Charter schools | ‘We’re going to make it work’
Some fear state’s push for schools could cost them precious local money
By WAYNE WASHINGTON
Senior Writer
Original at The State
CHARLESTON — Orange Grove Elementary is a school like many others here and throughout the state.
Its building, located west of the Ashley River amid a cluster of moderately priced homes, is low and squat. Inside, there are cheery teachers and eager, smiling children, dressed in Orange Grove tops or school uniforms.
Little marks Orange Grove as a school of particular significance.
But it is.
Parents and school officials, looking for more money and more say with the Charleston County School District in teacher hiring and curriculum, successfully have applied for Orange Grove to become a charter school.
“We have a leadership team — the principal, the guidance counselor, teachers,” said Robert O’Donald, vice president of Orange Grove’s board of directors. “They will govern the school and won’t have to go through Charleston County for certain administrative procedures that teachers consider red tape. I honestly feel it will be better. We’re going to make it work.”
When Orange Grove changes its leadership structure and begins operating as a charter school this fall, it will become part of a movement that Gov. Mark Sanford and many state legislators want to see blossom.
But the latest push to increase the number of schools like Orange Grove in South Carolina could splinter the Palmetto State’s charter school movement.
Some charter schools fear a proposal before the Legislature could cost them precious local money.
Others trust the state will make up any money they lose. They see the proposal as offering them an opportunity to operate separately from school districts that they say are hostile to charter schools.
Charter schools are public schools, not home-based or affiliated with a religion, that are authorized by local school districts to offer new and creative methods of educating students.
The General Assembly passed a law authorizing charter schools in 1996, but the flood of charter schools — and the boom of innovation and academic improvement they were supposed to bring — never materialized.
A decade after they first were authorized in South Carolina, fewer than 30 charters are in operation.
Now, Sanford and Republicans in the General Assembly are making another push.
A bill creating a statewide public charter school district — the first in the nation — is likely to be debated in the state Senate this week. The House of Representatives passed a similar charter schools bill last year.
After the recent ruling by Circuit Judge Thomas W. Cooper Jr. that South Carolina is not doing enough for young children, education is a front-burner issue for lawmakers. Politics also will help push the charter schools debate to the fore.
“That’s going to be one of our priorities going into this session,” Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer said.
Facing re-election and rebuffed in attempts to have the state offer parents tax credits for private-school tuition, Sanford has embraced charter schools as one way to offer alternatives to parents who are dissatisfied with public schools. While they don’t have a strong relationship with Sanford, many Republicans in the General Assembly generally share the governor’s belief that some form of school choice would improve public education.
Some aren’t so sure.
Even if the bill passes, there is little evidence that more charter schools will improve public education, some say.
“I don’t think there is any place in the country where charter schools have been a silver bullet,” said Katrina Bulkley, an associate professor in the Department of Counseling, Human Development and Educational Leadership at Montclair State University in New Jersey.
GROWING A SCHOOL
Larry DiCenzo, principal at Orange Grove, is a tank of a man with a quick smile and a gentle manner.
Escorting a guest through a corridor of the school recently, DiCenzo was stopped by a little girl who gave him a hug.
A principal since 1979, DiCenzo is a former wrestler. But he isn’t on the mat anymore — unless you count what he considers his constant fight with the Charleston County School District to get more money for his school.
“I have to wrestle with Charleston County to pry that funding from their fingers,” DiCenzo said.
For years, Orange Grove has been one of the better-performing elementary schools in Charleston County. It has won a Blue Ribbon Award from the U.S. Department of Education for academic excellence. It also has received more than $264,000 in reward funding from the state Department of Education for outstanding test scores over the past decade.
Still, Orange Grove parents wanted more for their children. They wanted more freedom in deciding which classes would be offered, more say in when or if new teachers would be hired, and more money to run the school.
“The biggest thing is money,” said O’Donald, an Orange Grove parent and board member. “Orange Grove doesn’t get all of the money that is allotted to it. With more money, we’ll be able to do more.”
Two years ago, Orange Grove parents and school officials asked the Charleston County School District if their school could become a magnet school. The district turned down that request.
Parents and school officials then took another path, successfully applying to the district to make Orange Grove a charter school.
School districts allocate local, state and federal money to schools — charter and traditional — in their jurisdiction based on their size and needs.
But charter school operators say district officials — offended by the notion that charter schools are needed because traditional public schools are not serving students well enough — often do not allocate all of the money that charter schools are entitled to get.
DiCenzo, for example, said his school is entitled to thousands in Medicaid funding that Charleston County refuses to send his way.
“I had a district official tell me point-blank: ‘Larry, you’ll never get that funding,’” DiCenzo said. “They don’t like us going charter. They’re taking it personally.”
SATISFYING A NICHE
The intent of the 1996 charter schools law was not to clear the path for high-performing schools like Orange Grove to opt out of their local school district, said Hillery Douglas, who has been on school boards in North Charleston and Charleston at various times since 1980.
“The legislation was enacted to satisfy a niche that the public schools were not satisfying,” said Douglas, currently a Charleston County School Board member.
Becoming a charter school would mean more money to Orange Grove, Douglas said. Current law calls for the district to give charters the average amount all schools in the district receive. That could mean as much as an additional $1 million to Orange Grove, Douglas said. But the pot of money available to the other 80 Charleston schools would shrink.
“That’s why it’s unfair,” Douglas said. “It’s just about getting more money. If it was about doing a better job educating kids, I’d support it. They’re already doing a good job.”
DiCenzo said he is looking forward to doing an even better job. The extra money will be used to buy more computers, reduce the student-to-teacher ratio and possibly add Chinese language classes.
MIXED RESULTS
Charter school proponents have looked west for a model of what the movement can do for academic performance.
Arizona, which passed a charter law in 1994, has the highest concentration of such schools in the country. Its 2005 mean SAT score of 1,056 far surpasses the South Carolina mean of 993.
But other figures paint a different picture.
According to the most recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which the U.S. Department of Education refers to as “the nation’s report card,” South Carolina’s fourth- and eighth-graders have performed better than their counterparts in Arizona in math, reading and writing while holding their own in science.
South Carolina’s fourth-graders matched Arizona students in science. But eighth-graders here scored slightly lower than eighth-graders in Arizona in science.
Still, charter school backers in South Carolina say charters would mean better education in the Palmetto State.
“With less than 30 charter schools, we don’t believe that they are having the kind of impact on the overall picture that they could be having,” Sawyer said.
A 2002 study, conducted for the state Department of Education, found it is “highly unlikely” the state ever would have a large number of charter schools, citing the skepticism of local school districts that must authorize the new schools.
The study also found many of the approved charter schools struggled. Of the first 18 charter schools in South Carolina, five were closed because of mismanagement, poor academic performance or financial problems.
However, with only a few charter schools available for analysis, the study cautioned, “it would be inappropriate to make assumptions about how a larger charter school program might function.”
One reason the charter school movement has not fully lived up to the promises of its supporters is because, so far, charter curricula often are not that much different from what’s taught in traditional public schools, said Montclair State’s Bulkley.
“Charter schools are not a reform of the substance of education,” she said. “It’s a reform of the structure of education.”
Bulkley, who has written extensively about charter schools and testified in Congress on accountability, does not oppose charters. In fact, she likes what she knows about the bill being debated in South Carolina, particularly the establishment of a separate school district.
Typically, charter schools are not scrutinized heavily until their charters are about to be renewed, Bulkley said, an approach that doesn’t serve the school well.
“What the (charter) schools need is a critical friend, some organization that can provide some insight, some analysis. In theory, a state charter school district would provide that support,” she said.
But a statewide charter school district, empowered to approve charters and allocate state money to them, would face challenges, too, Bulkley said.
Could a statewide district do a good job serving schools in different parts of the state? Such a challenge, Bulkley said, “would not be insignificant.”
A SPLIT DECISION
Some charter school operators have other concerns.
Greenville Technical Charter High School, which opened in 1999 and has 400 students, is seen as a model for what charter schools can be: innovative and stable, with a creative curriculum that allows students to take college courses.
Greenville Tech’s principal, W. Fred Crawford, is a big backer of charter schools in general and wants to see them flourish. That, he says, is why he is so opposed to the latest reform.
The proposed changes give charter school operators two bad choices, he said. They can remain in often hostile local school districts, or they can opt to join the newly created statewide district and lose local money.
Being part of a local district entitles a school to a slice of local property tax money that goes to districts for education. If a school opts out, it would not be entitled to that money under the bill.
Schools get state and federal money, but local property tax money also is a significant piece of the pie — roughly 30 percent. During fiscal year 2005, schools in Richland 1, for example, got $4,300 per pupil in local property tax money, district officials said.
The bill’s supporters say it will be crafted in a way to make sure charters don’t lose out if they join the statewide district.
“They want to see charter schools succeed,” DiCenzo said. “The governor believes in charter schools. All he’s looking for is to give parents some choice.”
Like the bill’s backers, Crawford favors school choice. But he is wary of the charter bill. And he is not alone in his concern.
In November, he and 10 other charter school operators sent a letter to the governor and to state legislators opposing the charter schools bill.
“If the charter schools bill currently pending in the Senate is signed into law, many of our charters will be forced to close,” it reads. “This will happen because the bill provides a pathway for local school districts to keep per-student tax dollars that they currently have to pass along to charters.”
Local property tax revenue makes up just less than half of Greenville Tech’s budget, Crawford said.
State education officials are divided.
Inez Tenenbaum, state superintendent of education, is not opposed to the charter schools bill. “But it’s not the panacea some proponents think it is,” she said.
However, the S.C. School Boards Association is opposed to the bill, said general counsel Scott Price.
“No other state’s doing anything like this,” Price said. “It’s growing government. It’s almost like (creating) a fictional district.”
For Charleston County School Board member Douglas, the new charter school debate is part of an age-old problem in South Carolina.
“This state is trying all sorts of things to circumvent educating everybody,” he said.
Reach Washington at (803) 771-8385 or wwashington@thestate.com