Abundance for education?

It's always a good time to expand high-quality public school options

The best time to open a high-quality public school was last year. The second best time is now.

In February, the Massachusetts state board of education board voted on five proposals to expand charter school seats. The state’s acting commissioner had brought all five to the board and recommended approval.

As the Commonwealth reported, one of the proposals up for consideration was a KIPP charter school in Lynn, MA. This particular application was opposed by the school superintendent in Lynn, who dislikes competition; it was opposed by local union officials, who dislike charter schools; and it was opposed by the mayor of Lynn, Jared C. Nicholson, who claims with a smiling face that he’s “focused on delivering inclusive growth through better schools.”

And yet, the KIPP school has a waitlist of 1,700 students. In that context, Mayor Nicholson’s homage to “inclusive growth” is kind of a joke. If he were being true to his values he would allow parents to attend the public schools of their own choice.

Still, you can kind of understand why the entrenched interests in Lynn wouldn’t want to allow KIPP to expand. It’s all about protecting entrenched interests.

The same arguments bubble up at the state level as well. In a recent Boston Globe op-ed by Mary Bourque, the executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, argued that, “now is not the time to approve the expansion of any charter school. Instead, policy makers should do all they can to protect the resources traditional public schools desperately need to provide a first-rate education to students in the state.”

Protect, protect, protect.

But this where higher authorities are supposed to step in. They’re supposed to say, no, allowing the expansion of high-quality schools would be good for Massachusetts kids and families, and we’re not going to allow these types of protectionist arguments to win out.

Gov. Maura Healey’s education secretary, Patrick Tutwiler, had a vote on the state board. He’s supposed to be representing all citizens of Massachusetts. And yet Tutwiler voted against all five of the charter proposals. Why? Here’s what he said:

“I voted no today as I believe this is not the right moment for charter school expansion, as schools and students are still recovering from the pandemic, and we are all navigating a changing federal landscape,” Tutwiler said.

It’s not the right moment to expand charter school seats in Massachusetts, which has one of the best-studied and highest-quality charter sector of any state? Massachusetts, which has one of the most generous provisions protecting districts that lose students to charter schools?¹ If not now, when will it be the right moment?

This type of scarcity mindset is a political loser, it’s bad for families, and it’s bad for children.

There is a better way

You can debate the merits of any particular charter school application. I don’t know enough to speak intelligently about the specific KIPP Lynn charter application. But I am receptive to data showing that parents want better options, and Democrats like Healey and Tutwiler should be too.

As Bruno Manno notes in a recent piece for The 74, there are a lot of ways to expand public school choice options. Magnet schools, new school models embracing Montessori or STEM or dual language features, open and dual enrollment programs, and career pathways programs are all ways to embed choice features within public education. I can keep going… The research on early college high schools continues to show amazing results. Similarly, a high school “Zones of Choice” initiative in Los Angeles Unified boosted student outcomes and narrowed narrowing achievement and college enrollment gaps for students in the lowest-performing schools.

In other words, Healey and Tutwiler have a lot more options than just saying “no.”

Frankly, they could also look at the voluntary school desegregation program called METCO program that’s been operating to great success in Boston for nearly 60 years. As Kevin Mahnken reported for The 74 last year, the program has produced some remarkable results:

METCO students enjoyed sizable improvements to their standardized test scores, school attendance, and disciplinary records compared with similar peers who didn’t participate. They were also more likely to both start and graduate from college and later earned substantially higher wages. The effects were especially large for boys and children whose parents didn’t attend college.

But METCO also has an extensive waiting list. Why aren’t Democrats like Healey and Tutwiler proposing to expand the METCO program so it can serve more families? Better yet, why aren’t they thinking about how to replicate a METCO-like program for Lynn families, or Worcester, or Brockton, or Lowell?

There are a lot of ways policymakers could expand public school choice options, if they’re willing to listen to their constituents.

1. As the Commonwealth notes, “Under the state’s charter school reimbursement law, meant to cushion the financial impact of students exiting local districts for charters, districts continue to receive payments for three years for each new charter student, starting with 100 percent of the per pupil funding the first year, 60 percent the second year, and 40 percent in the third year.”