Why we will vote FOR the Georgia Charter School Amendment on Nov. 6
As two of the founders of Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School, buy the second charter school to open in Atlanta, capsule 10 years ago this fall, we have spent a lot of time considering the arguments in favor of and against Amendment 1—the proposed change to the Georgia constitution that if passed on Tuesday would allow for the re-establishment of an appointed state commission with the power to create charter schools.
Our personal conclusion: We support Amendment 1.
We’ve heard good people—including friends and allies whose right to make their own decisions regarding this we respect 100 percent–say they support “some” charter schools but oppose Amendment 1 because it’s going “too far,” is “too corporate” or gives “too much power” to the state. We know those views are truly sincere and well-intentioned. We share some of the misgivings.
But we also believe that many people don’t realize how precarious all charter schools are in Georgia right now—and what a serious threat that is to all of us who believe in the importance of diverse public schools serving every family from every background.
The three biggest arguments we’ve heard against Amendment 1 are this:
- First, that charter school proponents already have an “appeal” process to the state board of education if they are not given a fair hearing by a local school board;
- Second, that approving this amendment would mean less funding for conventional public schools;
- Third, that this gives the state “too much power” over public education and takes away the local control of local school boards.
Based on our experience over the past decade, all three of those arguments appear flatly incorrect.
- First, under the “appeal” to the state board of education allowed under current law, the best that a charter school organizer can hope for is to be approved as a “special” school receiving just a fraction of the funding that conventional public schools receive. Schools like those are doomed to fail.
- Second, the only way that additional charter schools meaningfully divert funds from other schools is if they attract back to public education children who are not currently attending public schools. In a state where tens of thousands of children—more than 100,000 in Atlanta alone—have abandoned public schools, the idea of convincing a new generation of students and their families to return to public education is a GOOD thing. To argue otherwise is to accept all of the worst trends in public education over the past 50 years.
- Third, and finally, how can anyone argue that the system of local school boards has been a good thing? Over the last 20 years. Suburban school boards have openly encouraged white flight from the city and resisted reform ferociously. The city school system continues—despite the valiant efforts of some who have tried to turn things around—to post abysmal academic performance and graduation rates, and is today most famous for Atlanta’s ignominious cheating scandal. What could possibly be the argument for continuing to give that system of governance total control of all public schools?
In our minds, what is even more important than any of those arguments is this: A tremendous attack is already underway that threatens the existence of ALL charter schools. It began when the old state charter school commission was struck down by the state Supreme Court last year—proving that for charter schools to thrive they cannot exist purely on the whims of local school boards. This is why the education policy of President Barack Obama calls for the creation of “alternative authorizers”—like the one Amendment 1 would establish–of charters in every state.
THE ATTACK ON CHARTER SCHOOLS:
The ruling against the commission was in response to a lawsuit initiated by a few school boards that oppose the existence of all charter schools. Since that decision, the state Department of Education and many local school districts have already been recalculating formulas for funding in ways that have slashed millions of dollars from charter schools. It isn’t just that the bad economy has hurt everyone. Instead, local school systems have attempted to balance their budgets by disproportionately cutting funding for charter schools, diverting that money to non-charter schools and to make up shortfalls stemming from the systems’ poor financial practices in the past. Already, charter schools have had to band together to hire lawyers to fight some of these clearly unfair efforts.
If Amendment 1 fails, these attacks will accelerate. It will become vastly more difficult for new charter schools to be created in Georgia. And all existing charter schools in the state almost certainly will face a new barrage of obstacles when it is time to renew their charters. During the campaign over Amendment 1, local school leaders have repeatedly made it clear that they don’t even view charter schools as being public schools. They want to see all independent charter schools disappear. Based on past history, that attack will ultimately include going after well-established, high-performing, beloved schools such as Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School. It will be up for renewal in just three years.
To fully understand the importance of re-establishing the charter school commission, you have to look at the history of schools like the one we helped establish. It currently has generally good relations with Atlanta Public Schools, and there are many APS administrators who are committed to working in supportive ways with charter schools. We deeply respect those individuals and believe in them.
OUR EXPERIENCE BEFORE THERE WAS A COMMISSION:
But it wasn’t always that way. When we began working with a group of neighbors to create Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School back in the late 1990s, there was no charter school commission, and there were hardly any charter schools in Georgia. When we approached the administration of former APS Superintendent Beverly Hall with the idea of taking over the decrepit and underperforming elementary school in Grant Park that the system had announced they would soon abandon, she and others made it clear to us that our efforts were unwelcome. When we said we believed we could reconnect our neighborhood to the school and convince large numbers of families to reconsider public education, they blew us off. When we pressed ahead, APS fought our success tooth and nail—going to almost any length to prevent the creation of the school, and after it was established doing everything possible to shut us down. Administrators flagrantly denied funding the school was clearly entitled to. When our building burned catastrophically in 2003 during the first year of operation, APS illegally contracted for bulldozers to come in and remove what was left of the building (without even notifying us). APS lawyers worked bitterly to block us from receiving insurance funds we were entitled to get for reconstruction, and at the same time notified us that our charter was going to be terminated for failure to immediately rebuild. That’s no exaggeration. It was that bad.
We overcame those efforts at sabotage, miraculously. Our neighborhood banded together, rebuilt anyway and persevered. Dynamic and talented teachers began flocking to the school with their resumes, and our students began posting some of the highest scores in the city. (Without cheating.) As early charter schools like ours succeeded, though, metro Atlanta school districts still didn’t embrace them. Instead, they began adopting policies designed to make it virtually impossible for more charter schools to be established. There was no state charter commission then, so local school boards had complete control over the approval of new schools. By 2007, things were so bad that metro Atlanta school districts rejected almost every new charter school proposed that year—often on the most specious grounds. That wave of denials led directly to the state legislature voting to create a charter school commission in 2008 with the power to overrule rejections by local boards, and to fully fund those schools.
Only after that did the Atlanta board of education and other local school systems truly begin working in good faith with charter school groups. Soon APS had created a rigorous but completely professional system for considering applications. It accepted convincing proposals for high-quality new schools—such as Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School’s expansion into the middle school grades several years ago—and rejected applications that couldn’t make the grade. Serious charter school advocates like us applauded when the commission shot down inferior plans. Many other districts—though not all–took similar steps.
During the two years that the charter commission existed, there was no avalanche of poor performing new charter schools—as some opponents of Amendment 1 suggest would happen if it is approved on Tuesday. There was no syphoning off of hundreds of millions of dollars from starving conventional public schools. No attacks on teachers. No surge in social or racial stratification of schools.
Instead, with the charter commission keeping local school boards honest, the number of children attending independent charter schools in Georgia grew slowly and steadily. Gradually, the number of pupils rose by the end of 2011 to just under 60,000 in about 100 independent charter schools—or less than 4 percent of all public school students in Georgia. (That number excludes so called “charter systems,” which actually remain under the direct management of local school boards and differ very little from conventional public schools.)
In Atlanta during those years, the total number of students in charter schools grew to just under 4,000—including 637 students currently enrolled in kindergarten through 8th grade on the two campuses of Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School, where both our children have attended.
THE NEW ATTACK ON EDUCATION REFORM:
All that began changing when the Georgia Supreme Court ruled in May 2011 that the state legislature didn’t have the legal right to have ever created the old charter school commission. (Read Doug’s op-ed on the ruling at the time here: http://www.ajc.com/news/news/opinion/charter-ruling-flunks-history-ignores-roots-of-seg/nQtnm/) Since then, growth in independent charter schools has stalled—at just above 60,000 students statewide. Local school boards no longer have to worry about being overruled if they reject a proposed charter or a renewal for no good reason. The number of proposals for new charter schools has plummeted—chilled by the newly hostile environment. At the same time, the state Department of Education, under the new direction of a state superintendent who has made clear his previously stated support for charter schools was less than it appeared, has become increasingly difficult for all charter schools to work with. Our funds have been cut much more dramatically than conventional schools.
Why does this matter even beyond charter schools? It matters because charters have become one of the very few remaining places in the world of education where there are still people working to foster racially and socially diverse schools, and trying to convince families to stay in public schools rather than flee to private ones. That goal is at the core of Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School. The driving force to improve Maynard Jackson High School, the conventional APS school in Grant Park, is an inspiring group of parents whose kids were reconnected to public education through our neighborhood charter school. Without charters, that would never have happened.
Meanwhile, in APS overall, the student population plummeted during the time since our group began working to create a charter school. There were about 57,000 students in APS at the beginning of Dr. Hall’s tenure—a tenure during which APS genuinely improved in some respects. Nonetheless, even as the population of Atlanta grew rapidly and charters were adding thousands of students to the APS rolls, the total number of students in the system dwindled to less than 49,000 by the time she retired in the wake of the Atlanta cheating scandal.
Charter schools are by no means a solution for every ill in public education. Just like the best conventional public schools, they are human endeavors, and like humans they are imperfect. Sometimes they fail. They should never replace all of traditional public education. But in the decade that charters have existed in Georgia, they have vastly more often provided quality education for tens of thousands of students who otherwise wouldn’t have had good schools to attend or would never have participated in public education at all. Far more important, charter schools in many areas have challenged the fossilized local school boards and education bureaucrats who long controlled public education across Georgia to finally wake up and get serious about meaningful reform. And charter schools—embraced nationally by Republicans and Democrats from Bill Clinton to George Bush to Barack Obama–have revitalized the idea that public schools should serve everyone, and not just those with no other options.
If Amendment 1 fails, it will be open season on all charter schools in Georgia, open season on the small number of conventional public school administrators who have been supportive of them, and open season on the only truly hopeful trend in Atlanta public education for a generation.
Vote yes for Amendment 1.
Doug and Michelle Blackmon
Nov. 1, 2012
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Doug and Michelle, can you provide some insight into why the provision has an appointed board rather than an elected board and whether or not that makes a difference into how the board will operate? I am still rather uncomfortable with the provision for an appointed board, but realize that there may be reason why it is being proposed this way.
Hello Rene. We didn’t have any involvement in the drafting of the amendment or the campaigning for it, so can’t actually say exactly what reasoning there was for that element the design. (In fact, I resigned from the board of the Georgia Charter School Association almost a year ago specifically to avoid direct involvement in the campaign, given my real life as a journalist. Michelle and I decided to post our personal views on the amendment because so many people were querying us about it. So all of this is really a private communication to others we know might be interested in our views.)
But having said that, I would imagine the commission is appointed because a) all state commissions are appointed–such as the state Board of Education, which oversees the state’s current involvement in all public schools, and the Georgia Board of Regents, which oversees all public higher education, and endless numbers of other such entities that ultimately oversee a whole range of critical public services in Georgia, AND b) because the charter school commission that previously existed was also appointed.
I honestly think the concern about it being an appointed board is a distraction without any substance. That’s simply the way government functions in Georgia, and long has. There’s nothing new or more or less nefarious about it than there is in the way the University of Georgia or Georgia Tech or the whole Department of Education is governed. As we said in the original post, the appointed commission that existed until last May didn’t do any of the terrible things that opponents have imagined that the new commission would do. So there’s just no evidence to support those concerns. The reality is that the evidence says the opposite.
I also would say that, like another person commenting here wrote earlier, having elected local school boards does not seem to have protected us all any better. I wouldn’t advocate doing away with elected school boards, but my personal view and experience is that school boards, in the city, the suburbs and rural Georgia, have consistently proven themselves to more concerned with political self-preservation than any sort of meaningful agenda for revitalizing public schools. In terms of my personal support, I keep coming back to that: the local school board system has been such an abject failure, has so often worked hardest to support the worst instincts of the voters–whether that was for racial segregation or low taxes or outright corruption–I just can’t get reconciled to the idea that that system should continue to hold a monopoly on all aspects of public schools. And that’s what the failure of Amendment 1 will create–a rigid monopoly that not only prevents more charter schools and puts in jeopardy all existing charter schools, it will also reduce the influence of the state Department of Education. That’s all very bad, and far far more likely to happen than these overblown worries that the state legislature is going to suddenly turn over all public schools to private companies. That’s an imaginary boogie monster and there’s simply no evidence to suggest anything remotely like that could happen.
As a concerned parent, I hear you loud and clear. I appaud your efforts to get a community school in a failing area of Atlanta. But my concerns are why parents are working harder to fix the failing schools that leave behind children who are still getting an inferior education. What happens to them? But I digress. There are far too many political entities involved in education OUR BLACK children. In my opinion, this amendment is more about how much money Educational Management Companies (EMO) would profit off the backs of Our Children and not care about their education. These companies come in to help because of poor-performing district schools. They hire the staff, implement the curriculum, pay the payroll, do the technology, train the teachers and operate the school.But those services come at a cost of an administrative fee. They can buy buildings; they can give the school loans; they can do all these great things but less money is going to the kids and teachers because these companies are getting their money off the top.
Not only that, who is going to make sure these schools that are being chartered by the commission are doing what they suppose to do. The commission only charters, they don’t manage. Commission will be in Atlanta, who is going to monitor a school in Waycross, GA. Also, how will this new Commission determine if there is a need for a charter school in an area? There have been many EMO coming into an area saying they want to help these proverty stricken kids but never ask the community if that is what they want. So a school can be granted a charter but it will take almost an act of God to get one that is not doing well to close down. Most charters are granted for 5 years. If a school is not doing well, it is hard to get them to close before their charter can be renewed. This means the parents who WILL keep their kids in the charter school will not be getting quality education again.
I am for quality education and options for parents. What I am not for are politicians and large (out of the country) companies telling me how they are going to save my child. I am more willing to put the extra effort it takes to make a public school my child attends the best it can be with the help of other parents and the community instead of abandoning what is available to me and others who want to stay and fight for ALL the kids in the school to make it better.
It is a choice, but the choice should be the kids, ALL the kids, not just a select few who don’t have a voice and others take advantage of them.
Thanks for your reply, and for your support of the work we’ve done in Atlanta. I empathize with your concerns too. But I also believe that the record of charter schools in Georgia, and the old charter school commission that was struck down last May, really defies some of your worries. Charter schools–especially the ones created by the old commission–serve far more African-American children than any other group. Currently, those schools’ student populations are about 65% black, as compared to about 35% African-American in all public schools. So the reality is that charter schools on the whole have been a real vehicle for disrupting failed public schools and opening the door to new options more so for underserved black students than any other group. That’s why there is a tremendous amount of support for charters among many African-Americans (though obviously not universal) who at the same time are strongly opposed to Republican policies in every other arena. Charter schools are a non-party effort at this stage, strongly endorsed by President Obama and Arne Duncan, in addition to all the leading Republicans in the country.
In terms of the success or failure of charter schools, and whether they can be shut down, I would urge you to look at the actual, factual record of charter schools in Georgia over the past decade, rather than the THEORETICAL worries that are being offered up about the future. The actual record of charter schools is virtually all of them start their 5-year-lifespans very small, just as most new enterprises do, and then they gradually grow larger over the five years, as more families are attracted to them, and the schools put together larger staffs, build out facilities, etc. Most don’t reach full size before five years, and many don’t do so until their charters have been renewed.
Those charter schools that fail to fulfill the performance requirements–in terms of academic achievement–that is laid out in their charters are aggressively policed by the state Department of Education’s charter school division and by local school boards–even if they are not chartered by a local system. And several charter schools have been shut down by those regulating entities for poor performance in recent years. Much more important, however, is that if a charter school is failing to do what it should, the children who are attending and their parents or guardians are generally the first to figure that out, and they can bail out at any time. And they do! No one is required to attend a charter school. Does that mean sometimes resources are consumed for a year or two by an ultimately failing school? Yes it does. But that is dramatically outweighed by the impact of successful charter schools, which generally operate at far lower costs than traditional public schools and have repeatedly filled the gap for children who were otherwise being ignored by traditional schools. Those successful charters also often trigger conventional public schools to finally get serious and step up their game to meet the competition posed by a charter. That’s partly because charter schools, especially in inner city and poorer areas, don’t make the assumptions that are rampant in many conventional schools about which children are going to be able to excel and which aren’t.
Charter schools will NEVER supplant conventional public schools, but at a very low cost, they are an amazingly constructive disruptive to dysfunctional school systems, and even when they fail, the presence of the school almost always leads to improvement in all the surrounding schools. And whatever money is lost on a charter school that isn’t renewed or is closed after two or three years is NOTHING compared to the tens of millions of dollars wasted over the years by conventional school boards that have refused to close their own failing schools, refused to close schools that were all but empty because the families that they served abandoned them for their poor performance, refused or were unable to confront administrators or faculty who failed in their jobs. The cost of the failures of conventional public schools, in dollars and in damage done to our communities, is astronomical, compared to the trifling by comparison amounts that are spent on charter schools. (The good that is done by conventional schools is also astronomical–I don’t mean to suggest otherwise.) But all of this hand wringing about the “cost” of charter schools is, to just speak plainly, silly and hypocritical, especially when it comes from the very local school board officials and educators who say absolutely nothing about the immeasurable more vast amounts that have been spent on failed efforts in the conventional schools.
I am a true believer in public education. I attended public schools all the way through. Most of the time in schools that were overwhelmingly African-American and overwhelmingly attended by desperately poor kids. My mother was a teacher in them too. I believe public schools are in many respects the only hope for bridging the divides that are so large in our country right now. But this refusal to acknowledge the obvious failures and deficiencies, and be open to some modest experiments with alternative ways of doing things, is well-intentioned but misguided, and defies the reality that stares us all in the face.
Thank you so much for sharing your story, views and experience. I also want to thank you for all of your hard work you have done to make a difference in a child’s life, it is greatly appreciated!
You and the Koch Brothers and Alice Walton and all of the for profit charter schools from out of state. While GA has some terribly narrow educational leaders, there is an opportunity to educate, lobby, and organize around these issues. Once bought politicians giving charters to all of the for profit charters, there will be little money for the progressive charters. And there will be little opportunity for our voice to make a difference. They will squish out our advocacy, like a pesky mosquito. Do not side with the Tea Party on this! Do not side with corporate america on this!
Dan, I appreciate your passion, but your concerns are really defied by the record of charter schools in Georgia. There’s nothing unusual about an appointed commission like this one. That’s what the state Board of Education is, and the Board of Regents that governs UGA and Georgia Tech. The existence of those boards hasn’t destroyed those schools or privatized public schools. And the historical facts are that the kind of organizing you advocate–and that I completely agree with–around local school boards simply hasn’t produced the changes you suggest. There’s no reason to believe that it’s suddenly going to by giving local school boards even MORE complete control over all public schools.
Charter schools are a small phenomenon in Georgia that can be used to disrupt broken and dysfunctional school situations. They will continue to be that, even with the commission recreated. This isn’t a tea party or corporate America idea. It’s a concept directly endorsed by President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and Bill Clinton, and, yes, a whole raft of Republicans. There’s simply no evidence to support the nightmare scenario you imagine. And there is immense and endlessly abundant evidence to support the conclusion that the system of local school boards that has controlled everything for the past century in Georgia is failing.
Thanks for this post – it really helped me decide which way to vote. I’ve shared it on Facebook in an effort to continue spreading your knowledge and experience on the issue.
Doug and Michelle,
Thank you SO much for this piece. Since I relocated to rural southwest Georgia to my hometown of Edison – home of Pataula Charter Academy, which was named in the suit – it has become clear to me that Amendment 1 must pass.
Rural Georgians have no school choice without charter schools. The five school systems from which Pataula draws its student body are all incredibly damaged, and have been for decades, despite the desperate parents who have wanted them fixed. As for the school boards, the “vote ’em out” arguments are so unrealistic as to be laughable, if the issues weren’t so serious.
Ousting incumbent members of the local Boards of Education is virtually impossible: there are no, repeat, no media outlets covering the races down here. Need information on the local elections? It’s word-of-mouth only. Still, parents tried here, as did parents in neighboring counties. All failed. So, parents in Calhoun County banded with parents in five other counties/school districts to create an inter-county/school-system charter school so their kids would have a choice besides paying for private school… the only other alternative. And they succeeded in creating an exceptional school, a school that will have to close its doors, and send its students back to those damaged school systems if this amendment fails.
It’s a travesty. If Pataula closes, the odds are that it will never open its doors again. None of the five school systems from which the student body is drawn will approve it. And the kids will suffer. And not just the kids attending now and here, but all of the children across Georgia who need a break from the hide-bound, stubborn, damaged school systems so they can learn and get a real education.
As you’ve pointed out, no school system welcomes charter schools: charter schools take the most involved, committed, energized parents away from their systems forever. It breaks my heart to think that the charter school kids – who are thriving in their new environment – will have to go back to if the amendment fails… and all the other rural kids across Georgia who may never have any choice in the future.
From my experiences with metro Atlanta school boards and what I’ve learned about southwest Georgia boards, I feel certain that obdurate, entrenched local boards of education are likely to see the failure of this amendment as carte blanche to do whatever they want with impunity. And that will kill charter schools, and the educational excellence charter school students experience.
As for this dreaded spectre of corporate schools that are hovering just outside state lines, ready to take over our schools, I can’t see any for-profit entities coming to rural Georgia… ever. There’s no profit to be made here. But I confess that I’d welcome them if it would mean that the children or rural Georgia – or anywhere in Georgia – would get a shot at a decent education.
Bottom line, I believe that for decades, parents have tried to get Georgia school systems to change, and address issues, and make changes, and be successful. They’ve failed for whatever reasons, and not just in rural areas, but in cities, too. So they see a life-saver for their children in the form of charter schools.
The children of Georgia should not be left to sink under the weight of a failed public education system. The children of Georgia deserve a chance to grab that life-saver. Passing the amendment would ensure that life-saver exists for all of Georgia’s children.
Thanks for commenting Marcia. You have an important perspective.