Little more than a year ago the County Board of Education approved 20 Rocketship charters all at once, but Wednesday night the same Board showed it is no longer rubber stamp for charters.
With staff opposed to two charters in Morgan Hill – including another Rocketship charter — and Board members raising serious questions, Rocketship withdrew its appeal of a Morgan Hill Unified School District decision rejecting their charter petition. Another charter operator, Navigator, forged ahead with its appeal of the School District denial, only to lose on a 4-3 vote.
This vote marks a seismic shift in the landscape for charter schools. What changed in just one year?
- Parent and teachers from Morgan Hill got organized and they showed up in numbers at the Board. They argued forcefully that Morgan Hill schools are reforming themselves, with plans to open new focus academies, and they pointed out that the new charters threatened those reform efforts. The approval of the charters would have resulted in the closing of at least one public elementary school, raising serious community concerns.
- County Superintendent of Schools Xavier De La Torre has strengthened his staff and focused staff efforts on oversight and review of charters. There has been serious concern that the Superintendent’s office lacked the capacity to ensure that charter schools were being held accountable. De La Torre is addressing that concern.
- There is growing skepticism about charters and Rocketship in particular. Test scores, currently the only structured way to measure achievement in schools, are mixed. Some charter schools are accused of skimming the best performing students from regular public schools and recruiting them to make charters look more successful. And there are serious questions about the financing of some charter operators.
- There is a growing consensus that charter schools cannot close the achievement gap by themselves. Where charters work best, it is because of a collaborative relationship with conventional public schools and their school districts.
In the future, expect the Board to hold charter schools to a higher standard. They will be looking for charters that are extraordinary. Also expect the staff to continue with its diligent oversight of charters. The Superintendent’s office will be looking to proactively evaluate charter schools, instead of simply accepting their representations.
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I must respectfully disagree with the overall impression given by this article. While the County Board did indeed vote 4 – 3 to deny Navigator’s appeal, and did indeed cite problems with their petition, pretty much every member of the Board told them to clean up their petition and bring it back and they will switch their votes. This vote was not a vote of no confidence in Navigator, nor was it by any stretch of the imagination a vote of confidence in the Morgan Hill schools. The Board members berated the district, including the local board, the district administration, and the teachers – for resisting reform, for not caring about Hispanic students, for not recognizing that charter schools are the future of public education. We (MHUSD employees) were told that our objections signify nothing but fear (that we will lose students, and we are simply trying to protect our own jobs, and we care nothing about quality education for students), and that innovation and reform cannot possibly come from within the schools (the only way to achieve reform in any institution is by imposing it from without). They all seem to believe that charter schools, by definition, offer educational programs that are superior to those offered in the public schools. Not a single board member indicated even a hint of concern that the charter school movement could weaken public schools.