An Educated Choice

Rhode Island charter schools offer options and innovation in a beleaguered education system. But are they money well-spent?

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IT’S A BIG NIGHT at the Stadium Theatre in downtown Woonsocket. The crowd buzzes in anticipation. Underneath the gold leaf trim adorning the interior of this historic building, teenagers are darting to and fro, directing people to sit. Meanwhile, parents are hugging children, huge smiles on approving faces and good luck wishes on their lips. The theater’s bottom level is almost full. The audience has come to see the premiere of All is Fair in Love & Law, a musical written, directed and choreographed by students at the Beacon Charter High School for the Arts.

The class’s seniors staged this production days before bidding farewell to high school, not for a grade or to meet a graduation requirement, but because they wanted to. Perhaps that is the first sign that Beacon is no ordinary school. Two years ago, Beacon surrendered its charter –– essentially its license to operate –– and was closed after a state education hearing officer declared the school "insolvent, and so administratively flawed that [its] long continuation…would put the public school interests of the state, along with state and local funds, at risk."

Only eight years after charter schools were established in Rhode Island, Beacon was on its way to being the first to fail. Critics latched on, saying it showed deficiencies in how charters operate and how their different approach to educating schoolchildren may not work after all.

Charter schools are indeed different from traditional public schools. In Rhode Island, save for three, each is its own school district, and each designs its own curriculum and is in charge of its budget, contracts, teachers, staff and operations. All charter schools have their own oversight board –– members are either elected or named depending on the school’s charter rather than elected by a community’s citizens as in traditional public school districts.

"Charter schools are very enigmatic," says Robert Pilkington, founder and president of the Rhode Island League of Charter Schools and the principal at Beacon. "We have a hard time communicating who we are."

Charters were created nationwide beginning in the early 1990s. Supporters saw them as a way to provide school choice to families who couldn’t or didn’t want to attend private schools, as well as laboratories of a sort where alternative teaching methods could be implemented. They also served as a compromise to vouchers, seen by many as unfairly allowing public money to be used to send children to private school. Charters are public schools, and although the laws vary with each state, they generally enjoy more autonomy, greater flexibility in designing the curriculum and more independence for teachers in how they provide instruction than in traditional public schools.

Today there are more than four thousand charter schools in forty states and the District of Columbia, with an enrollment exceeding one million students –– about 2 percent of the student population nationwide from kindergarten through high school. In Detroit, 20 percent of public school students attend charters. In Washington, D.C., it’s 27 percent; in New Orleans, 57 percent.

The first charter school in Rhode Island, the Textron/Chamber of Commerce Providence Public Charter School, was established in 1997. There are eleven now –– located from South Kingstown to Woonsocket. There are proposals for five more, but the General Assembly has frozen applications, bringing the expansion to a standstill. Lawmakers say the state –– which partly funds charters –– cannot afford to direct more money solely to them, especially when they’re wrestling with yearly budget deficits.

Supporters like charter schools because they see them as a long-sought option to a stagnant and, in some cases, failing public school system in the state. They say they work, and offer as evidence that all charter schools have met –– and some have exceeded –– federal requirements for academic performance, whereas about five dozen non-charter public schools did not meet the grade, according to state education department data for the 2005-06 year. Proponents add that charter schools offer parents a valuable commodity within the public school system –– a choice of where to send their children –– and give students the opportunity to receive a specialized education, such as in the arts, environment, science and technology or by learning specific job skills.

"Here in Rhode Island, we have proven that charter schools provide a valuable alternative in education," says Keith Oliveira, special assistant to the commissioner for state and charter schools at the Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. "We’re not saying they’re better, but what we are saying is they provide a different setting, a different atmosphere, a different design, and we leave it to the parents to decide if charters are better for their particular child."

Critics view charters as an alternative way of teaching and learning that should be incorporated instead within the traditional public school system. They say charter schools drain the limited money available for public education –– money that could be used to help schools across the board.

"Parents already have choices where to send their children," says Jim Parisi, field representative of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals (part of the American Federation of Teachers union), referring to private and parochial schools. "And while I understand that parents like more choice, we think more choice might have been generated in the existing system."

To be sure, charter schools must adhere to certain standards. Students take the same assessment tests in reading and math proficiency that students in traditional public schools take, and the schools are judged accordingly on a scale of classifications required under federal law. Teachers must be state certified. The schools must petition the state Board of Regents every five years to have their charters renewed. Their finances are scrutinized quarterly by state agencies. But in so far as those rules are met, charters have tremendous flexibility in choosing what to teach, and how to teach it.

Rhode Island’s charter schools reflect that scholastic diversity. The Paul Cuffee School in Providence, selected this year as one of the top fifty-three charter schools nationwide by the Center for Educational Reform, has a maritime theme. The Compass School in South Kingstown, which like Cuffee teaches students from kindergarten through eighth grade, also has an environmental bent, coupled with social responsibility. The International Charter School in Pawtucket offers a bilingual program for children from kindergarten through fifth grade. The New England Laborers Cranston Public Schools Construction and Career Academy bills itself as the first collaboration in the nation between a trade union and a public school district. Beacon targets students with an interest in the arts –– offering a choice of developing visual, theatrical or culinary skills.

"Each charter school has very different strategies," said Julia Steiny, an education consultant, writer and former Providence school board member. "What they have in common is that the relationships, the talking mechanism, is overwhelmingly better than the average in regular schools. They’re better organized. The governance structure is more shared, and the relationships with parents are better."

MORE THAN THIRTY STUDENTS squeeze around a U-shaped table in a classroom at Beacon. They come from different social and racial backgrounds. One girl has dyed black hair with a streak of pink highlights in the front. A student named Ben wears a T-shirt that reads, "Rehab is for quitters." Another student named Justin says he works at a barbershop. Several seniors who have a free day because they have completed their exams, nonetheless have decided to attend. They’re not coming for pizza or cookies, for this is no celebration; it’s a focus group session commissioned by Beacon’s administrators to find out what the students think about their school.
The facilitator, Kristin Lehoullier, asks the students for their impressions. The answers come fast and furious.

"It’s different, like, the teachers are different. They actually care –– unlike other schools," says one girl.

"It’s like a huge family," says another girl."

"It’s amazing," another says.

"How?" Lehoullier asks.

"Everything," the student answers.

"It’s like a school full of high school misfits," Ben says.

"Not everyone’s a misfit," a girl across the room says in a reprimanding voice.

More voices. Lehoullier writes on the flip chart. "Public image = school of misfits." Below it she draws an arrow that connects to this thought: "less so now."

About 2,800 students attended charter schools last year –– less than two percent of the more than 150,000 pupils who went to public schools in Rhode Island. They are there because either they –– or their parents –– chose them. Several students are adamant during the focus sessions that Beacon, with a total enrollment of 140 students, feels like a safe haven, a fresh start in an environment where they feel respected, even loved.

David Mattera is one of those people. The eighteen-year-old, who just graduated and will attend the Community College of Rhode Island, says he hated his junior high school in Pawtucket. He couldn’t focus amid the bedlam he says reigned in the classroom. "When I came to Beacon, it was just a complete change and exactly what I needed because I was failing in the other school," says Mattera, who with seniors Dezaray Pieczarka and Sarah Steere, wrote and directed the end-of-year musical. "It was really killing me because I knew I could excel."

The three call Beacon an outlet for themselves and for classmates trying to overcome problems with school, with family or with life.

"I had really found my little nook," Pieczarka says.

"It’s kind of like a small town," Steere says.