Hillary Clinton Dead Wrong: Charter Schools Must and Do Take 'Hardest to Teach'

A much higher proportion of students attending Michiganâ€™s public charter schools come from low-income families compared to the state's conventional public schools, according to the state's Center for Educational Performance and Information. Last year, children eligible for free or reduced-price lunches due to low family income comprised 70 percent of the charter school student population, compared to 44 percent in conventional public schools.

The figures are newsworthy in light of recent comments from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that charter schools donâ€™t take the "hardest to teach" students. Hereâ€™s what she said:

"The original idea behind the charter schools â€¦ was to learn what worked and apply them in the public schools. And here's a couple of problems. Most charter schools, I don't want to say everyone, but most charter schools, they don't take the hardest-to-teach kids. And if they do, they don't keep them. The public schools are often in a no-win situation, because they do thankfully take everybody, and they don't get the resources and help and support they need to take care of every child's education."

Yet charter schools in Michigan are required to accept every student whose family applies, according to state law. When the number of applicants exceeds the number of seats available, the schools are forced to use a lottery or similar random method to select who gets in.

â€œSecretary Clinton isnâ€™t accurate when she says that charter schools donâ€™t take the hardest-to-teach kids,â€ said Dan Quisenberry, president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, a charter school advocacy group, in an email. â€œIn fact, in Michigan, charter schools educate more harder-to-educate kids that traditional public schools do, particularly children in poverty. Michigan charter schools must accept any student that applies.â€

That also includes special education students, who comprised 10 percent of the students in Michiganâ€™s charter schools, just slightly less than the 12 percent figure at conventional public schools.

In 2014-15, 144,522 students attended a Michigan charter school, and 101,714 of them qualified for a reduced-price or free lunch. Conventional public school districts had 1,345,712 students, with 594,059 designated as economically disadvantaged.

I know a white man who is the only white math teacher in a majority black school. Most of his classes are 100% black. He has been horribly treated by the black male students. There are very large adults as permanent hall monitors. When he has a problem he signals and the hall monitor removes the offender. The classes are beginning to settle down as they are much smaller now. (He told one student to stop talking and the boy snapped, “You just be pickin’ on me ‘cause I be black!” He looked around the class which had only black students in it and did not respond.) The teacher brought in the black football coach, a former NFL star, and the coach asked what the problem was. The coach ended up signaling the monitor to throw out a racist ranting student. So far, it’s been hell.

Incidentally, the county is a majority black one. Several years ago the county decided that having 100% black prison population was giving it a bad image. So they traded five black prisoners with my county for five whites. The whites were all hospitalized within the week. I knew one of the inmates as we’d worked together. Talk about PC idiocy.

Regular public schools, on average, are better funded than either charters or private schools. This is invariably suppressed in the debate by the relentless focus by the anti-reformers on the tiny handful of very expensive private prep schools. But there are outlers. Sidwell Friends is expensive. Your neighborhood St. Mary's (Catholic) or St. Paul's (Lutheran) or Gospel Academy (Baptist) is not.

The larger question that HRC is ignoring here is the fundamental choice between one-size-fits-all, which is the default orientation of most public schools, and the willingness to experiment with a diversity of schools for very different students and communities. One-size-fits-all works reasonably well in homogeneous communities, especially if it is stretched a bit with ability grouping, tracking, magnet schools, AP and IB programs, etc. But at some point, one-size-fits-all is defeated by extremes in student diversity.

This issue gets conflated with racial issues, which is unfortunate, but the fact is that a considerable number of students need basic remediation and socialization, will never perform at grade level, and would be best directed towards skilled trades. These kids will be lost in academically rigorous classrooms. Conversely, a school dominated by such students, typically from poor and often single parent families, will be rejected by middle class parents, who will either move or opt for private schools.

Charters can be created to serve students in any niche. There are many charters pitched to children in poor neighborhoods, and they are popular with low-income parents desperate to escape failing public schools. The kids who are left behind, unfortunately, are the children of the incompetent and disinterested. It is difficult for any school to correct for parental default unless we are willing to take kids away from their parents and send them to boarding schools. I'd be happy to make that experiment. Per pupil revenues here in DC are just shy of $30,000. Start here. We have the money.

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