The Charter School Experiment After 10 Years (2002) This report studied the
decade-long charter school movement and found that while some charter schools
are working, the vast majority have not lived up to their promise. The cornerstone
idea of the original charter school movement was to raise student achievement
through innovation. However, as this report shows, where data are available
charter schools generally are not more effective, and often less effective, than
comparable regular public schools.
Executive Summary
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) supported the
creation of educationally strong charter schools from their
inception. We believed that innovative schools could be a
boon to public education, could provide good options for
children if the schools were held accountable for student achievement,
and would offer teachers new professional opportunities. The
AFT insisted that the schools be nonselective, meet high standards,
and protect the rights of teachers as employees.We are disappointed
to report that charter schools often fail on all three criteria and that
they have not lived up to the claims of their advocates or the hopes
of the American Federation of Teachers.
Nor have charter schools lived up to the claims of their detractors.
In general, these schools are a diversion from reformers’ and policymakers’
efforts to improve education in America.
■ Charter schools contribute to the racial and ethnic isolation of students.
Although these schools do not cream the best students from
the public schools to the extent some had feared, they do fail to
educate high-cost student populations at the same rate other public
schools do. High-cost populations include low-income, English
language learners, and special education students. Charter schools
tend to enroll special education students who have less severe needs
and require fewer services.
■ Charter school teachers are less experienced and lower paid than
teachers in other public schools. Charter school teachers also
receive inferior benefits and pensions compared to their public
school counterparts. Further, working in charter schools has not
met teachers’ expectations. Surveys of charter school teachers show
that they are most satisfied with education-related and colleaguerelated
issues; they have mixed feelings about administrators and
governance; and they are dissatisfied with salaries and benefits,
parent involvement, facilities, and workload.
■ Charter schools generally obtain funding for the type of students
they educate that is comparable to other public schools. Because
charter schools operate on a small level, they do not reap the benefits
of economy of scale that school districts do. As a result, the
charters spend more on administration and less on instruction
than other public schools.
■ Charter school students generally score no better (and often do
worse) on student achievement tests than other comparable public
school students.
■ Charter schools have not been held to the “bargain” they made—
trading freedom from rules for increased accountability. The charter
school “bargain” emphasizes administrative, fiscal, and educational
autonomy in exchange for greater accountability for student
achievement. In general, the schools have taken the freedom but
have not delivered on their promise to produce results. Charter
school authorizers have closed very few schools for failing to meet
student achievement goals. In addition, authorizers often face
insurmountable political hurdles when they attempt to close a
charter school. Teachers, students, and parents successfully lobby to
keep their charter school open—much like supporters of any other
public school facing closure.
■ Charter schools were supposed to experiment with new curricula
and classroom practices, but they have proven no more innovative
than other public schools. Rather than bring new ideas to education,
the charters sometimes import existing programs from
schools outside the district in which they operate. The innovations
charter schools do make are in governance and usually are not
transferable to the public school district.
■ School districts with growing enrollments feel little competitive
pressure and sometimes view charter schools as a solution to over-
crowding. Districts with stable or shrinking enrollments experience
a real—and sometimes damaging—financial loss due to charter
schools.
■ The problems associated with charter schools identified in this
report are exacerbated in the charter schools operated by for-profit
companies. The company-run charter schools enroll fewer students
with disabilities and spend less on special education services
than other charter schools. Teachers in for-profit schools report
lower levels of professional opportunity and greater dissatisfaction
with involvement in school decision-making than teachers in other
charter schools. Although the management companies operate
schools that are much larger than other charters, they still spend
more on administration and less on instruction. The company-run
schools do not contribute to innovation because they offer a single,
“cookie-cutter” school design, curriculum, and technology package
to all the schools they operate.
■ The justification for charter schools has moved from one that is
based on education and innovation to one that is based on choice
and competition. Yet charter schools provide a narrower range of
services to a more homogeneous student body, and “competition”
from charter schools has not brought about significant educational
change in other public schools.
In light of these findings, the AFT concludes that policymakers
should not expand charter school activities until more convincing
evidence of their effectiveness and viability is presented.
