INDIANOLA — Charter schools are expected to be a hallmark of President-elect Trump’s education policy. His pick for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, is one of the nation’s biggest promoters of the non-traditional public schools.
That means we should expect more focus on them in Mississippi.
So now halfway through the second year of the experiment in our state, where do we stand?
From looking at an annual report by the state Charter School Authorizer Board and a study by the Legislature’s PEER Committee, whether they will improve the state’s poor educational system remains up in the air. The potential is there, but the outcome isn’t guaranteed.
It’s very much worth trying, though. Charters, which receive public money but are free to operate with more flexibility than traditional schools, give poor parents and children, who are often stuck in the worst districts and can’t afford private alternatives, another option.
The first two charter schools, both of which are in Jackson, did well in state assessments of their finances and organization during their opening year of 2015-2016. But academic progress was slow.
Reimagine Prep, which had 110 fifth-graders, received a D in the state ratings. It outperformed other Jackson public school fifth-graders quite significantly in math, but not English.
Midtown Public, which had 104 fifth- and sixth-graders, made an F and was slightly below other Jackson fifth- and sixth-graders in math and slightly ahead in English.
“Frankly, we were disappointed in the initial results, but you have to give them time because you have to understand what they’re walking into,” said Tommie Cardin, a Ridgeland attorney who serves on the state Charter School Authorizer Board. “In fairness to them, it’s going to take several academic years to really get a feel for what they can do.”
But Cardin, a former chairman of the Authorizer Board, pointed out there were bright spots in the data, especially regarding growth in student scores. He described the teaching approach at both schools as “aggressive, hands-on, interactive.”
Clearly, 10-year-olds who are behind in learning don’t catch up overnight — or in most cases, ever. The schools need time to prove themselves academically, and that’s why the state rightly gave them an initial five-year charter.
And that time limit alone is a major reason why charter schools are worthwhile. If they don’t produce, the board doesn’t renew their charter and they cease to exist. Traditional failing schools have no such incentive. They can do as poorly as they want for as long as they want, and the tax dollars keep rolling in.
Yet there’s undoubtedly risk in handing out public money to a private entity. As such, the Authorizer Board has taken a cautious approach to allowing new schools. Results from charters in the other 40 states that allow them are mixed, and it’s worth it to get it right before building up a huge, expensive program.
Although one additional school opened this year, Joel E. Smilow Prep in Jackson, the board approved no new schools in 2016.
“We’ve been shooting for quality not quantity, and we believe that we have a process that yields operators who have the highest and best chance of success,” Cardin said. “That’s what we demand because the children in these schools deserve no less.”
There’s reason to hope charters could soon expand out of Jackson and into the Delta, where they’re needed most with high poverty rates and nearly every district a D or F.
A new law passed in the last legislative session lets students cross district lines into a charter school if their district is rated C, D or F. Previously they could only draw students from within their own district.
Because of that, there’s not been enough population from which to draw to make a charter school work in a rural area.
Sunflower County stands to benefit from the change as much as anywhere. The district is rated a D, and a potential charter here could draw from nearly every surrounding community, including Greenville, Leland, Belzoni, Cleveland and Greenwood.
Cardin said the main reason for not having one in the Delta has been a lack of quality applicants and that the inability to cross district lines was a concern for prospective charter school operators.
“The idea was that changing that might help encourage quality operators to apply in the Delta,” he said. “That’s yet to be seen because it’s very new and we haven’t had an application cycle since that law changed, but we’re about to start a cycle this month.”
Here’s hoping 2017 is the year the pieces finally fall into place for a Delta charter school.
