By T.L. HEADLEY, MBA, MAT, MA
As a parent with two children in Cabell County Schools, and as someone who has three master’s degrees, including a Master’s +45 in Education, an MBA in finance/management and an MA in public relations, I think I can speak to the importance of SB 14, the Creating Public Charter Schools Act of 2015, to the futures of my children and that of current and future generations of children in our state.
I am incredibly saddened that the state’s “progressive” Democratic leadership chose to use parliamentary procedures (tricks) to shut down debate and essentially try to shut the door to this needed education reform for at least another year. West Virginia’s children deserve better.
Perhaps you, the reader, are aware of what charter schools are and why more and more parents are looking to them as a way to improve our children’s educations as well as provide parents more confidence in the quality of their children’s schools and more power to make decisions regarding their children’s education. If you do not know about charter schools, they are public schools that, while funded by the state, establish their own charters – essentially contracts with parents – to provide education to their children. They set their own rules, determine their own curriculum and they have much more latitude to hire and fire teachers.
Since 1991, when Minnesota instituted their use, charter schools have shown their value. Today, just 24 years later, 42 states and the District of Columbia have now instituted charter schools. Studies have shown that charter schools provide students a significant advantage. In particular, these studies show that charter elementary and middle schools, on average, outperform their district-run counterparts in math. In fact, the effects for math achievement, for the most part, became larger and more significant with the addition of three new years’ worth of research (with the exception of a small drop in magnitude for studies at the elementary level). The effect sizes at the elementary and middle school levels are estimated at 0.045 and 0.084, respectively. These effect sizes mean that attending a charter elementary school would boost a student starting at the 50th percentile to the 52nd percentile in a year. A student attending a charter middle school could jump from the 50th to the 53rd percentile in a year. If that same student experienced similar gains all three years at a charter middle school, the student would move from the 50th percentile upon entering 6th grade to nearly the 60th percentile upon leaving 8th grade. 1
Likewise, these same studies and others show that these benefits are not limited to math and science but are also seen in reading. In fact, at the middle school level, the estimated effect sizes for math and reading are 0.374 and 0.174, respectively. These suggest that a student initially at the 50th percentile would move to percentile 64.6 in math and percentile 56.9 in reading.
As you know, tests routinely show that West Virginia students struggle with the math, science and reading curriculum. If charter schools are beneficial to our students in these fields, not only must they be instituted in West Virginia, but we must learn what they are doing and duplicate it in non-charter public schools in the state.
There is also evidence of large positive impacts of charter schools on high school graduation and college enrollment. 2 For example, in one lottery based study of Boston schools, researchers found charter school lottery winners had similar rates of overall postsecondary enrollments as lottery losers but the winners were 17 percent more likely to enroll in four-year colleges than those who did not win the lottery. A couple of other studies have found significant reductions in student disciplinary infractions, teenage pregnancy, and incarceration among those who attend charter schools.
Charter schools, as autonomous entities, use that autonomy to design unique strategies to teach students who may not have been well served in traditional district-run schools. These students include low-income, low-performing and special needs students as well as high-performing, gifted and talented students and the general student population – particularly those with special interests that are not being met by traditional schools.
Right now, West Virginia ranks among the top states in terms of investments in education in proportion to per capita income, yet we are left to watch as our current school system fails.
We are closing down community schools in the face of declining population and in the face of declining tax revenues to support them, forcing more and more students to travel further and further to get less and less educational value. It is time we begin to think outside the box, and charter schools allow us to do just that. They will also allow us to do more with less and hopefully make a real difference in our children and grandchildren’s lives.
I ask that you move quickly to overturn this pathetic attempt by West Virginia’s Democratic leadership to undermine real education reform in our state and pass SB 14 the Creating Public Charter Schools Act of 2015. We simply don’t have the luxury of waiting. Children’s lives and futures are at risk.
1 Julian R. Betts and Y. Emily Tang, Value-Added and Experimental Studies of the Effect of Charter Schools on Student Achievement: A Literature Review, National Charter School Research Project (Seattle, WA: Center on Reinventing Public Education, 2008). Julian R. Betts and Y. Emily Tang, The Effect of Charter Schools on Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of the Literature, National Charter School Research Project (Seattle, WA: Center on Reinventing Public Education, 2011).
2 Scott Imberman, Achievement and Behavior in Charter Schools: Drawing a More Complete Picture (Houston, TX: University of Houston, 2007); Will Dobbie and Roland Fryer, Jr., “The Medium-Term Impacts of High-Achieving Charter Schools on Non-Test Score Outcomes,” Working Paper No. 19581 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2013).
The Mind's Eye 