Statewide interest in independently-run charter schools is increasing. “Three proposals are scheduled to go to the Board of Regents for action next month,” said Keith A. Oliveira, charter schools coordinator for the Rhode Island Department of Education.
Included are the possible expansion of the Times Square School – which currently serves only middle grades – to include kindergarten through fifth grades; the founding of the International School in Pawtucket; and a school to serve all districts in the East Bay area, proposed by Roger Williams University. Five other projects are also under review by the state Department of Education.
Seifert Systems Invests in Energy Efficiency to Strengthen Operations
For manufacturers, energy is more than just another operating expense. It plays a critical role…
Learn More
Currently, Rhode Island has three charter schools – all in Providence, which has a cap of four – with enrollment totaling 573. According to the Rhode Island State Budget Office, $4,019,249 (of a total public school budget of more than $500 million) was allotted to those three schools – the Textron Chamber of Commerce Academy, Times Square School and the Highlander School – this year.
A fourth school has been approved to open in Providence next fall, the Paul Cuffee School, which will use the sea as the theme throughout its curriculum.
“I think a lot of people don’t understand what charter schools are,” Oliveira said. “They are public schools. They are schools of choice. They offer a choice to parents and students who are looking for alternatives to what the current public schools are providing. The test is whether or not there is a demand.”
The charter school (publicly funded, independently run) movement began in Minnesota in 1992. Today, according to statistics from the Center for Education Reform, there are 2,069 charter schools in the United States. Over 300 new charter schools opened this fall; nationally, charter schools have an enrollment of a half million students, which accounts for about 1 percent of the nation’s school children.
Oliveira said charter schools not only offer choices to families, but also to teachers and administrators seeking creative ways of instruction. If the true test is demand, then this year’s number of proposals coupled with the fact that each Rhode Island charter school currently in operation has a waiting list, seems to confirm success.
Concrete results are more difficult to ascertain.
“They (The charter schools in Rhode Island) haven’t been opened long enough to perform any long-term studies on student achievement,” said Oliveira. “It’s too soon to tell.”
Not so, according to Robert Pilkington, operations officer at the Textron Chamber of Commerce Academy, a high school and Rhode Island’s oldest charter school. Pilkington doesn’t see the value of the standardized tests administered to Rhode Island’s 10th graders each year, but has seen positive results in Textron’s testing, which tests students three times a year, every year.
“That way, we can see what progress a student makes over the course of their year,” he said. “So far, we’ve seen dramatic results. Our tests show that our teaching strategies are working.”
At Textron, test results help determine adjustments to a student’s schedule, for example offering an extra reading lab to a student who is not performing at grade level in English, instead of enforcing a foreign language requirement.
“We see results, not just because we’re taking a snapshot of the 10th grade, but because we’re testing Johnny Jones three times a year,” said Pilkington. “The one year test of a new class every year is unreliable to test how a school is doing.”
The 215 students who attend Textron have the options of eating dinner at school and participating in tutoring sessions in the evenings. Standard class size is 17.
“We consider ourselves a vanguard,” Pilkington said. “We’re changing the way public schools operate.”
The National Education Association has concerns about charter schools, citing relatively homogenous student bodies and inconsistent systems of accountability on the organization’s Web site.
According to Larry Purtill, president of the National Education Association Rhode Island, issues the group may have with charter schools are less about concept and more about equal opportunity for students.
“I think the schools in Rhode Island are set up for all the right reasons,” he said. “They seem to be successful. What would be nice is if we could duplicate that success in every district.”
Purtill said he supports the idea of trying to reach students who have not been successful in a more traditional classroom.
“The concept is a good one,” Purtill said. “Within every school district, I worry about the fact that charter schools are only going to handle a certain group of kids. It leaves some behind. I’d love to see the concept of charter schools in every district.”
“We want to make sure we’re talking about schools with accountability,” he said. “We want to make sure that we do the same thing for everybody.”
Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform (CER) in Washington, DC, calls the charter school climates in Rhode Island and neighboring Massachusetts “dramatically different.” Massachusetts has 39 charter schools, with a total enrollment of 11,265.
According to CER research, Massachusetts has stronger charter school laws, ranking the state as the sixth strongest of the nation’s 37 charter laws. Rhode Island, by contrast, ranks the fifth weakest.
“It starts and ends with the law,” Allen said. “Under strong laws, charter schools are invited, supported and they flourish. They are built around results, not rules. To be able to do that, you must be able to start from scratch.”
Charters for Massachusetts’s start-up schools have only to be approved by the state board of education; the approval of Rhode Island’s charter schools is a two-step process: a charter must first be approved by the local school board, then by the state Board of Regents.
“When the school board is the authorizer, the school board is less likely to follow that to the letter of the law,” she said. “A charter school is rarely independent when it is approved by the school board.”
Nationally, Allen said, the idea of charter schools is “becoming more mainstream. Rhode Island is one of those states where it’s looked at as kind of odd.”
