Montana charter schools not a smart option

"Charter schools are smarter schools!"

Thus goes the slogan in some of the many states where there are concerted campaigns by private charter school companies and operators to barge in on the public school system in those states.

Is this slogan true? Or, as opponents of charter schools claim, do charter schools take advantage particularly of low-achieving and high-achieving students and their concerned parents, yet offer them a lesser quality education than is already available in the less-expensive public school system? Do charter schools, as some of their opponents claim, essentially financially victimize students and their concerned parents? Are charter schools "martyr schools," as some campaigners against them have claimed?

Bottom line and our concern, would the addition of charter schools to a small state education system like Montana's offer an expensive advantage for students and state education systems or simply an added expense with few or no advantages — and maybe some drawbacks?

To start to answer this question, we need to consider several basic issues. First, there is not just one charter school system. There are as many different charter school set-ups as there are states with charter schools and companies running charter schools in the different states.

Second, the legislation in each individual state can to some extent direct the development and cost of charter schools in that state. Thus, charter school companies are not able simply to cut corners for purposes of increasing profits — if legislative provisions prevent such approaches and require appropriate educational standards. And, likewise, limit the fees that can be charged for attending such schools.

Finally, legislation can set qualifications and educational standards for the personnel in the charter schools, again as a way of insisting on quality of faculty, advisers and counselors in each charter school in that state, rather than settle for the cheaper, poorer qualified persons.

Or it could accept proposals from a so-called "authorizer." This second supervising authority in Montana charter schools would have a very free hand for five to six years with little review (5-7). Despite the fact that the authorizer section takes three sections of HB 315 to cover (5-7), it leaves the authorizer entity or corporate structure largely undefined. Two elements of the authorizer section of the proposed statute should concern us.

First, the authorizer must operate with national "principles and standards" (6:4), no other specific requirements are noted. Once again, how about concerns for local and community standards and principles, rather than those that may be applied to Montana from anywhere?

Second, who may be an authorizer? The proposed statute leaves this matter so vague that even the statute itself rejects only "religious organizations" or any organization "indicating a religious purpose" (5:4). Why this single limitation? Religiously established and oriented schools have provided a very important service to American education, from Harvard and Liberty Universities to the entire Catholic school system — to Havre's First Lutheran Pre-School, which my own son attended and where he received well coordinated and expert preparation.

Why should such high-quality schools in Montana be prevented from applying for charter school status and a state share of funding?

Why the specific undefined category of vocational education programs? Sorry, but under provisions of the present statute, that category appears to be prescribed to authorize a very low quality but expensive charter school system for low or high achievers in the present public school system.

How about the personnel, administrators and teachers in Montana's proposed charter schools? The statute specifically provides for "exempting public charter school teachers from state certification" (Introduction).Good grief, what's going on here? After years, even centuries, of advancing well-established qualifications and standards for teachers and administrators, now we are specifically directed to ignore those standards.

What are our university teacher education and major programs designed for? Why have long and well-established educational principles in Montana and across the nation established local school boards, teaching certificates, college teacher programs and a state Board of Education?

Is the charter school system really a move to free enterprise and better education or simply, as one researcher has characterized it, "charter school mania" that is a "really bad" idea? I'm afraid this author's characterization summarizes the situation very well, especially in a small state like Montana.

Plus, the cost of charter schools grows and grows where they are established, undermining more and more funding for public schools, which are already suffering from lack of adequate funding in Montana — especially now that we have a nation-wide sequester policy that starves regular schools in every district in the State of Montana and especially on our Indian reservations.

What about the statute itself presented to the Montana State House of Representatives this session, HB 315? Among sponsors, as would be expected, were local Republican house members, Rep. Kris Hansen and Rep. Wendy Warburton. More surprising for this Republican dominated piece of legislation was the sponsorship by Sen. Jonathan Windy Boy of Rocky Boy.

In a small population state such as Montana, charter schools simply make no sense. They would be costly and add nothing to the education of larger city school systems. In rural and smaller town districts, they would be an utterly disadvantageous impossibility.