Should Charter Schools Be Publicly Funded?
Worth knowing before you start: ASU Prep is a charter school, so this week you'll be examining the evidence about your own school's model — including the parts that aren't flattering. The findings are genuinely unsettled: on average charters do about the same as district schools, while individual ones range from far better to far worse. And on Thursday you'll meet a statistic that's higher overall and lower in every single group at the same time. Both are true. Working out how is the best twenty minutes of the week.
Reading List
Read these before Tuesday. The Chalkbeat piece is the most useful one for the funding argument — it takes a claim critics make and actually checks it.
Required
If You Want More
- What Are Charter Schools and Do They Deliver? — Brookings
- The Battle Over Charter Schools — Harvard Ed Magazine
- Charter Schools May Be the Future of Public Education — VICE (video)
One-Week Plan
Here's the shape of the week. Your guide will set the exact timing for your section.
What a Charter School Actually Is
Write first: should charter schools get public money?
Then the definition, which matters more than you'd think. A charter school is a public school. It's free, it's open to anyone — first come first served, or by lottery — and it's funded publicly. What makes it different is that it runs under a contract, a charter, held by an organisation rather than being run directly by the district. That charter exempts it from some state and local rules, and in exchange it has to meet the standards written into the contract.
Then the numbers:
- Charter enrolment more than doubled, adding 1.7 million students — from about 3% to 6% of all public school students.
- About 2,400 charter schools opened while about 2,600 traditional public schools closed, so the total number of schools actually fell slightly.
- There are more charter elementary schools than high schools. Why do you think that is?
- Enrolment isn't even: over 10% of Black students and 7% of Hispanic students in public schools attend charters, against about 4% of white students. That's worth explaining rather than just noting.
Evidence That Refuses to Settle
Test scores rose at both charter and district schools between 2005 and 2017, with charters improving more steeply — ending up about level in math and slightly ahead in reading.
But the most careful studies find that on average, charter schools do neither better nor worse than district schools. And then this, which is the number that matters most:
17% of charter schools did significantly better than nearby public schools. 37% did significantly worse. 46% were statistically indistinguishable.
Notice what that does to the average. If a third are much worse and a sixth are much better, "the average charter school" describes almost nobody. So maybe the right question isn't "are charter schools good?" but "which ones, and can anyone tell in advance?"
One more thing worth asking: are test scores even the right way to judge a school? They measure something real. They don't measure whether students are happy, safe, curious, or well-prepared for anything that isn't a test.
Both Cases, and the Money Fight
For: public funding means every family gets to choose a school, not just the ones who can afford tuition or a house in a good district. Competition may push nearby schools to improve. And some studies find low-income, Black, and Hispanic students gain the most.
Against: charters take students and funding from district schools. Quality varies enormously and it's often hard to see inside a charter's practices. And the strict "no excuses" discipline model many charters use — demerits, detentions, frequent suspensions — draws serious criticism.
Here's the subtle bit about the money. If funding follows the student, why would a district be short? Because of fixed costs. A school that loses two students per grade loses that funding, but still has to heat the building and pay a principal. Whether that's a fatal problem or a temporary one is a real argument, and the Chalkbeat reading takes it seriously.
Before you leave, find a resource to bring on Thursday.
The Statistic That Shouldn't Be Possible
Here are two true statements about the same data:
- Charter schools have a higher overall suspension rate than traditional public schools.
- Charter schools have a lower suspension rate than traditional public schools in every single racial group.
Neither is a lie. Try to work out how that's possible before your guide explains it.
It's called Simpson's paradox, and it happens when the groups being combined aren't the same size or composition. Charters enrol proportionally more Black students, who are suspended at higher rates across the entire school system — so the combined charter number goes up even though each group's number is lower.
Once you've seen this, you can't unsee it. Any time someone shows you a single number about two groups, you now know to ask what's inside it. That one habit is worth more than anything else you'll learn this week.
Then finish with: what would you measure to judge a school? And if you were unhappy where you are and had the choice, would you switch?
Score Your Own Week
What went well, what to improve, what you learned, and whether anything you believed changed. Then the participation matrix. Be honest with yourself.