- Letter to the Editor: City should follow charter funding law [Letter from FOCUS]
Letter to the Editor: City should follow charter funding law [Letter from FOCUS]
The Northwest Current
By Robert Cane
December 31, 2014
This past summer, the District’s public charter schools brought a lawsuit requesting equal funding for all District public school students, as required by D.C. law. The government has filed a motion to dismiss the complaint, and charters are preparing to respond to this action.
Successive administrations have underfunded tens of thousands of D.C. charter school students by between $1,600 and $2,600 each year in public school funds. Over the past eight years, this illegal underfunding has sent $770 million to D.C. Public Schools, with no equivalent funding for public charter students. In response, the charter school association and Washington Latin and Eagle Academy public charter schools reluctantly initiated legal action. They did this only after charters’ patient demands for lawful funding and fairness were ignored for years.
A higher share of charter students grow up in economically disadvantaged homes than their counterparts enrolled in D.C. Public Schools. In part, this is because charters, by choice, locate in District neighborhoods where the need for quality public schools is greatest. Accordingly, of the charter students whom D.C. underfunds, 78 percent are AfricanAmerican, compared to 68 percent in D.C. Public Schools.
D.C. public charter schools have led a renaissance in public education in the District, with an on-time high school graduation rate 21 percentage points higher than the school system’s average, enabling a larger share of charter students to get accepted to, and graduate from, college.
Charter student performance on standardized test scores is superior to that of D.C. Public Schools students. These academic results have been most pronounced east of the Anacostia River, where poverty, unemployment and crime are highest. In wards 7 and 8, public charter students outscore their D.C. Public Schools peers by 18 and 26 percentage points, respectively.
D.C.’s public charter school community is not asking for special treatment, or for the government to make good its previous years of underfunding — merely that the law, and the basic fairness that underscores it, be enforced.