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Home > Blogs > Middletown School News and Issues > Archives > 2008 > April > 23 > Entry
Charter schools: Friend or foe?
In the era of school choice, competition is a word that gets thrown around a lot.
Parents have more options than ever — private schools, charter schools, vouchers, career-tech schools, homeschool, and even choices within the public school system such as open enrollment or magnet public schools like Middletown’s Central Academy.
With limited financial resources coming from the state and a per-pupil based funding system, schools are competing to attract students. As an urban district, Middletown has a pretty well-developed school choice foundation.
Some of these players came together yesterday at the first annual Celebrate Education luncheon, sponsored by the Journal and the Chamber of Commerce. This particular event focused on secondary and higher education in Middletown. Miami University Middletown was there, along with some of the city’s high schools programs: Butler Tech, Fenwick, Middletown Christian Schools, Middletown City Schools and the Life Skills Center of Middletown.
Principal Chuck Hall of Life Skills Center of MIddletown made some interesting comments on the often strained relationships between charter and public schools.
Hall said Tuesday that the financial situation induces the strained relationships between charter and public schools, leading to a competitive environment.
Charter schools are tuition free. When a student decides to leave a public district and go to a charter school, the funding for that student is deducted from the district’s state aid and paid to the charter school.
“I think as a result of that our young people are suffering and we’re doing them a great injustice,” he said.
Life Skills is a charter school managed by White Hat Management that caters to at-risk students ages 16 to 22. Life Skills centers are located across the state, mostly in urban areas where drop-out rates tend to be higher. Students from Middletown make up more than 66 percent of the charter school’s student body, according to the Ohio Department of Education.
Hall has been reaching out to Middletown officials this school year and has met with board members and Superintendent Steve Price.
“Partnerships are key,” he said.
Hall acknowledged that Ohio’s system for funding facilitates a lot of the tension between charter schools and their public counterparts. I have also heard various education officials point out the differences in accountability and other regulations between charter and public schools.
But despite that, the competitive relationship between the charter and public schools is doing more harm than good, said Hall, who added that all the schools are working toward the same goal: getting students their high school diplomas. He isn’t competing with the other schools in the area, he said.
“I’m in competition to deal with the drop-out rate,” he said.
When Gov. Voinivich started Ohio’s school choice movement in 1991, one of the goals was to create competition in education. The thought behind this is that competition would prompt continuing progress and improvement.
What do you think of Hall’s comments? Should schools be in competition with one another? Do you think competition accomplishes its goal of stimulating continuous improvement in education? Or should all the schools, regardless of whether they are public, charter or private, work together to helping all students succeed in whatever system works best for them?
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