CHARTERS: Fighting For Relevance

It's the best and worst of times for charter schools right now.  What they need to focus on next isn't expansion for expansion's sake, however, or even culling the herd to improve overall effectiveness.  They need to make themselves relevant and useful to improving public education. And Arne Duncan and George Miller need to help.

What a strange mix of things are going on around charter schools these days.  The Obama administration has gone mad for them, focusing much of its attention (and many of its school visits) on charters.  Arne Duncan will speak at the charter conference today (here).  I wouldn't be surprised if the First Lady started  focusing her visits on charter school vegetable gardens, where watering times are not limited by arbitrary rules. 

At the same time, charters are going through a particularly rough time -- capped in more than half the states that allow them (and too few likely to change anytime soon), suffering from widespread quality problems according to the CREDO report.  Last but not least, there's more and more talk about unionization -- not only the handful of schools that have already done it but the many more who might under the Employee Free Choice Act. 

My view, for what it's worth, is that it's time for charters to engage more constructively and substantively with school districts and district schools.  You've proved your point.  A handful of independent schools can do amazing things.  But many can't and don't.  Choice for choice's sake is not particularly compelling.  There's too little evidence that the mere power of your existence is having any beneficial effect on public education over all.  And there's too much pushback for you to grow -- even with the help of the EdSec's bully pulpit and RttT dollars. 

The real path towards success is for the ideas and practices of the best charter schools to become a stronger, more meaningful part of NCLB's school improvement process, rather than a rarely used option that it currently is.  None of the main stakeholders -- charter operators, ideologues, teachers unions, or districts -- will like this idea much.  It's messy, steps on a lot of toes, and is unproven.  But it still seems like the right way to go. Another 20 years of drip-drip expansion doesn't seem particularly inviting or useful to the world at large.