Tag: Charter schools

While being a charter school is distinct from being a for-profit school, one argument given in favor of charter schools is because they, unlike public schools, can operate as for-profit businesses. While some might assume a for-profit charter school must automatically be bad, it is worth considering this.

As one would suspect, the arguments in favor of for-profit charter schools are essentially the same as arguments in favor of providing public money to any for-profit business. While I cannot consider all of them in this short essay, I will present and assess some of them.

One stock argument is the efficiency argument. The idea is that for-profit charter schools have a greater incentive than non-profit schools to be efficient. This is because every increase in efficiency can yield an increase in profits. For example, if a for-profit charter school can offer school lunches at a lower cost than a public school, then the school can turn that difference into a profit. In contrast. A public school has less incentive to be efficient, since there is no profit to be made from cutting costs.

While this argument is reasonable, it can be countered. One obvious concern is that profits can also be increased by cutting costs in ways that are detrimental to the students and employees of the school. For example, the “efficiency” of lower cost school lunches could be the result of providing the students with low quality food. As another example, a school could be more “efficient” by not offering essential services for students with special needs. As a final example, employee pay could be kept as low as possible.  

Another counter is that while public schools lack the profit motive, they still need to accomplish required tasks with limited funds. As such, they also need to be efficient. In fact, they usually must be creative with extremely limited resources and teachers routinely spend their own money purchasing supplies for the students. For-profit charter schools must do what public schools do but must also make a profit. As such, for-profit schools would cost the public more for the same services and thus be less cost effective.

It could be objected that for-profit schools are inherently more efficient than public schools and hence they can make a profit and do all that a public school would do, for the same money or even less. To support this, proponents of for-profit education point to various incidents of badly run public schools.

The easy and obvious reply is that such problems do not arise because the schools are public, they arise because of bad management and other problems. There are many public schools that are well run and there are many for-profit operations that are badly run. Boeing provides an excellent example of this. As such, merely being for-profit will not make a charter school better than a public school.

A second stock argument in favor of for-profit charter schools is based on the idea competition itself improves quality. While students go to public school by default, for-profit charter schools must compete for students with public schools, private schools and other charter schools. Since parents generally look for the best school for their children, the highest quality for-profit charter schools will win the competition. As such, the for-profits have an incentive that public schools lack and thus will be better schools.

One obvious concern is that for-profits can get students without being of better quality. They could do so by advertising, by exploiting political connections and various other ways that have nothing to do with quality. Think of businesses that people hate and that offer poor goods and services, but still manage to make a profit. They are not getting customers through their quality, but by other means and charter schools could use similar methods.

Another concern about making the education of children a competitive business venture is that competition has causalities: businesses go out of business. While the local hardware store going out of business is unfortunate, having an entire school go out of business would be worse. If a for-profit school goes out of business, there would be considerable disruption to the children and to the schools that would have to accept them. There is also the usual concern that the initial competition will result in a few (or one) for-profit emerging victorious and then settling into the usual pattern of lower quality and higher costs. Think, for example, of cable/internet companies. As such, the competition argument is not as strong as some might believe.

Those who disagree with me might contend that my arguments are mere speculation and that for-profit charter schools should be given a chance. They might turn out to be everything their proponents claim they will be.

While this is a reasonable point, it can be countered by considering the examples presented by other ventures in which for-profit versions of public institutions receive public money. Since there is a school to prison pipeline, it seems relevant to consider the example of for-profit prisons.

The arguments in favor of for-profit prisons were like those considered above: for-profit prisons would be more efficient and have higher quality than prisons run by the state. Not surprisingly, to make more profits, many prisons cut staff, pay very low salaries, cut important services and so on. By making incarceration even more of a business, the imprisonment of citizens was incentivized with the expected results of more people being imprisoned for longer sentences. As such, for-profit prisons turned out to be disastrous for the prisoners and the public. While schools are different from prisons, it is easy enough to see the same sort of thing play out with for-profit charter schools.

The best and most obvious analogy is, of course, to the for-profit colleges. As with prisons and charter schools, the usual arguments about efficiency and quality were advanced to allow public money to go to for-profit institutes. The results were not surprising: for profit colleges proved to be disastrous for the students and the public. Far from being more efficient than public and non-profit colleges, the for-profits generally turned out to be much more expensive. They also tend to have significantly worse graduation and job placement rates than public and non-profit private schools. Students of for-profit schools also accrue far more debt and make significantly less money relative to public and private school students. These schools also sometimes go out of business, leaving students abandoned and often with useless credits that cannot transfer. They do, however, often excel at advertising. This explains how they lure in so many students when there are vastly better alternatives.

The public paid the price for these schools as the for-profits receive a disproportionate amount of public money and students take out more student loans to pay for these schools and default on them more often. Far from being models of efficiency and quality, the for-profit colleges have usually turned out to be little more than machines for turning public money into profits for a few people. This is not to say that for-profit charter schools must become exploitation engines as well, but the disaster of for-profit colleges must be taken as a cautionary tale. While there are some who see our children as another resource to be exploited for profits, we should not allow this to happen. As such, the fact that a charter school could be for-profit is a reason against funding them with public money. In closing, the charter school approach seems to a method of funneling public money to fund value-based groups (like churches) and into private pockets.  

In my previous essay on charter schools, I considered the quality argument. The idea is that charter schools provide a better alternative to public schools and should receive public money so that poorer families can afford to choose them. The primary problem with this argument is that it makes more sense to use public money to improve public schools rather than siphoning money from them. I now turn to another aspect of choice, that of  values.

While parents want to be able to choose a quality school for their children, some parents are also interested in having an alternative to public schools based on their values. This desire forms the basis for the value choice argument for charter schools. While public schools are supposed to be as neutral as possible, some see public schools as problematic in two broad ways.

One way is that the public schools provide content and experiences that conflict with the values of some parents, most commonly with their religious values. For example, public schools often teach evolution in science classes, and this runs contrary to some theological views. As another example, some public schools allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms based on their gender identity, which runs contrary to the values of some parents. As a third example, some schools teach history (such as that of slavery) in ways that run afoul of the ideology of parents. As a final example, some schools include climate change in their science courses, which might be rejected by some parents on political grounds.

A second way is that public schools fail to provide value-based content and experiences that parents want them to provide, often based on their religious and political views. For example, a public school might not provide Christian prayers in the classroom. As another example, a public school might not offer religious content in the science classes (such as creationism). As a final example, a public school might not offer abstinence only sex education, which can conflict with the values of some parents.

Charter schools, the argument goes, can offer parents an alternative to public schools, thus giving them more choices regarding the education of their children. Value-based charter schools can avoid offering content and experiences that parents do not want for their children while offering the content and experiences they want. For example, a private charter school could teach creationism and abstinence only sex education.

It might be argued that parents already have such a choice: they can send their children to existing private schools that match their values. But, as noted in my first essay, some parents cannot afford to pay for private schools. Since charter schools receive public money, parents who cannot afford to send their children to private value-based schools can send them to value-based charter schools, thus allowing them to exercise their right to choose. As an alternative to charter schools, some places have school voucher systems which allow students to attend private (often religious) schools using public money. The appeal of this approach is that it allows those who are less well-off to enjoy the same freedom of choice as the well off. After all, it seems unfair that the poor should be denied this freedom simply because they are poor. That said, there are problems with ideological charter schools.

One concern about value-based charter schools is that funding them would fund specific values with public money. For example, public money going to a religious charter school would be a case of public funding of that religion, which is problematic in many ways in the United States. At least until the Supreme Court removes that obstacle. Those who favor value-based charter schools usually do so because they are thinking of their own values being funded by public money and not value-based charter schools they would dislike. However, it is important to consider that allowing such charter schools opens the door to funding values other than one’s own. For example, conservative Christian proponents of religious charter schools are no doubt thinking of public money going to Christian schools and are not considering that public money might also flow to Islamic charter schools, to a Satanist school or a charter transgender training academy. Or perhaps they believe, probably correctly, that they can ensure the money flows in accord with their values.

Another concern is that funding value-based charter schools with public money would deny others their choice. There are many taxpayers who do not want their money going to fund values they do not accept. For example, people who do not belong to a religious sect would most likely not want to involuntarily support that sect and people who oppose abortion would not want state funds supporting abortion.

What might seem to be an obvious counter is that there are people who do not want their money to go to public schools because of their values. So, if it is accepted that public money can go to public schools, it should also be allowed to flow into value-based charter schools. After all, if state money should be denied to anything that some people oppose based on their values, almost all public funding would cease.

The reply to this is that public schools are controlled by the public, typically through elected officials. As such, people do have a choice regarding the content and experiences offered by public schools. While people will not always get what they want, they do have a role in the process. Public money is thus being spent in accord with what the public wants, as determined by this process. That people do not always get what they want is how democracy works.

 In contrast, the public does not have comparable choice when it comes to value-based charter schools. They are, by their very nature, outside of the public education system. This is not to say that there should not be such value-based schools, just that they should be in the realm of private choice rather than public funding.

To use a road analogy, imagine that Billy believes that it is offensive in the eyes of God for men and women to drive on the same roads and he does not want his children to see such blasphemy. Billy has every right to stay off the public roads and every right to start his own private road system on his property. However, he does not have the right to expect public road money to be diverted to his private road system so that he can exercise his choice.

Billy could, however, argue that as a citizen he is entitled to his share of the public road money. Since he is not using the public roads, the state should send him that share so that he might fund his private roads. He could get others to join him and pool these funds, thus creating his value-based charter roads. If confronted by the objection that the public should not fund his values, Billy could counter by arguing that road choice should not be a luxury that must be purchased. Rather, it is an entitlement that the state is obligated to provide.

This points to a key part of the matter about public funding for things like public roads and public education: are citizens entitled to access to the public systems or are they entitled to the monetary value of that access, which they should be free to use elsewhere? My intuition is that citizens are entitled to access to the public system rather than to a cash payout from the state. Citizens can elect to forgo such access, but this does not entitle them to a check from the state. As a citizen, I have the right to use the public roads and send any children I might have to public schools. However, I am not entitled to public money to fund roads or schools that match my values just because I do not like the public system. As a citizen, I have the right to try to change the public system and that is how democratic public systems are supposed to work. As such, while the ideological choice argument is appealing, it is not compelling.

In the previous essay I considered the monopoly argument for them. On this view, charter schools break the state’s harmful monopoly on education. It is worth noting that the state does not have a monopoly on education (there are private, non-charter schools). Instead, the state schools often have a monopoly on public money and charter schools break this monopoly by receiving public money. This, it is argued by charter school proponents, allows for more choice. They are right. But not all choices are good choices.

Without charter schools, people have one less type of alternative to publics schools. But there are alternatives. One is home schooling. While this is appealing to some, it has obvious limits and doing it well demands much of the parents. Another alternative is attending a non-charter private school. While these schools can provide excellent education, they are also often known for being expensive. As such, they are usually only an option for those who can afford them. Because charter schools receive public money, they can provide an alternative to public schools for those who cannot afford a private school. However, there is the question of why there should be such a choice and why people would take it.

Proponents of charter schools often claim charter schools provide better education than public schools or have some other advantage, such as being safer. Proponents of charter schools point to failing public schools and their various problems as support for their view. While this is a rational argument, it does raise some concerns.

One concern is that while there are bad public schools and excellent charter schools, there are also excellent public schools and awful charter schools. As such, there is nothing intrinsic to the public system that necessitates its badness nor anything intrinsic to the charter system that necessitates its superiority. This raises the question about what factors determine school quality.

The easy and obvious answer is funding. It is no accident that the best schools tend to be in affluent neighborhoods and the worst schools tend to be in poor areas. After all, most public school funding is local and based on property taxes. As such, high value property generates more funding for schools. Low value property generates less. Naturally, this is not the whole story for school funding, but it is an important part. It is also worth noting that it is not just community wealth that is a factor. Community health is also important for the quality of education. After all, stable communities that have families actively involved in the school can create a very good educational experience for the children. However, wealth and health often travel hand in hand.

Parents usually prefer their children to attend the best schools. This is why parents who have the income buy houses in the best school districts. This provides another limit to choice: while anyone can attend the best public schools, they must be able to afford to live in the districts that have the best schools. This public school is analogous to private schools; one must pay to be able to choose to attend. An appealing promise of charter schools is that children can escape the poor schools and go to a superior charter school, using public money rather than needing to rely on the resources of the family.

While this is appealing, there are obvious problems. One is that poor schools will become poorer as they lose students and will decline until only those who cannot escape remain as students. This is like spending a fortune on lifeboats for an ailing ship rather than using the money to fix it.

Of course, this analogy could be countered by saying that the public-school ship is doomed and the only viable option is to escape. This is a reasonable counter. If a school is so badly wrecked that it cannot be saved, then escaping to another school would be as sensible as fleeing a sinking ship. The challenge is, however, showing that this should be a charter school and not a new public school.

 Another concern is that it would seem to make more sense to use the public money to improve the public school so that parents would want their children to attend. After all, if parents want to choose good schools, the best use of public money would seem to be to make public schools better. Since there are excellent public schools, this is something that can be done with proper funding and a strong community. As noted above, there is no special magic to charters that makes them inherently better than public schools. To use another analogy, the charter school argument is like pointing to the poorly maintained roads of a community and saying that the solution is not to fix the roads, but to use the public money to put in another set of roads adjacent to the existing roads. It would seem to make much more sense to fix the existing public roads rather than building charter roads.

Given the above discussion, the choice argument for charter schools based on quality does not appear compelling. Unless it can be shown that charter schools are inherently better than public schools in virtue of being charters, then it would be better to improve the quality of existing public schools rather than siphoning away public money to charter schools. There are, however, other factors that figure into offering choices in education. In the next essay I will look at the appeal of ideological choice: charter schools can offer an ideological or theological alternative to public schools.

Before discussing charter schools, I need to present factors that might bias me against them. Like many Americans, I attended public schools for K-12. Unlike some Americans, I got a good education that provided the foundation for my undergraduate and graduate education. Both of my parents were educators in public schools.  My father taught math and computer science and my mother was a guidance counsellor. I went to a private college for my undergraduate degree and then to a public graduate school. This led to my current career as a philosophy professor at a public university. I belong to the United Faculty of Florida, the NEA and the AFT. As might be suspected, my background inclines me to have some suspicions about charter schools in the context of the political climate of today. Because of this, I take special care to consider the matter fairly and objectively.

As with most politically charged debates, the battle over charter schools is long on rhetoric and short on logical arguments. Proponents of charter schools lament the poor quality of public education, rail against indoctrination, and crusade for choice, and praise the profit motive as panacea. Opponents of charter schools sometimes see them as harmful to the public good, places of indoctrination, and as profiting at the expense of the children.

 While there is some merit behind these rhetorical stances, charter schools should neither be accepted nor rejected based on rhetoric. As liberals and conservatives have pointed out, the American public education system has problems. Charter schools have been advanced as a proposal to address some of these problems and should be given objective consideration. I will begin with what can be called the monopoly argument in favor of charter schools.

Proponents of charter schools assert that the state holds a monopoly on education and employ arguments by analogy to show why this is a bad thing. For example, the state monopoly on education might be compared to living in an area with only one internet service provider. This provider offers poor service and there is no competition. While this is better than not having any internet access at all, it is a bad situation that could be improved by competition. If the analogy holds, then the harm of poor-quality schools could be addressed by allowing competition.

This analogy can also be used to argue that people who do not have children in school should not be forced to pay into the education system. This would like making people pay for internet access they do not use. But this is another issue.

While the analogy does have some appeal, the state already lacks a monopoly on education. There are already private schools that operate without public money. These provide competition to public schools. By going through the appropriate procedures, anyone with the resources can create a private school. And anyone with the resources to afford a private school can attend. As such, there is already a competitive education industry in place that provides an alternative to public education. There is also the option of home schooling, which also breaks the monopoly.

Supporters of charter schools can counter that there is a monopoly without charter schools. To be specific, without charter schools, public schools have a monopoly on public money. Charter schools, by definition, break this monopoly by allowing public funds to go to schools outside the state education system.

This can allow privately owned charter schools to enjoy what amounts to state subsidies, thus making it easier to start a privately-owned charter school than a privately funded private school. Those who are concerned about state subsidies and things like welfare might find the use of state funds problematic, perhaps because it seems to confer an unfair advantage over privately funded schools and funnels public money into private hands.

Supporters of charter schools can counter these criticisms by turning them into virtues. Public money spent on charter schools is good exactly because it makes it easier to fund competing schools. Private schools without public funding need to operate in a free market. They must compete for customer money without the benefit of the state picking winners and losers. As such, there will not be as many privately funded schools as there would be charter schools funded by taxpayer money in a form of school welfare.

As such, charter schools would break the public-school system’s monopoly on public money, although there is not a monopoly on education (since privately funded schools exist). The question remains as to whether breaking the funding monopoly is a good thing or not, which leads to the subject of the next essay in this series, that of choice.