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LWVNC STUDY ON CHARTER SCHOOLS
Vicki Boyer, Co-Chair, LWV-NC Charter School Study
July, 2000

As we begin to wrap up our three year study on charter schools and their impact on traditional public schools, we see almost as many questions now as we did at the beginning. The true impact of this change in education will not be known for years to come. Not until the children who participated as students reach their adult years will we truly see the outcome of the education they received. In the meantime, much of what we have seen has been unquantifiable and intangible. Our full report, which was presented at Council in June, will be sent to each chapter.

The League has long been a proponent of public education, so it is important for us to understand this new facet of the system. As many of you know, charter schools were established by the state legislature to provide citizens with alternatives in public education. The schools are exempt from some of the regulations that govern traditional public schools, a situation designed to allow for the introduction of new teaching styles and techniques. Charters receive public moneys to operate their facilities. We have been visiting charter schools and have surveyed the administrators of the traditional public schools during the course of our study. A brief overview of our observations follows. Please consult our full report for more details.

• Charters were designed to operate free from some rules and regulations governing traditional public schools, and if they do well we may need to reassess all educational regulations. They may hamper instead of help.
• The existence of charters has resulted in a greater need for administrative personnel at the state Department of Public Instruction. The staff originally appointed to oversee charters has hired additional people, an unexpected expense for the state.
• Charters operate successfully only with considerable volunteer support from parents. Parents are aware of this when they seek to put their child in the school. One principal told us that all applicants were well aware that the school could not function without volunteer support, making parental help almost a requirement in some schools. Traditional public schools cannot ‘require’ volunteer hours from parents.
• Many children who were previously home schooled have joined charters, bringing with them money that the state had not previously been expending on their behalf.
• Both charters and traditional schools would benefit from a means of exchanging success stories. There is currently no established means of communication between the two.
• New charters would benefit from an extended planning period prior to opening, financed by the state.
• The best result of charter schools may be the fact that it shows that parents are interested in taking an active roll in their child’s education, to the point of expending considerable time to investigate the best educational opportunities available for their child. This is true across all economic, ethnic and racial groups. A great many parents are willing to go the extra mile for education. The existence of charters that are primarily minority students shows that many parents felt the traditional public schools were not meeting the needs of their children. A child watching a parent attend school meetings even after a long day at work has ample evidence of the importance the parent puts on education and is more likely to work hard at learning.
• Charter schools are generally smaller in population than traditional public schools, and many students as well as parents seem to function better in this smaller environment.

Charter schools have been approved by the legislature and signed into law. They are public schools and are deserving of broad public support. They may not provoke the changes some anticipated in public education since the numbers they take out of traditional public schools are quickly replaced by our rapidly growing school aged population. But they have clearly provided a relief valve for over-flowing schools as well as dissatisfied parents. As a public entity they should receive more oversight in the form of frequent classroom visits and public attendance at board meetings, coupled with public reporting of financial decisions. They do spend tax dollars and the public has a right to know.