Letter to the Editor: On Question 2

To the Editor:

Question 2 will determine the future of public education in Massachusetts. Can we continue to improve our schools, or will we develop a two-tiered system with preferred funding for privately-run schools that focus on the easiest-to-educate children? There’s a lot at stake.

So, point by point, I’d like to respond toScott Oran’s Oct. 25 letter to the Daily, in which he challenged what I said at a recent Tufts event.

1. Are urban schools mostly disasters? No. The achievement gap is real. But to label schools that serve low-income students as failing is damaging and false. The state uses an approach that measures income. Researchers do not use this approach because they know it doesn’t measure school quality. If we use the measures that all researchers use — whether they support charters or not — we will see that Boston is not in the bottom 25 percent of school districts — in a state with the highest achievement scores in the country.

2. Are there really 32,000 children waiting for charter seats? The waitlist Mr. Oran cites includes Horace Mann charter schools, under local control, which are not affected by the cap. It includes families who applied two years ago and haven’t applied since; it even includes students who are now in charter schools such as those who applied to two and got into one. Boston has school choice, and the number of students on waitlists for district public schools is comparable, possibly even greater, than that of charter schools. 

3. There are also thousands of students who have been waitlisted for Boston’s early kindergarten program, which is proven to reduce the achievement gap. If Boston weren’t sending more and more of its budget to charter schools, it could expand early education.

4. Do charter schools educate all kinds of students? The answer is clear: They don’t. Dave Sweeney, CFO for the City of Boston, writes:

   “BPS serves a greater percentage of high-need special education students (for instance, an aggregated 2.5 percent of BPS students are blind, deaf, or autistic versus 0.9 percent of students in Boston-based charter schools) and English Language Students (30 percent of BPS students versus 13 percent of the students in Boston-based charter schools).”

   Mr. Oran says charters are required to educate all children. True, but that doesn’t mean they do. Mr. Oran chairs the Board of Trustees of the Brooke Charter Schools in Boston. His schools have about six percent English language learners, on average. Boston Public Schools have almost 30 percent English language learners, including many who speak almost no English. Brooke has about eight percent students with disabilities, on average. Boston Public Schools have 20 percent, many with serious problems. These facts are from the state website. In addition, Brooke schools don’t accept students above eighth grade.

5. Will more charter schools drain money from district schools? Yes. Contrary to what Mr. Oran said, charter schools are not funded like METCO. That’s funded by a state appropriation; no local money leaves the sending district. Charter schools are not funded like vocational education: A school committee decides to join a regional vocational school and whether to fund capital expenses.

   Charter schools are funded by local districts, largely from local property taxes. The decision about whether to open a charter school is made by an appointed state board. When a charter school is successful, the local school committee often has to cut other programs or close schools. The state board doesn’t consider the effect on other students. So if a new charter causes another school to close, the choices and needs of other parents are ignored. Decisions about local property taxes and local schools should be made by people accountable to the taxpayers and voters and parents.

6. Do charter schools help students learn more? Studies that suggest charter schools work miracles in closing the achievement gap have been roundly criticized by other eminent researchers. But the most interesting recent study is by Harvard Professor Roland Fryer. He found that while “no-excuses” charters like Brooke do raise test scores, they do not raise the incomes of their graduates later on. He wonders whether the methods these schools use to raise scores — test prep and hyper-discipline — may actually hurt students’ job skills. That’s the kind of schools that are expanding in Massachusetts.

Question 2 is far too extreme: As Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone writes, “This ballot question – if approved – would allow the indefinite expansion of charter schools with up to 12 new openings each year. There would be no restrictions on where these charters can open, and local taxpayers and governments would have absolutely no say so in the charter’s approval.”

Question 2 won’t just affect Boston. Somerville, Medford, Cambridge and many other cities are close to their “cap” on how much tuition can be sent to charter schools.

And Question 2 won’t just affect the students in charter schools. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, a strong supporter of charter schools, made a far more modest proposal for lifting the cap last year. But he strongly opposes Question 2 because it goes way too far. He wrote in the Globe that Question 2 is “super-sizing an already broken funding system to a scale that would have a disastrous impact on students, their schools, and the cities and towns that fund them … It’s a looming death spiral for our district budget, aimed squarely at the most vulnerable children in our city. It’s not just unsustainable, it’s unconscionable.”