Charter schools can make valuable contributions to our education system, but only if they do something better than traditional public schools. In Arkansas, it’s up to the Arkansas Board of Education to determine which charters are worthy of public dollars and which ones are not.
It’s not always an easy call, but it seems that our state board is doing its best on this front.
Public charter schools are a form of public school free from most of the restrictive laws that govern traditional public schools. Arkansas has two types: a conversion school, which can draw students only from withinthe boundaries of its school district, and an openenrollment school, which can draw students from across district boundaries and be run by a government entity, an institution of higher learning or a nonprofit organization.
Earlier this month, the board considered the merits of seven proposed charter schools, including two in Northwest Arkansas.
Only one of the seven won approval, and that was for an extension of a charter school that’s already operating in Helena. The board rejected charters proposed for Springdale, Fayetteville, Little Rock, McNeil, Gillett and West Memphis.
The Sky Foundation had proposed establishing a Dove School of Excellence in Springdale. The organization oversees four Dove schools in Oklahoma - two each in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. The Dove school in Springdale, according to a Sky Foundation representative, would have targeted the city’s large Hispanic population and emphasized science and technology instruction to equip students with the skills needed to participate in the global economy.
The board also considered a charter school called the Prism Education Center for Fayetteville.
Misty Newcomb, the chief organizer for Prism, said the school would focus on students who are underachieving or who come from low-income families - a group, she said, that falls through the cracks in the Fayetteville Public Schools. Prism would offer longer school days and transportation to as many as half of its 650 students in kindergarten through eighth grades.
After hearing arguments for and against these two charters, the board rejected them both. The reason? Not enough innovation. That’s a key factor in the board’s thinking when it comes to charters;
they have to provide something that the normal public school does not.
Looking at the board’s low acceptance rate of charter-school applications this month, one might conclude that the board is anti-charter. That would be a false assumption.
Arkansas caps at 24 the number of openenrollment charter schools that may exist at any one time. We already have 18, so the board is right to be highly selective. It is the board’s job to identify charter schools that try something new that might lead to education reform, not just do the same thing as well or only slightly better. As board member Sam Ledbetter said, “I don’t think that anybody wants us to approve charters for the sake of approving charters.” We agree.
Charter schools are desirable for the competition they provide for traditional public schools and because they can inspire system change and reform in our education system.
President Barack Obama supports charter schools and has called for states to lift caps on them. That’s something for the folks in Little Rock to consider and debate.
Does Arkansas need its cap? It probably doesn’t matter much as long as we have a state Board of Education that chooses its charters wisely.
Opinion, Pages 9 on 11/22/2009
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