Whitewater has the chance for approval and funding for a charter school. Our school district’s website lists the next Charter School listening session as taking place tomorrow, March 30th, at the Cravath Lakefront Center, from 4 to 6 p.m.
Libertarians have long favored charter schools, and a video that I posted last week, from Reason.tv on fixing Cleveland’s schools, gives only a taste of a charter school’s promise. I have not studied charter schools at any length, and have read about them only tangentially to other libertarian topics. A few years ago, I visited more frequently the website of a charter schools advocate, Joanne Jacobs ( www.joannejacobs.com), but I have not, sadly, visited her site more recently or frequently.
Charter schools are a good compromise solution in a world of significant funding for public education. One might hope for more private alternatives, but they won’t happen overnight, and we cannot quickly undo decades of government-sponsored education. All policy takes place on the margin, with conditions existing that one might not prefer, but cannot easily — and surely not magically — change. Public spending produces this cumulative result: over time, it drains away private resources until private alternatives prove too anemic to thrive.
Government first takes the field as merely one player, but quickly occupies the field, taxing the resources on which private competition depends.
To call charter schools a compromise solution is no back-handed compliment; on the contrary, they may be one of the most practical ways to offer space from burdensome regulation and government intrusion.
A charter school thrives or languishes by its charter, and how that charter is implemented. I simply don’t know enough about Wisconsin charter schools to tell how Whitewater’s proposed charter seems in relation to existing schools’ charters. Along the same lines, I don’t know the likelihood of a charter school proposal’s success in receiving funding. Even if one knew generally, one would also have to know how close or far a given proposal was from that of other applicants’ proposals.
There are three things that one can say with confidence.
First, a charter school offers greater locally autonomy, in line with its charter, and that’s a positive circumstance. That’s especially true in a small community, where private alternatives (other than homeschooling) are unlikely to develop (at least anytime soon). We’re not a big city, where, for example, a large parochial school system might operate alongside a public one, offering an alternative (really, a competitive choice). Our district’s larger than the City of Whitewater, but it’s still a smaller, rural public district. Although parents might send their children from one district to another through open enrollment, distance makes that option slight and limited. That option is important, but hardly one most parents could practically exercise.
Second, if all charter schools depend on a commitment to a clear, focused charter, then they also depend on equal access for all residents, up to the space available. Recent revelations about favoritism in school admissions in Chicago (often involving magnet schools, rather than charter schools), shows the risks of any public allocation of limited resources. Even if an option would produce a fine result, unfair access to the option undermines, rather than advances, a community. An allocation of penicillin, based on proximity to a public hospital, rather than on greatest medical need (or even on equal distribution), would save some only at the expense of not saving more.
Third, one of the truths of inner-city charter schools is that they succeed, if the charter is sound, across all socio-economic groups. Many charter schools thrive, and produce excellent results, with students who might otherwise unfairly be written off as disadvantaged, and somehow unsuitable for a charter school program. No one should be counted out; this community is a multicultural one, and any program can succeed with a heterogeneous student body.
I don’t know how this will turn out; it’s to our credit that we’re considering a less restrictive, more autonomous educational program.