GROWING POPULARITY

Charter schools attracting larger numbers of students

Lila Johnston, Breez Robison and MacKenzie Vanderhaak, all elementary students at Ozark Montessori Academy, use a counting frame Nov. 29, as they work on math problems in a classroom at the Springdale school.
Lila Johnston, Breez Robison and MacKenzie Vanderhaak, all elementary students at Ozark Montessori Academy, use a counting frame Nov. 29, as they work on math problems in a classroom at the Springdale school.

Editor’s note: This region is experiencing a large increase in the types of schools and learning approaches available. The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ex- plores those different options and their impact on the education landscape in a seven-part series that began Sunday.

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Eli Marks and Andre Melchor, seniors, practice their music Nov. 16 at the Arkansas Arts Academy in Rogers.

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Itzel Nunez and Amber Turknett, both seventh-graders at Ozark Montessori Academy, work on English assignments Nov. 29.

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Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/CHRIS SWINDLE

Graph showing information about Northwest Arkansas School Districts

Web watch

See a video of Arts Academy students, this and the previous stories in the series at nwaonline.com

Dave Perozek can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @NWADaveP.

Charter schools are becoming an increasingly popular educational option in Arkansas — especially Northwest Arkansas.

The state’s open enrollment charter schools recorded 13,891 students Oct. 1. The number represents 2.9 percent of all public school students in the state, almost double the 1.5 percent five years ago.

Open enrollment charter schools are run by entities other than public school districts. They’re open and free to students from any district, and they receive state money based on enrollment. They offer varying focuses from college preparation to performing arts to Montessori, which uses mixed-ages classrooms and emphasizes hands-on learning.

The number of students in open enrollment charter schools in Benton and Washington counties has increased 130 percent since 2011 while the number of such schools has grown from two to five. The figure doesn’t include the state’s two online open enrollment charters serving about 2,500 students across Arkansas.

The Arkansas Arts Academy, originally called the Benton County School of the Arts, opened in Rogers in 2001 as one of the state’s first charter schools. The subsequent growth in the charter environment pleases Mechel Wall, who led the way in establishing the arts school.

“It’s one of the best things that has happened to education in Arkansas, simply because everyone raised their sights a little bit higher,” Wall said.

“It’s powerful when you put people who have a vested interest in the outcome in the driver’s seat. They’re no longer passengers waiting for someone else to make the change. Suddenly they have the ability to make a change, to make something better or make something different.”

Others have a less favorable outlook on charter schools. They include William McComas and Christian Goering, both education professors at the University of Arkansas. They cite a wide range of problems they see with the charter school phenomenon.

“We’ve always had this idea in this country, whatever the new thing is, the shiny new thing at the end of the street, it has got to be better than what we’re leaving behind,” McComas said. “That certainly is not always true.”

A BRIEF HISTORY

The first law allowing the establishment of charter schools was passed in Minnesota in 1991. The Arkansas Legislature passed a law of its own in 1995 allowing charter schools, but had practically no impact. The Arkansas law only allowed public school districts and higher education institutions to run charter schools.

The Legislature reworked the law four years later in an effort led in part by John Brown, a Republican from Siloam Springs who was a state senator from 1995 to 2002.

“It took us three full years of working and negotiating,” Brown said. “There were a lot of compromises along the way. But I think it made it healthy and understandable to people. We were fair to everyone, or tried to be, to get it done. And it’s been fun to see how things have grown and changed.”

The new law set up a system with two types of charter schools: a conversion charter where school districts convert an public school into a charter school; and the open enrollment charter, which may be started by an institution of higher education, a governmental entity or a nonprofit organization.

Open enrollment charter schools are financed by taxpayer dollars and don’t charge tuition. They receive money from the state on a per-pupil basis, but don’t receive local property taxes.

Their administrators sign agreements, or charters, binding the schools to meeting certain enrollment, financial and academic goals. The schools can be experimental and are exempt from some laws governing conventional schools.

Arkansas Arts Academy, for example, has a waiver allowing it to hire unlicensed teachers. The school uses this waiver only when it comes to hiring certain instructors, such as musicians or artists, said Mary Ley, chief executive officer.

Ley’s position also relies on a waiver: She doesn’t need a superintendent’s license to serve as the school’s leader.

Arkansas’ first four charter schools opened in the fall of 2000.

“It’s an exciting opportunity to put into practice some innovative concepts,” Ray Simon, then-director of the state Department of Education, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette at the time. “We hope all the programs succeed and that their successes will be replicated by other schools.”

Three of the first four charter schools were started by school districts — one each in Rogers, Little Rock and El Dorado. Those districts converted all or part of a building into a charter school. In Rogers, it was Grace Hill Elementary School.

The other charter school was Gateway, run by the Ozark Unlimited Resources Education Cooperative. Gateway, considered the state’s first open enrollment charter school, was at a converted Bible camp in Ponca where students lived for six weeks at a time. It’s focus was to help get failing students back on track academically.

Gateway closed after one year, largely because of financial difficulties. Each of the other charter schools among the first four relinquished their charters within six years.

They are among 22 charter schools that have closed over the past 15 years, according to information provided by the Arkansas Department of Education.

The state today has 52 charter schools. Twenty-eight count as conversion charters, and the other 24 are open enrollment.

QUALITY

Jade DeSpain, 17, could have ended up going to high school just about anywhere in the country. Three years ago, DeSpain and her family were planning a return to the United States after eight years of living in Beijing. Their Chinese visas were expiring. They intended to stay in America a short time and head back to China.

DeSpain said her parents “literally went from North to South looking all through America for interesting programs” they thought would offer a good education for her and her two sisters. They decided on Haas Hall Academy in Fayetteville, even though they had no connection to Arkansas.

“Leap of faith, really,” said DeSpain, a senior hoping for a spot at one of the nation’s military academies next year. “We haven’t gone back to China, so I think we’re all kind of in love with this place.”

Of all the charter schools in Arkansas, perhaps none has garnered more accolades than Haas Hall, ranked the best high school in Arkansas for five years straight by U.S. News & World Report. Haas Hall emphasizes college preparedness and tries to emulate the college experience.

It opened in a converted dairy barn in Farmington in 2004 with 17 students. It now serves 645 students in grades seven through 12 on two campuses, one each in Fayetteville and Bentonville. The state has authorized Haas Hall to open schools next fall in Rogers and Springdale.

Haas Hall was the only school in Benton and Washington counties, and one of only 10 in Arkansas, that received an “A” on its report card from the state this year.

Northwest Arkansas Classical Academy received a “B” for both its elementary and high school levels. Arkansas Arts Academy earned a “B” for its high school and a “C” for its elementary and middle schools.

Ozark Montessori Academy, the only other open enrollment charter school in the area, opened in 2015 and didn’t have a track record on which to be graded.

Fifty-four percent of Arkansas’ public schools received a “C” on their last report card.

Grades released in 2016 were based on data from the 2014-15 school year.

Arkansas has a School Recognition Program, which provides financial awards to the top 10 percent of public schools in the state in terms of student performance and student academic growth.

H a a s H a l l Ac ad e my, Northwest Arkansas Classical Academy and Arkansas Arts Academy earned a combined $168,648 through the program this year. Three other open enrollment charter schools in the state received money through the program.

Jonathan Mills, who received his doctorate in education policy from the University of Arkansas, published a study in 2013 on the academic achievement of students at Arkansas’ charter schools.

Mills found both math and literacy scores at charter schools statewide were slightly lower than those for traditional public schools, though results tended to improve with the number of years a charter operated.

Patrick Wolf, distinguished professor and 21st century endowed chair in school choice at the University of Arkansas, noted while charter schools may have been producing slightly worse results, they did so with one-third less money than traditional public schools. That’s because charters don’t receive property tax dollars.

“So in terms of bang for the buck, the Arkansas charter schools are delivering higher return on investment,” Wolf said.

UNHEALTHY COMPETITION

Goering, associate professor of English education, sees the the school choice movement as an outgrowth of the nation’s broken system of accountability that started in 1983 with “A Nation at Risk,” a report of President Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education.

“As that’s moved forward and grown more teeth, we’re in a situation where school and the value of school has boiled down to a test score. That’s a huge problem,” he said.

“I want to reform education to be better. I don’t want to reform education to be privatized. A lot of what you see in Arkansas right now is really moving toward privatization,” he said.

Charter schools have brought on a heightened sense of competition in education, something Goering said is unhealthy for schools because the goal is to educate all children and competition will result in winners and losers.

Wolf, however, said customer choice is seen across the spectrum of American life.

“So I think when the idea of public charters emerged, it really resonated with general American values with consumer choice and competition,” he said.

McComas, a professor of science education at the University of Arkansas, sees little evidence charter schools accomplish one of the goals cited by supporters: to make the traditional public schools better, particularly by showcasing innovative ways of educating.

Wolfe disputed the notion, saying anyone who’s not aware of the different models of charters and the results they’re getting isn’t paying attention, he said.

“In Arkansas in particular, it’s part of our charter school law that independent charter schools are not authorized unless they can convince the state’s authorizing board they are providing something distinctive from the traditional schools,” he said.

SUPPORTING CHARTERS

One of the nation’s biggest backers of charter schools calls Northwest Arkansas home. The Walton Family Foundation, based in Bentonville, has invested more than $385 million in charter school growth since 1997, according to the foundation’s website.

Deciding how to dole out that money is something the foundation takes very seriously, said Kim Davis, senior program officer for education.

“Specifically when we talk about Northwest Arkansas, I think what you’ll find is we provided support for those organizations getting great outcomes for kids,” Davis said. “So when you look at the Classical Academy, when you look at Haas Hall, Arkansas Arts Academy — particularly on the high school level — all the evaluation we’ve done shows those schools are outperforming their traditional public school districts in their area. It’s important for us that there’s a track record.”

Parents have indicated they are interested in charter schools, Davis said.

“We want to support what folks in the region are telling us they would like regarding educational opportunities for their students,” Davis said.

A region’s quality of life depends in part on the educational opportunities available, and quality of life is important to attracting and retaining high-caliber talent for business, he said.

An example of how much value parents put on school choice bubbled to the surface in 2013 with the opening of Northwest Arkansas Classical Academy, an open enrollment charter school in Bentonville serving 556 students through grade 11.

The school started as a result of some Bentonville and Rogers parents who joined forces to explore educational options.

Cindy Palen, a Bentonville mother of four, was one of those parents. They wanted something more academically rigorous than what they were seeing in the public schools, especially at the elementary and middle levels, Palen said.

Parents visited other schools in neighboring states and did research online. One of the schools that most intrigued the group was a charter school in Texas emphasizing a classical education. It was run by Responsive Education Solutions.

Classical education is based on the teachings of philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Grammar, logic and rhetoric play a large part in the students’ education.

There’s an emphasis on learning Greek and Latin root words. Historical, literary and artistic studies focus on the classics, according to the academy’s website.

Palen was a member of the school’s board until she resigned in March. She has two children attending the school. She also has a child who’s a senior at Bentonville High School and another who has graduated from Bentonville High.

Palen said she’s seen a difference between the education of her kids who attended Bentonville High — regarded by U.S. News & World Report as the second-best high school in Arkansas — and her kids at the Classical Academy.

“There’s a big emphasis on writing” at the Classical Academy, Palen said. “Whereas you might get that in some of the AP classes at Bentonville, in the Classical Academy that’s just the standard.”

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