Hands off D.C.'s successful public charter schools, Mr. Mayor

Members of the District of Columbia Council are considering Mayor Adrian Fenty's budget. In the budget he presented to the Council, the Mayor determined that charters, which educate 33% of D.C. students, should take 100% of his education cuts.

Lobbied by D.C.'s public charter schools—publicly funded nonprofit institutions independent of the city government bureaucracy—Council Members agreed to reverse 70% of the Mayor's anti-charter cuts.

But the Mayor's move against D.C.'s only proven school reform to date didn't end there. The Mayor also included legislation in his budget that would remove the autonomy from city government control that has allowed charters to thrive

Now the Mayor wants his political appointees to become regulators for D.C.'s public charter schools. Currently, D.C.'s Public Charter School Board judiciously exercises its power to review and sometimes to revoke schools' charters to operate.

Since 1998, the board has been doing what the Chancellor for the city-run schools has only just begun: holding schools to high standards and replacing ineffective school leadership when necessary.

The Mayor wants to control charters and to have the power to withhold their funds if they don't follow his rules. Yet it is precisely charters' independence from centralized control that has enabled school leaders and teachers to innovate to provide the best educational programs, get parents more involved and provide students the structure they need to learn.

The Mayor's attitude to D.C. public charter schools is not justified by the schools' performance. D.C. public charter schools are way ahead of regular public schools in closing the achievement gap between black and white students.

African-American middle and high school students in D.C. public charter schools are nearly twice as likely to be proficient in reading and math as their peers in the regular public schools run by the Mayor.

D.C. public charter schools are excelling in more ways than student proficiency. Students in D.C.'s public charter schools are safer from the violence that plagues so many Northeast and Southeast D.C. communities. Teen absenteeism in D.C.'s charters is less than 50% of the rate in the city-run neighborhood schools and charters' high school graduation rate is 24% higher than the city-run schools.

The Mayor's indifference to these facts is all the more remarkable when one considers that charters produce superior results with less money from the public purse than the schools the Mayor controls.

The Mayor's budget cut is to the charters' facilities allowance, which charters use to buy or lease and renovate buildings in which to educate their students. But even after the Council's decision to partially restore the Mayor's anti-charter cuts, school building funding per public charter school student will be less than half the amount provided for students in schools run by the Mayor.

The Mayor has a history of making life difficult for D.C.'s public charter schools. D.C. law requires the city government to negotiate with public charter schools when disposing of school buildings no longer required for the city-run schools, whose enrollment has been falling for decades.

But the Mayor has frustrated their efforts at almost every turn. Many of these precious public assets will be handed over to multi-million dollar luxury condo and high-end office developers.

Thanks to this anti-charter discrimination, many charters produce their superior educational results in inadequate former warehouse, office or retail space and church annexes and basements. Non-residential public charter schools—two D.C. charters are boarding schools—have half the square footage per student as public schools controlled by the Mayor.

This D.C. school reform is working. And the signs are that the Council will protect these special public schools' autonomy, the linchpin of their success.

Robert Cane is executive director of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools.