Charter schools attract only the ‘best’ parents with the ‘best’ students, siphoning them away from our conventional public schools, leaving the ‘worst’ students, from the ‘worst’ families, behind.

Ever since the creation of the first charter school, opponents have contended that charters, as schools of choice, would appeal to the most successful, motivated students from families already highly involved in their children’s education.

The theory continues that this scholastic and social “cream” — the stereotypical academically-achieving, well-behaved, white, upper-middle-class ‘normal’ children of two-parent PTA-member families — will fill the charter school rosters. Having thus “abandoned” the traditional public school system, their elevating effect on the local schools will no longer be felt, and the local schools, left to educate the at-risk, minority, poor, poorly-achieving and unmotivated, will sink further into failure.

In fact, it’s the opportunity to make meaningful school choices on behalf of their children that makes parents better, more involved advocates for them, not the other way around.

Charter schools illustrate this phenomenon on two counts. First, they don’t attract just the “golden” students. In fact, to the contrary, they serve a disproportionate number of students traditionally considered to be low-achieving or otherwise “at-risk.”

Secondly, charter schools, unlike some traditional public school systems which try to blame their poor education results on the ethnic, social, educational or financial demographics of their students, successfully provide an atmosphere in which such students thrive and achieve.

Often detractors try using free and reduced lunch program participation rates to show that charter serve less low-income students than their conventional public schools counterparts. This formula is flawed, however, as CER data - directly reported from charters - shows: 54 percent of all charter school students qualify for free and reduced lunch; however, many charters choose not to participate in the program because of red tape, a lack of proper facilities and myriad other reasons.

Bottom line: Charter schools educate some of the most underserved students in the country, allowing them to achieve success where the conventional system failed to do so.

Online resources for the Center for Education Reform:

Charter School Myths and Realities: Answering the Critics (link)

Annual Survey of America’s Charter Schools 2008 (link)

A nice cap to this year’s National Charter Schools Week occurred last night as the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem played host to a celebration of one of the country’s most successful charter schools, Harlem Village Academies.

The star-studded evening included MC Hugh Jackman and singer John Legend. Surprise guest Gov. David Paterson who has supported a lift in the state’s charter school cap and wants to see more schools like HVA enter the landscape.

The night’s big news was made by media mogul Rupert Murdoch who donated $5 million to the school, which will be used to build a new high school facility. He also pledged another $500,000 he intends as a challenge grant for others to join.

Harlem Village Academies continues to earn accolades from all over, including NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg who recently held it up as an ideal in the charter community.

And why not? New achievement numbers for New York are out, and once again, HVA outshone the competition, scoring 100% in reading and 98% in math. Big congratulations to all of the HVA students and to school founder Deborah Kenny.

Talk about money going to a proven program where it will do the most good for kids.

Too bad the latest Administration budget proposal doesn’t do the same.

There’s no evidence that charter schools are succeeding.

Really? Is that why they are teaching kids to read a year or more ahead in most states, ensuring real math gets taught, saving children at-risk of dropping out, in high demand and still growing? And that’s with a population of children across all states that are a majority minority and disadvantaged.

For some reason, opponents like to perpetuate myths about charter school students not really doing any better academically than their peers in the conventional public schools. (They try to be subtle and say things like “we like charter schools, but we have to do something about the bad ones,” or “they are a great experiment but the jury is still out). In reality, numerous studies indicate that charter school students are outpacing their conventional public school peers with fewer resources and tremendous obstacles. Among the examples:

• Of New York’s 118 charter schools, 86 percent outscored their districts in math, and 66 percent outperformed them in English.

• In Arizona last year, 74 percent of fourth graders passed reading versus 68 percent in conventional public schools. For eighth grade reading scores, it was 67 percent for charters as compared to 63 percent passing in conventional schools.

• An in depth investigation by The Washington Post in December 2008 found that DC middle school charter students scored 19 points higher than conventional public school students in reading and 20 points higher in math on national standardized tests.

• Charter schools in Boston raise student achievement annually at a rate higher than all district public schools.

Charter Schools take money and resources away from public schools.

“Taking money away” is a misnomer. When kids leave systems that do not meet their needs, money should leave. But it’s not leaving public education, it’s just moving to meet the public’s needs in a different way.

When a child attends a charter school, they are attending another legally created public school which a state’s education revenues are intended to support. And when money follows a child, other public schools in that state benefit from the renewed focus that money changing hands brings about – the idea that schools are set up for the benefit of students, and that their needs should drive services, not the other way around.

More “Charter School Mythbusters #2″

“There are too many lousy charters out there.”

While one bad school is one too many in any sector, some who suggest lousy charters exist do so with the purest of intentions but often the faultiest of data. They believe that by standing up for quality and against poor performance, they are demonstrating a commitment to accountability and avoiding a kind of “double standard” criticism by the establishment who get offended when reformers say too many conventional public schools are failing. If they admit publicly that their own movement has flaws and undertake what they believe are corrections, then policymakers and opponents will take the charter concept seriously, see them as serious reformers and good policies as well as eventually only good schools will exist.

But saying there are bad charter schools without an intensive look at data – below the surface of even what publicly released AYP scores say and do – ignores their real progress and achievement. And isolating the purpose of charter schools to only one of their three intended effects – quality schooling – ignores the other major two, and equally important effects charters were created to address: parent choice and competition.

More “Charter School Mythbusters #1″