A recent letter to the editor stated, “Children are leaving the public schools because the people and programs in those schools are not serving them well.” Based on my personal experience, this is a fallacy.
Contrary to what many perceive, the public schools of Massachusetts are doing a very good job educating our children. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce-sponsored Free Enterprise website and Education Week’s Quality Counts report, Massachusetts leads the the nation in educating our children.The Quality Counts report shows Massachusetts has led the nation for the last seven years.
The purpose of public schools is serve all students of the Commonwealth, regardless of wealth, parental support and community challenges. Our public schools are successful despite constant underfunding and criticism and while charter schools divert over $400 million (2015) from public school systems across the state.
Northampton’s share was $2,087,117 last year, and my town of Westhampton paid $325,380 in charter school tuition. During my nine years as a Select Board member in Westhampton, I witnessed the increasing flow of funding away from our public schools and to local charter schools. A quarter of a million dollars in a single year is a major blow to a very small town’s budget. There’s really no way to sustain that kind of hit year after year.
If a parent sends a child to a private school, that household’s tax dollars remain in the local community. If that parent opts to send a child to a charter school, the household’s tax dollars are diverted away from the public school to pay tuition to a semi-public charter school that is run by an organization outside the public school system.
Local, democratically elected school committees have no involvement in this semi-private, publicly funded institution, yet the funds they have to work with are being siphoned away by charters. The Washington State Supreme Court has struck down these types of charter schools as an unconstitutional use of public money.
In addition to these concerns, charter schools systematically have been proven to be no more successful than public schools. While there are isolated cases of some success, the overall success of charters is no better than that of public schools, and often, charter schools fare worse. NPR reported that the Stanford University Center for Research on Education Outcomes concluded that “kids in most charter schools are doing worse or no better than traditional public schools.”
The Education Law Center’s EducationJustice website reports: “Charter schools also likely benefit from enrolling an easier-to-educate group of students than public schools.
On average, charter schools enroll fewer English language learners, fewer students with disabilities, and fewer homeless students in comparison with public schools. Some of the highest-performing charter schools also lose many students, most likely their lowest performers, who often return to local public schools.”
The Massachusetts Teachers Association reports that “A study of charter high schools in Boston showed that only 40 percent of those enrolled as freshmen made it to graduation, compared to 80 percent of those enrolled in the Boston Public Schools.”
The teachers association has also listed approximately 75 communities that have taken a position or passed resolutions in opposition to lifting the cap on charter schools.
Since charters in Massachusetts (particularly here in the Valley) mostly benefit families that can provide their own transportation and offer volunteer time, they inherently become self-selective in their student body — only certain families apply, given those constraints.
As the Gazette recently reported, a study has shown just 6 percent of a sample of local charter school families have a household income less than $50,000; 79 percent of households in the sample have at least one parent with a graduate degree.
To provide public funding to these schools for transportation, eliminating that barrier for some families, would add even more to the amount of money lost by public schools. Here in the Hampshire Regional School District, we have been waiting decades for the promised state funding for busing to regional public schools. It is frustrating to see state aid head to semi-public institutions while aid originally promised to public schools remains continually underfunded.
As a teacher, I am also concerned that these semi-public schools are unable to unionize. While some may consider that a positive, I have heard from local charter school teachers about the lack of prep time during the day and the absence of any representation in evaluation and review situations.
According to the Massachusetts Teachers Association, charter schools are not required to have licensed teachers, and the teacher turnover rate is typically 11 percent higher than in the public school system. Unionization allows fair negotiation of wages and working conditions, both of which are absent for charter school teachers.
I urge readers to speak with local school committees and teachers about the challenges facing public school teachers, students, and your town’s public school system.
Ballot Question 2, which would lift the cap on charter schools, is a sure way to funnel even more millions of dollars away from our public schools. We must protect public education as a foundation of our democracy. Voting no on Question 2 would keep the cap on enrollment in the current charter schools and would prevent an influx of new charter schools that could do even more damage to our local public schools and cause even more strain on small towns’ budgets across the Valley.
Brian Mulvehill lives in Westhampton and is a teacher at Ludlow High School.