Should Charter School Start-Ups Be “Connected” to School Districts?

The Lawrence Journal-World gives a short profile of Betty Horton, a charter school advocate. Horton speaks bluntly:

“Horton, an education consultant from Topeka, . . . said she is expecting warfare.

‘When you talk about charter schools being developed by African Americans and community people, the school district can get ugly and can do some horrific things,’ Horton said.”

Charter schools are a family thing–Horton, her husband, and her sister and brother-in-law have all received grants of $1,995 to help develop plans for charter schools.

Horton now heads the Kansas Association of Charter Schools. (The organization does not yet have a web site, it appears.). She is not getting a universal endorsement. “State Board of Education member Sue Gamble, a Republican from Shawnee, has questioned the awarding of the grants, saying those receiving the grants seem to have no connection to school districts.”

That last sentence has an interesting phrase. “No connection to school districts.” Ms. Gamble may be correct on that point (we really don’t know). But that obscures a more important question: do the people involved have a connection to education? And can they help guide would-be charter school operators into sound territory? Gamble’s comments reflect a common but misguided sentiment: “education” should be limited to what is approved by the local school district. This confuses desired end (an educated population) with one particular means–the politically elected local school board.

Independent charter schools are not for every student, nor should they be. But it’s time to recognize that the needs of students can be served by multiple educational authorities.

By the way, the sidebar in the article has some useful links.

Obscuring the Picture With Wiggle Words

Kansas has enacted a requirement that 65 percent of school spending be spent on classroom instruction. The idea has been discussed in many states, and enacted in a few. George F. Will comments that federal data compilers are obscuring the debate by changing the definitions that might be applied to such laws:

In July the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the U.S. Education Department, undermined this national effort. A report on expenditures for public elementary and secondary education for the 2003-04 school year contained this finding: “The percentage of current expenditures spent on instruction and instruction-related activities was 66.1 percent in 2003-04 for the nation as a whole” (emphasis added). Seasoned students of government verbiage noted the suspiciously vague phrase “instruction-related activities.”

[snip]

Now that Americans’ concern is shifting from how much money is spent on education to how much education the money is buying, government has blurred the measurement in a way that says 66.1 percent of education dollars already reach the classroom. If the “instruction-related” criterion is not added, the percentage of dollars devoted to instruction has declined for five consecutive years, to 61.3.