If the education of our children, especially those in low-performing schools, were not so important, the recent legislative decision to create "charter-like schools" would be laughable.
The charter-school debate in North Carolina has gotten so engulfed in partisan politics and the culture wars that the best interests of our children appear to be one of the last considerations anyone makes when they address the issue.
The General Assembly created the new designation of "charter-like" to give school boards a new option when it comes to the state's 135 lowest-performing schools.
School boards may now petition the State Board of Education to designate their local low performers as charter-like schools. If approved, the school board will then control them under charter-like rules.
Charters are public schools that operate outside of the local education hierarchy. They must follow some of the same state laws that rule traditional public schools, but they also have more flexibility.
Of the many advantages that charters enjoy, the most important may be that they operate free of encumbrances from the local school board. A charter goes straight to the State Board for its authority to operate. Charter organizers tend to be imaginative and to have a very specific approach to a very well-defined segment of the student population.
What purpose this new designation serves for students, therefore, remains to be demonstrated. We're skeptical that it will make much difference. The same school-board members who ran these units while they were low-performing will now run them while they are charter-like. We don't believe that these people will suddenly be blessed with an entirely new vision of education.
Other skeptics see ulterior motives in the new designation. The state is pursuing federal "Race to the Top" grants and many people believe that the state's current legal cap of 100 charters will harm our chances of winning the money. (The Obama administration supports charter schools.)
If that is so, then the logical solution would be to raise the cap, as has been suggested many times over the past 15 years. But in a Democratic legislature, that won't happen. Charters are too closely identified with the Republican agenda in this state.
Instead, students in 135 poorly performing schools will get a half-loaf, watered-down reform thrown their way. They'll go to a school with some of the advantages of charters, but not the most important.
This does not appear to be a reform effort aimed at the best interests of students. It looks like political maneuvering.
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