Wichita should innovate, launch charter schools

Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s choice to be the next secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, is controversial because she favors school choice – vouchers or public charter schools.

School choice, at least through public charter schools, is not a partisan issue, nor should it be bound up with religion, as Devos suggested many years ago. Large cities governed by Democratic mayors have had large fractions of their public schools in charters for years. These include Boston, Denver, Kansas City, Mo., New Orleans, New York and Washington, D.C. Arne Duncan, the Obama administration’s Education secretary for seven years, encouraged the growth of charter schools, though he did not support vouchers.

Academic studies that control for a wide range of factors influencing student performance have demonstrated that students attending over-subscribed charter schools – those whose slots must be randomly assigned – learn more than those attending conventional public schools. This is an especially important result for minority students, who make up most of the student bodies at successful charters.

The challenge for cities and states that allow public charters is for the bodies authorizing them to weed out poorly performing schools. Kansas City, Mo., has had a mixed record with charters, in large part because unsuccessful charter schools have been allowed to remain in business.

So how can we be like other cities where K-12 education has improved because of public charter schools? Kansas charter law is highly restrictive, though a somewhat related statute allows school districts to become “innovation districts.” Given the new disappointing test results in Wichita schools, USD 259 should immediately request this status, so it can begin experimenting with different school and curriculum models.

Ideally, as in other cities where charters have made headway, the district could mobilize sufficient philanthropic dollars to help get charter schools – specifically aimed at improving the performance of minority students – launched and operational.

In the absence of this happening, the local school district could invite existing teachers to form their own charter schools. To avoid draining the best teachers from existing public schools, the new schools could be urged to attract new teachers graduating from Kansas universities, teachers accepted by Teach for America, and more experienced teachers from out of state. The new schools should also be allowed to hire part-time teachers for specialized courses, such as software coding, and not be bound by existing union contracts, which is true for charter schools elsewhere.

Finally, with the incoming administration committed to school choice and Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Wichita, expected to leave Congress to become CIA director, our new congressman should work with the Department of Education and other like-minded congressional representatives to gain federal funding for cities that initiate or expand charter school, while demonstrating that they can close schools that aren’t up to snuff. This would give the new administration a way to prove that it is committed to giving more students and their families the ability to move to better schools if their local schools aren’t performing well.

There is no reason why public schools should not be subject to the same competitive pressures that private companies face to produce high quality products and services and to continuously innovate.

This story was originally published December 6, 2016 at 5:03 AM with the headline "Wichita should innovate, launch charter schools."