Competitive outcomes

Expanding options draw students from school districts

Jade Despain, a senior at Haas Hall Academy, works through a question Dec. 14 during quiz bowl team practice at the Starr Scholar Center in Fayetteville.
Jade Despain, a senior at Haas Hall Academy, works through a question Dec. 14 during quiz bowl team practice at the Starr Scholar Center in Fayetteville.

Students in Northwest Arkansas have a growing number of options for their education, a trend traditional public school districts are following closely.

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NWA Democrat-Gazette

Ashley Kasnicka (left) hands out scarves, hats and gloves to students Dec. 16 alongside Phil Vanhook of Tyson Foods at Jones Elementary School in Springdale.

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NWA Democrat-Gazette

Principal Melissa Fink speaks to students Dec. 16 as she helps teachers and volunteers hand out Christmas gifts to students at Jones Elementary School in Springdale. Springdale Superintendent Jim Rollins said he values the traditional public school for bringing children from all backgrounds together to learn.

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NWA Democrat-Gazette

Ashley Kasnicka (right) hands out scarves, hats and gloves to students Dec. 16 alongside Phil Vanhook of Tyson Foods at Jones Elementary School in Springdale. Studies don't yet offer a clear picture of the impacts of open-enrollment charter schools on traditional schools in Northwest Arkansas such as Jones.

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Information about public school demographics.

Most still attend their resident, public schools, but they also are choosing from among open-enrollment charter schools, virtual education, private schools and home-schooling.

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

Web Watch

See this and the previous stories in the series at nwaonline.com/????

Longtime Springdale Superintendent Jim Rollins has devoted his career to a belief in serving all children. He values the traditional public school for bringing children from all backgrounds together to learn.

"They learn about the history of our country and what's made it great and how our democratic form of government works," Rollins said. "To me, the greatness of the public school is it takes all kids."

Open-enrollment charter schools are public schools run independent of traditional school districts through a charter contract with the state and aren't limited by specific geographic boundaries. Traditional districts draw students from within their geographic boundaries, though students can apply for a transfer to attend a school in another district.

Rollins believes some of the state's charter schools select mostly high-performing, affluent students, a practice he thinks leaves public schools with an uneven playing field.

"If the charter schools or the private schools or anybody else takes all the children, and, if they can serve them better than the public schools, I'm for them 100 percent," Rollins said. "If they pick and choose and ask for public dollars to support that selection process, I think that's very problematic."

Parents and students who want a choice will research the options and select the school that best meets their needs, said Martin Schoppmeyer, founder and superintendent of Haas Hall Academy. No data supports claims charter schools are picking and choosing students, he said.

"There's nothing better than to have choice in your life," Schoppmeyer said. "You have a school of innovation, online virtual academies. You have these things because of charter schools. It makes everybody think about how we can provide a different service to our children. It makes everybody better."

And the field isn't level, even among public school students, said Patrick Wolf. He's distinguished professor of education policy and 21st Century Endowed Chair in School Choice in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas.

Families with moderate to high incomes already have the advantage of more choices where their children attend school based on their greater ability to pick where they live, he said.

Surveys, including one done in 2007 for the National Center of Education Statistics, have found from 25 percent to 30 percent of families pick neighborhoods to gain access to good public schools, he said.

Charter school proponents say they give low-income families greater access to school choice, an option that in the past saved itself for mostly higher income families.

Charters take off

Increasing enrollment in charter schools in Benton and Washington counties is happening at the same time most traditional school districts are growing.

The growth is interesting because charter schools commonly open in low-income areas in urban centers, said Gary Ritter, professor of education and public policy in the Department of Education Reform at UA. He also is founder of the Office for Education Policy and Endowed Chair in Education Policy. Northwest Arkansas is a growing metropolitan region Ritter described as having a more middle-class demographic.

About 3 percent of roughly 84,670 students in public schools in Benton and Washington counties attend open-enrollment charter schools, with the rest remaining in traditional schools.

Charter schools open options for families, but a concern exists they lead to two systems of public schools dividing students between the haves and have-nots, said Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center in Boulder, Colo.

Studies don't yet offer a clear picture of the impacts of open-enrollment charter schools on traditional school districts in Arkansas. Most research on charter schools is concentrated on those in large, urban cities. Fewer studies exist on the impact in rural areas.

National research offers conflicting perspectives, with reports to support and rebut concerns charter schools favor some students during enrollment.

Charter school students are more likely to be black or Hispanic and are more likely to be considered low-income in the charter school sector nationally and in most states, Wolf said. They are less likely to require special education services under an individualized education plan, he said.

"Charters attract students who want to be somewhere else beside the traditional public school. And that may mean they are higher-achieving kids. In many situations, they are underachieving kids," Wolf said.

But in Arkansas, the research on 2010-11 school-year data suggests charter schools have enrolled a more advantaged population, Wolf said. Students enrolled in charter schools were less likely to be low-income than those in traditional public schools. They also were less likely to require special education services.

The KIPP Delta Public Schools, a group of charter schools in east Arkansas, have high populations of disadvantaged students, as do many of the charter schools in the Little Rock area, Wolf said.

Welner agreed national research on charter schools has found students with special education needs and students who are learning English are less likely to be enrolled in charter schools and more likely to be enrolled in their traditional public schools.

Recent research on the nation's large urban districts supports that argument. A November report by Bruce Baker, a Rutgers University professor, for the Economic Policy Institute found the expansion of charter schools leads to an uneven distribution of students by race, income, language proficiency and disability status. Charter schools in low-income, minority urban settings tend to serve the least needy populations and have the greatest resources, the study says.

Follow the money

Enrollment affects funding for all public schools. When traditional schools and charter schools compete for students, they compete for money.

So far, the region's overall growth has kept most traditional school districts from having declining enrollment even as charter schools have grown.

The Fayetteville School District normally grows by about 100 students per year, but the district grew by about 200 students this year for an enrollment of 9,863, said Kathy Hanlon, chief financial officer for Fayetteville School District. Hanlon isn't concerned about open-enrollment charter schools impacting the district's financial standing.

"We grew more students this year than we have in a long time," Hanlon said.

Springdale and Bentonville experienced blips in enrollment growth with the opening of new charter schools.

Ozark Montessori Academy, a public open-enrollment charter school, had an impact on the Springdale district last school year when it opened, said Kelly Hayes, comptroller for Springdale School District. The district experienced several years with annual growth of several hundred students, but only grew by about 150 in the 2015-16 school year.

The district's growth picked back up this school year.

The Bentonville School District's enrollment rose by 400 to 1,000 students annually for seven years before the 2013-14 school year when Northwest Arkansas Classical Academy, an open-enrollment charter school, opened in town. That year the district's enrollment still grew, but by just 200 students.

Bentonville since then has continued to add from 400 to 550 students, even with the addition of another charter, Haas Hall Bentonville, state records show.

Administrators at some Northwest Arkansas school districts said the loss of students to area charter and private schools can increase the cost of educating the students left, mostly by making the districts less efficient.

Districts this year received $6,646 per pupil from the state. For every 100 students who live in the district but don't attend Springdale schools, the district isn't receiving $664,600, Hayes said. The amount is small for a district with an annual operating budget of more than $200 million, but if another couple hundred students leave the district, the amount of revenue lost starts to add up quickly, Hayes said.

"If suddenly students were to leave and go to another institution or school district, our buildings would not be as fully utilized as they could be," he said.

Having fewer students doesn't reduce the district's costs because it still has to pay a teacher for a classroom of 17 that used to have 20 children, Hayes said.

"It basically increases our costs per student," he said. "That's why schools in our state get in trouble. They're losing kids, but they don't lose expenses at the same rate ... You become less efficient."

The Arkansas Department of Education doesn't distinguish between traditional school districts and open-enrollment charter schools because they are both public schools entitled to the same per-pupil amounts of state money, said Greg Rogers, the department's assistant commissioner for fiscal and administrative services.

Districts contribute to school funding through property taxes and have the ability to raise money above their per-pupil allotment through property taxes. Tax revenue collected by a district above a state minimum stays with the district rather than following the student.

Open-enrollment charter schools don't receive any property tax revenue, Rogers said, and must depend solely on state money for their guaranteed amount of per-pupil money.

Services for students

If charter schools draw the highest achieving students, the children remaining in traditional schools likely will be those with a higher level of need, Rollins said. Services are costly for children in special education and children learning English.

Nearly half of the Springdale district's students, about 10,000, need extra services for learning English, a number greater than the size of the total student enrollment of the neighboring Fayetteville School District. Another 10 percent of the district's students need special education services, according to state records.

Hayes is concerned about charter schools not offering services important to low-income children, including federally subsidized meal programs and transportation. More than 70 percent of students in the district qualify for meal assistance based on their family income.

Charter schools vary in the services they provide. Some offer students rides to and from school, while others don't. Some participate in the federally subsidized meal program. Some do not.

Some charters, including Haas Hall, don't have programs for special needs children or children learning English.

There's a perception the lack of programs, including transportation, is a barrier for some families, but little data exists on reasons parents interested in a charter school decide not to apply or what happens to students who apply but aren't accepted or choose not to accept a spot, said Sarah McKenzie, director of the Office of Education Policy.

Haas Hall Academy of Fayetteville opened in 2004 and for five years in a row has been ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the state's best high school. For 2016, the school was the 116th best in the nation. The Bentonville campus opened in 2015, and campuses will open next school year in Springdale and Rogers.

Questions have been raised through the years by state leaders about imbalances in the diversity of students at Haas Hall and about the lottery system used to identify students for admission.

Schoppmeyer rebutted perceptions Haas Hall doesn't serve a diverse population. About 12 percent of students who apply are accepted through the lottery.

Haas Hall has adopted a computerized system assigning a random number to students who submit applications for the annual lottery, Schoppmeyer said. The school waiting list is refreshed after each lottery and consists only of students who applied that year but whose numbers weren't selected.

The school has little information on students who apply, he said. Applications ask only for their name, age, grade, parent contact information, campuses they want to attend, whether the student has been expelled from another school and whether the applicant has a sibling attending the charter school.

No information is known about whether a child will need special education services or language services, Schoppmeyer said. Some students do receive accommodations for disabilities, but no students have required formal special education services. Haas Hall has bilingual faculty but no students have needed language services.

The Springdale campus will have English language services. Haas Hall now has an employee who focuses on outreach to minority groups, Schoppmeyer said.

The racial diversity of Haas Hall falls in line with the makeup of the Fayetteville and Bentonville districts, he said.

The two new campuses will be situated near highly diverse neighborhoods. Schoppmeyer wants to increase the number of minority candidates who apply for the annual school lottery. A report sent in October to the state officials discusses efforts to adjust marketing strategies, including providing translated materials for families who speak different languages.

Academics

Some charter schools across the country are high-performing, while others fall on the low end of the spectrum, Welner said. Most fall in the middle for academic performance, much like their traditional public school counterparts.

One evaluation found charter schools in Arkansas appear to have a slight positive effect on student performance and are on par with the mix of performance of other traditional public schools across the state, said Ritter, who with Wolf and graduate students at UA evaluated all charter schools in the state for the state Department of Education.

The report spans 340 pages and covers the school years of 2011-12 through 2013-14. Ritter said the evaluation is an indicator of performance, but he cautioned it wasn't the best time to study school performance because of the state's transition to new academic standards and a new statewide testing system.

Another statewide study published in 2013 found a small, negative impact on student achievement for math and literacy. The negative effects diminish the longer a charter school is in operation. The study by Jonathan Mills, who was a doctoral fellow at UA, was based on state test scores for 1.5 million students who were in the third through eighth grades from the 2002-03 school years through the 2010-11 school years.

Mary Ley, chief executive officer of Arkansas Arts Academy, attends meetings with other superintendents from around the state. She senses the tension between open-enrollment charter schools and traditional school districts.

Ley, who spent most of her 39 years in education in traditional school districts, thinks much of the concern is related to the loss of bright students to charter schools and test scores declining for traditional schools.

"I've always thought public schools should give those students more attention," she said. "If a charter is wanting to give them attention, you can't fault them for that."

The UA study found Arkansas Arts Academy students performed slightly better than students with similar characteristics in nearby districts, but slightly worse in math, Ritter said. The data shows the results are characteristic of students the academy attracted -- students who entered with stronger ability in literacy and weaker ability in math, he said.

The state report found Haas Hall attracted higher achieving students from 2011 to 2014, and those students performed slightly better on state tests in literacy and math when compared with similar high-achieving students in nearby districts, Ritter said. The results, however, were based on a small number of students.

It's to be expected high-achieving students would be more interested in Haas Hall because its niche is providing a college preparatory program, Wolf said.

"Haas Hall has defined itself as an academically ambitious charter high school and junior high school," Wolf said. "That's going to attract a certain population of students that might not be typical or representative of the broader community."

Rollins is attracted to the idea charter schools create competition. He acknowledged multiple providers can prompt changes in traditional schools and probably are.

But he worries about the fragmentation of the public school system and thinks the expansion of charters is just beginning in Northwest Arkansas as multiple providers are coming forward, Rollins said.

"For every child that leaves the public school, that family's leadership has created a void. The resources that were there to serve all children are lessened," Rollins said.

NW News on 12/31/2016

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