Reframing the Debate on Charters and Vouchers

“Proponents of educational equity cannot be effective as “the party of ‘no,” was the theme of the session on charters and education. The panel of experts—including Leigh Dingerson, author of Reclaiming the Education Charter: Ohio’s Experiment with Charter Schooling, Susan Nogan, a senior policy researcher at the National Educators’ Association, and Richard Shapiro, counsel for the defendant school districts in Crawford v. Davy—proposed policy advocacy and public relations strategies as methods for reframing the debate over education reform.

Regulation for Innovation: Charters as a Supplement to—not a Substitute for— Public Schools

Dingerson argued that charter schools are both improving and working to "dismantle" public education. In her comprehensive study of Ohio charter schools, she found that, while many charters serve as laboratories for developing innovative curricula and best practices, others run by for-profit companies provide the same or lower quality instruction as traditional public schools. She recounted the histories of two drastically different schools—the Inter-generational School and the International Preparatory School—to illustrate the potential and pitfalls of charters.

The Inter-Generational School in Cleveland, founded in 2002 by experienced educators and an expert in child psychology, frames instruction around developmental stages instead of grade levels and promotes interaction across age groups. K-6 students are placed into 4 "learner" categories, where older students have the opportunity to mentor their younger peers. Additionally, the school connects students to senior citizens--students teach computer literacy, while seniors provide help with reading and math. In spite of educators' refusal to "teach to the test," the state of Ohio has consistently rated the Inter-Generational School as "effective" or "excellent," and the Cleveland Municipal District is working to replicate its curriculum.

Established in 1999, the for-profit International Preparatory School exemplifies the sham side of the charter school movement. Administrators promised to provide students with foreign language courses, international travel experience and hands-on learning. Over the next 6 years, the school failed to provide textbooks and computers, offered no language classes beyond the introductory level, failed to meet state academic requirements, and amassed over 1 million dollars in debt.

Dingerson believes that both schools reflect the state of charter schools in Ohio. Deceptive and ineffective charter school experiences could have been prevented by greater government regulation. She argued that advocates of educational equity should work to create a set of standards and state regulations that determine if and how charter schools benefit the public school system, and support those charters that work best.

Reclaiming Public Opinion and Traditional Constituencies in the Voucher Debate

Nogan and Shapiro focused on the voucher debate. Like Dingerson, they argued that proponents of educational equity should not take defensive positions. Instead, they advocated a coordinated media strategy to present alternative proposals for education reform to the public. Nogan noted that presenting evidence on the inefficacy of voucher programs alone casts public school advocates as supporters of the status quo; a more productive tack would be to promote policies “better than” vouchers. She noted that studies show that, when presented with a menu of education policy choices, respondents ranked vouchers well below programs like early childhood education and after school programs.

Similarly, Shapiro argued that there must be a concerted effort to counter the “effective marketing” of voucher proponents. He shared that traditional constituencies—people of color and the urban poor—overwhelmingly support the plaintiffs in the Crawford v. Davy voucher lawsuit. In his view, education reformers must acknowledge the failures of public school systems in addition to exposing the realities of voucher (and charter) programs in order to reclaim this support base. He also stressed the need for acquiring and disseminating hard data on the efficacy, potential segregative effects and incidences of corruption in charter and voucher programs.