Carter Schools Being Put Under the Spotlight

Carter Schools are privately owned schools with public funding. There has been recent spotlights put on carter schools since Texas passed an overhaul of charter school in 2013, it’s first since 1995. This much needed and long awaited reform from legislatures included a provision which would allow fast shuttering of school who did not meet expectations. TheTexas Tribune states that these expectations are financial and academic accountability ratings which, if not met in three proceeding school years, will close the school and gives limited appeal ability if not met after one year. Six schools were marked by the Texas Education Agency for closure, but three schools appealed to the state court for various reasons including: not agreeing with the ‘one size fits all’ way of evaluating schools, its unjust restrictions on appeals, its punishment of money saving financial decisions like getting outside funding or keeping money in an endowment instead of a bank account to get more interest.

                I agree with the much need provision for charter schools. If carter school receives taxpayer money, it is the right of the taxpayer to know that the money is being used in a way that is equally or more effective than the public school model. I also agree with the swift closure provision, because this allows poor performing and tax dollar wasting schools to close easily and make room for more effective and efficient schools to take their place.

                Although this reform is doing a lot of good and quickly closing bad charter schools, the three schools that are appealing (Honors, Azleway, and American YouthWorks) raise some important flaws in the evaluation and closure of schools. The biggest and most immoral problem is the limited appeals for schools that do not pass the ratings. Even if it is a poor- performing school, everybody deserves the right to appeal. Not allowing appeals is unjust and quite possibly unconstitutional. Another problem brought up was punishment from business decisions like putting money in endowments and receiving outside funding. While I think it is unjust that they are being punished for making those decisions, I do not think that specific things like “endowments and outside funding are allowed” should be put into the provision. If the document starts to get specific like that, then it will eventually turn into the US tax code which outlines every single financial do’s and don’t’s which allows companies to avoid taxes (or in this case let a charter company avoid being shutdown). I think that allowing appeals to be heard will allow school to explain how making decisions like using endowments and outside funding is beneficial in their specific case and should not be punished.

                While I think that this ‘one size fits all’ rating should broaden its horizons and look at various measures of affective education, I think that it is an overall good thing to have a centralized evaluation system to see if these charter schools are truly using taxpayer money wisely.