Charter Schools on a Complicated Course in DC

In 1996, Congress passed legislation creating boards to grant charters to schools in DC to provide choices for students in struggling schools.  Charters were seen as a more accountable alternative to vouchers, as charter schools receiving public funds were subject to review by the city unlike private schools that received funds via vouchers.  If a charter failed to produce results it could be closed (and a number are closed every year.  A public school that doesn't produce results can stay open for decades).  When created, charter schools were supposed to be an alternative for students to failing public schools.

Enrollment in charters have grown remarkably.  In 2002, there were 10,679 students in charter schools.  In 2012, there were 31,562.  Many families found the charters a viable alternative to neighborhood schools for a variety of reasons: quality of education, school climate,  convenience of transportation and child care services. 

Most schools were created in minority neighborhoods and served an overwhelmingly minority population.  Well over half the students, sometimes nearly all in some schools, were on free and reduced lunches, the statistical indicator of relative poverty.  Achievement is slow process, particularly for students sometimes several years behind grade level in basic skills.  It takes time to develop a school culture emphasizing safety, success, and striving.

Charters were sometimes focused on minority students and named after leading minority leaders: Ceasar Chavez, Thurgood Marshall, Booker T. Washington, Maya Angelou, Marcus Garvey.  Many focused on African-American culture to give a sense of pride to the students.  An overwhelming majority of students were of color, and lived east of Rock Creek Park.  

I have been involved in charter schools since 2002.  I was a founding member of a board that created a charter school in NE DC in 2004.  I eventually served as finance director of that school for several years as well as another charter school in Northwest DC for a couple years., ending in 2011 when I left to take care of family matters.  I can recall meetings with city officials in 2006 going over grants for school programs with an intent to keep families in the city with good schools rather than lose them to the suburbs.  Some charter school directors in the meetings wondered if the goal was good schools for current students or to foster gentrification.  I thought it was a silly worry back then, another case of the government's forlorn hope of high income families staying in the city to boost tax receipts.  But DC of 2012 is very different from 2006.  People disturbed by influx of yuppies in the 80s would be shocked at the city 30 years later.

In the last few years, a few schools have opened which attempted to reach students  on the west side of Rock Creek and in the gentrifying Capitol Hill area (there had always been whites on Capitol Hill, but they typically moved to the suburbs or enrolled their children in private schools when they reached school age).  Schools with compulsory Latin or Chinese, even Hebrew, and the Basis schools had curricula that appealed directly to educated upper middle class values.  As students of middle class families tend to test well regardless of race, the schools' test scores have indicated the schools are successful.  What is successful though is the background of the families, not necessarily the paradigms of the schools, other than get students who will succeed no matter how you teach them.

I have to wonder about the charters.  Public funding to provide better education for people that already have advantages of wealth is a grim path for the city.  On one hand it encourages the middle class that would otherwise leave the city for better schools in the suburbs to stay, build neighborhoods, pay taxes.  The rich were going to send their kids to private schools anyway.  The poor were going to stay in the city as they didn't have many options.  But as the middle class stays in town, are they taking away places in good schools that the poor would otherwise have?

Is this the last form of gentrification in DC?  The poor are being priced out of housing due to increasing rents and jobs due to higher qualifications and experience required for jobs.  Poor folk need paying jobs that pay a living wage and can't get them in DC.  Don't get me started about unpaid or barely paid internships that are becoming prerequisites for jobs, usually available only to youth from wealthy or at least comfortable backgrounds who can afford to work for nothing in expectation of reward later.  Are the charter schools of DC following the same path of gentrification as everything else of importance seems to follow?

The city, and the country as a whole, is fairer in many ways than say 30 years ago.  Gay rights are not controversial except in the more backward communities.  Opportunities for people of color and women are greater than ever before.  So the playing field is becoming fairer it seems, as everyone has the same civil rights and, theoretically, opportunity.  But is it fairer economically?  George Packer in his book, The Unwinding, An Inner History of the New America, points out the progress made in people's civil freedoms, but not for many people's freedom from want.  On one hand charters give everyone more opportunities for a good education, but it may be more complicated than that in the future.