Charter School Statement by Secretary Paul Reville

My former colleague Tom Kane and his fellow researchers from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have offered a valuable new study on charter schools and Pilot schools in the City of Boston including a robust and sophisticated review of the attendance patterns and performance of several schools. The study offers some interesting evidence about how students can benefit when their schools feature increased levels of innovation and autonomy. Looking at charter schools and Pilot schools in Boston, the study finds, for example, that middle and high school students who attended charter schools made greater academic progress compared to similar students who attended traditional public schools. The findings should be interpreted with some caution, however, given the small number of schools examined, and national studies on charter schools that reach different conclusions. While the study is limited in its scope, it does provide convincing support for the idea that we should be doing more, not less, to give teachers, principals, and others more flexibility to adopt cutting-edge approaches to assure all students master 21^st-century challenges.

Regrettably, recent discourse in our Commonwealth about charter schools has been a politically-charged debate pitting proponents of more schools against educators and administrators in the traditional schools. Both groups have made and continue to make valid points. For example, charter supporters rightly assert that burdensome school district policies and rule-bound teacher’s contracts in some communities inhibit innovation. Likewise, educators in traditional school systems correctly observe that some charter schools don’t do enough to educate students with disabilities, English Language learners, and other disadvantaged students equitably.

Today, however, this debate isn’t getting us far enough. In recent years, only three or four high-quality charter school applications have been submitted to the state annually. Also, despite arguments to the contrary, the fact remains that 53 Commonwealth charters -- and 41 charters for Horace Mann charter schools -- are currently available under the statewide charter school cap meaning there is plenty of room for expansion of the number of charter schools in operation. Additionally, only 2.6 percent of the nearly one million public school students in our Commonwealth are being educated in charter schools, nearly sixteen years after they were first authorized. Meanwhile, our students are being challenged more each day to compete on an international playing field against students from rapidly-advancing school systems in other countries. At home, they face an economy where knowledge-based jobs are becoming the only route to a middle-class existence. Clearly, it’s time to add a new approach to promote school innovation and autonomy so our students can meet these challenges.

For the past several months, the Patrick Administration has been working closely with principals, parents, superintendents, school committees, teachers’ unions, charter school advocates, and business leaders to develop this new approach: Readiness Schools. The idea behind Readiness Schools is to replicate the autonomy that charter schools enjoy within the traditional public school system so we can foster greater educational innovation. We want teachers, parents, community-based organizations, unions, charter school operators, and others to submit their good ideas to convert an existing public school into a Readiness School. We also encourage groups to develop plans to establish new schools from scratch. We want to provide flexibility so Readiness Schools can, for example, offer an instructional program that meets students’ unique needs; provide a longer school day or year; have greater leeway in how they spend their budget; or gain exemptions from district policies and provisions of the teacher’s contract, as appropriate. At the same time, Readiness Schools will remain in the traditional school district structure, with local school committees and superintendents overseeing their approval and ongoing monitoring. Most importantly, they’ll be developed collaboratively, so that district and school leaders, teachers, and parents all will have a voice in developing the plan for the school.

Although effective school reform can come from many places, it’s time to move past the notion advanced by some that “true” reform can only happen outside the traditional school district structure. With Readiness Schools, we want to create opportunities for those who work outside traditional schools, including charter school educators, to do what they do best inside regular school systems. But we also want teachers and administrators working in the system now to be part of the effort, because they have good ideas to offer, too.

At a time when it’s more important than ever for all students to receive a first-class education, we need to put the old debates aside and come together around a new vision we can all embrace. That’s what happened when we passed the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993, and as a result, our Commonwealth cemented its place as the leading state in public school achievement. Now, it’s time to recapture that spirit, so we can give our students and families the public schools they rightfully deserve.