Weekend greetings, CharterFolk.
A lot going on. Let’s get straight to it.
Quite a Week
The volume of the clamor coming at us right now is overwhelming for many — I certainly feel it too.
And while I don’t claim CharterFolk is a definitive resource for separating all the signal from the noise, there are discernible patterns. My goal is to stay focused on what is known signal versus what is known noise.
Ham-radio-ing as best we can.
The collapse of NAEP scores — and our societal indifference to them — is certainly a clear signal.
This NPR story about the congressional hearing on education this week captures the irony.
It notes that the one thing Republicans and Democrats can agree on is that NAEP scores are terrible and that something must be done about them. But then, predictably, the hearing devolved into discussions about other highly predictable topics.
It’s like being an “anti-ham operator”: able to discern signal from noise but consciously tuning into the noise instead.
The collapse of learning levels and the widening achievement chasms, in my opinion, make the academic strengthening that the charter school movement has achieved in its third decade all the more significant. It’s understandable that some would tune it out. But we shouldn’t.
That’s why I return again and again to the significance of CREDO’s findings in 2023 …
… and PPI’s findings in 2024.
What has puzzled me, though, is the hesitance of many in our world to highlight these successes. I suspect part of it comes from concerns among those closest to city-level data, who have seen that charter school academic performance fell significantly during COVID. There’s a fear that once that data is aggregated again, it will show that some of the great progress charter schools made has been lost.
That may be true. Time will tell.
I believe it makes sense that the very scaffolds charter schools built to support student learning were the ones that had to be dismantled during the pandemic. But it’s not intuitive to me why we wouldn’t simply rebuild those structures — or better yet, strengthen them. That is, as long as we stay tuned to the signal and not the noise.
This is why I found Jen Stern’s Contributor Column this week so relevant.
Her organization’s work to strengthen academic performance among many charter schools in Minnesota provides a blueprint for what’s possible.
We’ll have another piece on this topic from Aimee Evan at WestEd this week.
And we’ll look to keep the CharterFolk radio dialed in to student learning going forward. If you have ideas for columns on this topic, ping me any time.
The Signal in the Supreme Court Case
Another critical signal buried within the noise is the impending Supreme Court decision on religious charter schools. Greg Richmond’s piece this week did a masterful job of tuning into the deeper implications.
It achieved one of the highest open rates of any post ever distributed here at CharterFolk — at a time when we have more readers than ever — suggesting that Greg’s piece may be the most widely read column in CharterFolk’s first five years.
Think of it:
The Superintendent of the Archdiocese of Chicago Schools, and the former CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, urged policy makers to think things through before acting rashly.
Talk about an attempt to discern signal from noise.
Let me reiterate:
My entry point into this discussion is agnostic on the church-state issues that come up relative to the case. It’s not that I consider those concerns to be noise — far from it. For many, they are among the most critical issues at stake.
My concern, however, is that focusing solely on that channel could prevent us from hearing other critical channels tied to this case — channels that, if ignored, could have disastrous implications for our movement.
Greg highlights some of these issues. For instance, our charter school system has been built over 30+ years of jurisprudence without ever contemplating the inclusion of religious schools. Much of this hinges on the role of authorizers.
Authorizers currently decide whether applicants should be allowed to operate a school, whether a school’s license should be renewed, and whether schools can engage in certain activities. It’s already a challenge to make these decisions for nonsectarian schools. But nothing in our first three decades has prepared us for how authorizers would fairly and impartially evaluate religious school operators.
And authorizing is just the tip of the iceberg.
Consider state constitutions — the vast majority of which, including those in many red states, have provisions banning public funding from going to sectarian schools. What happens the day after the Supreme Court takes the country in a completely different direction? Would all those state constitutions have to be amended to allow charter schools to continue receiving funding?
Just ask people in Kentucky how easy it is to change a state constitution to accommodate a policy shift in education.
It’s one of the many jagged edges below the surface that could rip a gaping gash in the charter school hull.
I’ve long felt the writing was on the wall for this Supreme Court case. The court’s decision to grant certiorari only confirmed it.
But one twist I hadn’t anticipated is the recusal of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
This means that, to deem religious charter schools constitutional, five of eight justices—not five of nine—must agree. With three justices almost certainly opposed, the outcome likely hinges on Chief Justice John Roberts.
Roberts has shown, on several occasions, that he is reluctant to lob legal bombs that destabilize decades of jurisprudence.
This is why I regret the court’s decision to expedite this case. If ever a case deserved long, careful deliberation, it is this one.
The Signal We Must Send
Amid the din, it’s not just ham-radio-ing that matters — picking up the right signals.
Sending the right ones really matters as well. Only a few will get through.
One of the most important we must send over and over in the coming months is that this case has titanic implications for our movement. And the seas the Supreme Court is navigating are rife with icebergs, with treacherous shelves lurking below the surface that they may not fully grasp.
The last thing the Supreme Court — or any of us — should want is four million kids left adrift in freezing waters, desperately in need of lifeboats.