School Choice or Best Systems_ What Improves Education_ - Margaret C. Wang [11]
• the regulatory and funding problems faced by the charter school sector.
Charter School Popularity
One characteristic of charter schools is not in dispute—parents favor them over traditional public schools. Nationwide, charter school waiting lists contain nearly 9 percent of the number of students currently enrolled in the charter sector. In nine states, the number of students on waiting lists exceeds 20 percent of charter school enrollment. Demand is highest in Massachusetts, where waitlists total approximately 55 percent of total charter enrollment, followed by Connecticut, where the figure approaches 50 percent.2 The waiting lists might be even longer if more parents knew about charters. This pent-up demand is due, in part, to the fact that many states cap the total number of charter schools that can be created, limit access on the basis of place of residence, and/or cap the number of students that any school can enroll.
In Chicago, for example, charter schools are extraordinarily oversubscribed. A recent Progressive Policy Institute study3 showed that all but 1 of the city’s 27 charter campuses (some schools have multiple campuses) had more applicants than open spaces available. Nine of the campuses had three times as many applicants as seats, and at one school the ratio was 10 to 1.
Charter schools currently serve 3.6 percent of the Chicago student population, which means that comparatively few students have access to their programs. The demand for alternatives to ineffective traditional public schools isn’t difficult to fathom: according to a report by the Illinois Facilities Fund, only 16 percent of the city’s high school students and barely one-half of Chicago’s elementary students have access to effective schools.4 Although the analysis is not causally rigorous (see subsequent sections for studies that are), the information that may concern parents is that all the charter high schools outperformed the average scores of the traditional public schools that their students would have otherwise attended.5 Seven of 10 Chicago charter elementary schools improved faster than traditional Chicago public schools.
One reason charter schools are so popular is that, according to national surveys, the majority of parents would send their children to private schools if the cost of tuition were not an issue.6 African-American parents feel particularly strongly about this; a nationally estimated 89 percent would send their children to private schools if tuition were provided.7 Publicly funded charter schools, since they are privately governed and operated, are naturally appealing to parents who prefer semiprivate to state-run schools.
Charter schools are also popular because individual schools that fail to please parents will fail to attract students and as a result can be forced to close. Public schools that fail to please parents continue nevertheless to have students assigned to them and remain open year after year. Whether the No Child Left Behind Act and state legislation will actually improve or close failing traditional public schools remains to be seen.
Parental satisfaction is important but often overlooked in the school choice debate. Many experts seem to believe that only academic test scores are “objective” or important measures of school quality, while the views of parents and citizens are subjective or even irrelevant. Both these beliefs are incorrect, as will be shown later in this chapter and in subsequent chapters. A nation that depends on individual choice and responsibility in so many other areas of economic and social life should not dismiss consumer opinions in education. Measuring parents’ satisfaction with different types of schools is a way to ensure that their views are not overlooked.
Academic Achievement of Charter Schools
Well-designed studies increasingly show that charter schools, on average, produce academic achievement levels that exceed those of traditional pubic schools, even though most charter schools are less than five years old and operate with