With 430 charter schools, roughly one-fifth the nation's total, Arizona offers a laboratory testing how free market education works. The authors, a husband and wife team, disagree about how to interpret the Arizona experience with charter schools. Together, Robert Maranto and April Gresham have authored numerous works and served as co-editors of School Choice in the Real World: Lessons from Arizona Charter Schools (Westview 2001). Maranto (PhD Minnesota 1989) (Robert.Maranto@villanova.edu) teaches Political Science at Villanova University; Gresham (PhD Minnesota 1993) is a researcher and homemaker. Their boss, Tony, enters kindergarten in 2005.

HE SAID PRAISING ARIZONA: The case for a charter school market Robert Maranto Villanova University

My local public schools in affluent Lower Merion Pennsylvania spend over $18,000 annually per child (in operating expenses alone), but I would rather send my son to school in Phoenix, Flagstaff, or any of a hundred other Arizona cities spending less than half as much, but offering real choices to parents and teachers.

For the past seven years, Arizona has boasted a charter school law allowing, for the first time, true school choice. If you want to start a charter school in Arizona and you have a coherent plan, you will probably gain permission from one of the two state boards that authorize charters, if not from a local school district that is also authorized to charter. Unlike Pennsylvania, you need not spend thousands on lawyers or lobbyists; you need not have political clout. You need only a dream and a plan to make your dream come true. Also unlike Pennsylvania, you will not make much money on education in Arizona. Arizona charter school operators are people who love education---not people seeking profits. Since state funds follow student enrollment decisions, district schools have incentives to compete with charter schools.

This means that for the first time, teachers and parents unhappy with existing public schools can develop their own alternatives. Arizona now has 430 charter school campuses, roughly 70 percent run by former district school teachers, administrators, and social workers that wanted to innovate within the system, but were stymied when the system said NO. Some district schools have lost a third of their would-be students to charters.

The Arizona model fascinates because while academics have theorized for years about what free markets would mean for public education, Arizona actually has such a market. Yet few have studied it. I have studied it. Over the past five years I have visited 29 Arizona charter school campuses (many multiple times), conducted over 200 interviews, and read innumerable reports and articles. I have seen a free market in public education, and I like what I see.

What do we know about a charter school market? We know that a charter school market is somewhat more restrictive than vouchers, in the sense that charter schools eschew religion while voucher programs include religious schools. Charter schools also suffer more regulation than private schools. In other ways, however, a charter market is less restrictive in that while existing voucher programs provide more opportunity to the poor, charter schools welcome rich and poor alike. Further, while private schools and public magnet schools often "cherry pick" admissions---it's easy to succeed if you only admit certain kids---charter schools in Arizona and most other states must make the best of whoever comes. Finally, charter programs typically increase the supply of education options by enabling edupreneurs, often existing public or private school teachers, to strike out on their own by starting new schools.

How well does Arizona's market work? Basically pretty well. A 2000 survey sponsored by the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools found that 61% of charter school parents but only 38 percent of district school parents gave their schools an A or A+, even though most charter schools spend less than most district schools. As Scott Milliman, April Gresham, and I have shown, save for the 13 percent of charter schools that converted from private school status, charter elementary schools have ethnic profiles nearly identical to those of nearby district schools. (Charter high schools usually serve at-risk students, and have more ethnic minorities.) Anecdotal evidence suggests that charter schools are safer and have more internal integration than traditional public schools. In district schools white and minority students often take separate courses of study and sit at separate lunch tables. For example, a Mexican-American charter school student I interviewed lamented that in his previous district school "everybody sits and stays within their own group, within their own race. There's a lot of conflict between everybody. Whites don't like blacks and blacks don't like whites, and Mexicans just don't like anybody." The district school had metal detectors and security guards, but students felt afraid. While his charter school has no security, people of all races get along since "this is a small school and everybody knows each other."

On the whole, charter schools do not have better standardized test scores than district schools, for the simple reason that parents whose children fail in traditional schools are particularly likely to seek charter alternatives. Notably, however, in an analysis of 35,000 district students and 5,500 charter students which controls for every conceivable independent variable (previous year test scores, race, primary language, absences, special education status, and grade level), Lewis Solmon of UCLA, Kern Paark of Arizona State University, and David Garcia of the Arizona Department of Education find that students learn slightly but significantly more in a year in a charter school than in a year in a district school. Charters do a bit better even though district schools have years of experience and greater resources behind them. In part, charter schools do better because they are smaller. In part charters do better because they empower their teaching staffs. Surveys I have conducted find charter school teachers more than twice as likely to report substantial influence over curricula and schedules as their district school counterparts, and nearly twice as likely to report control over instructional materials. Indeed, some charters give classroom teachers near complete control over budgets. The Sedona Charter School (SCS) even has teachers set their own salaries and those of their aids! SCS does not run a deficit, but it does have the highest test scores in the region.

Perhaps most importantly, charter schools offer parents a wide range of options. In Arizona, parents can choose Montessori, back to basics, or any of a wide range of other curricula that in my district are available only to those who can afford spending thousands on private school tuition. If only my wife and I had such options for our son! Alas, for some reason the $18,000 per child my local school district spends is not enough to tailor programs to fit the needs of individual students and teachers. Of course, if you think that all children and teachers are alike and that there is one best kind of education, then diversity can be frightening, even subversive.

And what about the students (and teachers) "left behind" in district schools? Our surveys and fieldwork show that charter school competition improves district schools by forcing them to compete for students and teachers. What a concept! I wish we had it where I live.

Finally, unlike district schools, charter schools are actually held accountable. When district schools screw up, they have to do paperwork and multi-year improvement plans, most of which are never implemented. When charter schools screw up, they close down and people lose their jobs: 6 percent in Arizona and over 3 percent nationally. Which system would you rather have when your children are at stake?

Of course, charter schools do not suddenly turn illiterates into National Merit Scholars. But in an area where progress is measured in inches rather than miles, charter schools offer hope.

 

SHE SAID NOT SO FAST! Charters can be good but are not a panacea. April Gresham Villanova, Pennsylvania

As is so often the case, my colleague and husband leads with his heart rather than his head, with optimism rather than realism. Alas, he has been seduced by the green of the cacti, the grandeur of Camelback Mountain, and the dreams of charter school entrepreneurs. He has gone from sober, unbiased analyst to being an outright supporter of charter schools. Don't get me wrong; charter schools should have supporters, but it's hard to be an objective evaluator when you are touched by dreams.

Let me make it clear that I too have spent countless hours in charter schools, and have liked much of what I have seen. Many of our friends are charter school entrepreneurs and their dedication to their children is inspirational. But I think that in the long run that dedication is best served by a neutral assessment rather than an all-out endorsement. So, since Bob has already waxed eloquent about charter schools' good points, I will play the bad cop and focus on some of their problems.

First, we need to be honest enough to admit that the jury is still out on what goes on inside charter schools. Even in Arizona, probably the most transparent state in the union, it is very difficult to figure out what goes on inside schools, particularly regarding finances and test scores---two things all schools, charter and district, want as secret as possible. From what we can divine, it seems that charter schools do about the same as district schools; rather less dramatic than free market supporters had promised. If they do only slightly better academically, then why praise them to the skies?

Then there is the matter of customer satisfaction. True, as Bob says, charter school parents rate their schools more highly than district school parents, but that is no surprise. After all, they made the (often tough) choice to enter their children in that charter school; rating that school badly would demean their own decision-making abilities. Thus, parent satisfaction surveys mean less than we think. Similarly, teacher satisfaction may simply reflect the fact that charter schools are new schools, and new organizations usually have higher morale and more empowered staffs. Give them a few years of nasty parents, state and national regulations, and lawsuits (or the threat of lawsuits) and charter school teachers may be as unhappy as district school teachers are currently.

So, definite measures such as test scores show charters doing a bit better, while satisfaction surveys, which often show charters as considerably better, have their own measurement problems. But let's put all that aside for the moment and say that I agree charters are better. The next question becomes…why? Are they better because, as my libertarian husband loves to say, the parents get to choose? Or are they better for a more mundane, less sexy reason, such as size? Charters are so much smaller than the average behemoth district school that they can pay more attention to individual kids, bend rules when necessary, and in general, do all kinds of fun things with kids that bigger schools, with all the lawsuit potential and administrative problems, just can't do.

And I have to wonder about the possible down side of such small, free-wheeling schools. For one thing, there is the Napoleon complex. In district schools you have school boards, central offices, regulations, superintendents, and all sort of other bureaucratic constraints to keep little Napoleons or Sadams from riding roughshod over teachers and students (now if only we could keep from stamping out creativity too!). But charter schools have many fewer constraints, and thus much more potential for mischief. For example, some charter operators routinely employ family members. I can write with my husband, but could I objectively evaluate his job performance? Other charter operators act as though their charters came directly from God's hands on Mt. Sinai, despite the fact that a typical charter school must evolve in response to its teachers, parents, and students.

My final concern is that of diversity. When different charters specialize enough to be marketed to certain sub-cultures, diversity does suffer. The reading curriculum at a conservative, Mormon-based school is as unlikely to showcase Richard Wright's classic novel Black Boy, as the history module at an inner-city Hispanic school is to feature a movie about the Boston Tea Party. The parents who choose to send their children and the teachers who teach don't see those educational materials as culturally relevant for "their" charter school. Yet, both are parts of our common American heritage, and I worry that this common framework will be lost. It's time enough to specialize in college when you have a common background from elementary school and high school. Why specialize the curriculum of your seven-year old?

In short, charter schools definitely have promise, but they have some potential pitfalls that are quite worrisome. Right now, I feel it is too early to say that they are the best answer to anything, other than how to impress my perpetually optimistic husband.