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Class Measures work touted by New Hampshire newspaper.

Date last updated 1:09 pm Dec 23rd, 2007

Charter schools do good work, but might go belly up
By Chris Dornin
Golden Dome News, September 28, 2007

CONCORD - A British education consultant told policymakers Wednesday the state’s public charter schools are full of passion and creativity, even though several seem doomed to fail unless the state supports them better. Peter Davies, a former principal at a large school in London, a visiting professor at Oxford and now the president of Class Measures Limited, has advised schools, superintendents and departments of education around the world.

Davies liked the way each New Hampshire charter school has tapped a market niche. Some of them help at-risk kids buy into learning again, he said, and some are magnet schools for arts in education, technology and veterinary medicine. He was amazed at the high morale he found in students, parents, teachers and board members- despite some grim realities. Poor public funding has widely hampered operations and the recruitment of students.

“We are not advocates for charter schools,” Davies insisted. “We’re impartial. I’m very blunt and down to earth. I once advised a board to fire their director or close the school. Our contract was not renewed. I can tell you these schools we saw are all doing a good job, and I’d say so if they weren’t. A couple are doing exceptional work with dropouts. That moved me. Some are facing huge shortfalls. If those were my company, I’d be telling the shareholders to close with due diligence or declare bankruptcy.”

His final 50-page report due out next month will say the charter school experiment got off to a rocky start when school boards across the state rejected a series of charter school projects. A new law several years ago gave the State School Board the power to approve such schools, but the legislature never assured their long-term viability. The recent loss of all federal charter school funding for the Department of Education leaves the system without central direction and accountability. All the charter schools and their backers name funding as their top concern, Davies added.

Rep. Kim Casey, D-East Kingston, chairs a legislative oversight commission on charter schools and has filed a bill next session to give them $5,000 per student, a boost from the current grant of roughly $3,600. Casey said a bill by Rep. Ken Weyler, R-Kingston, to give them $8,000 per student will be hard to pass. School districts that get little or no state adequate education aid might push to launch their own charter schools as a funding loophole.

“I applaud all of these schools for their enthusiasm,” said Casey, who also serves on the Kingston School Board. “I believe we need richer data on their outcomes with students to persuade lawmakers to fund them.”

Davies said his data on each school, though detailed and accurate, is too small a sample to show with statistical validity that charter schools outperform public schools.
Jerry Frew, the assistant superintendent in Exeter, said his school board founded and underwrites the Great Bay eLearnnig charter school and a Virtual Learning charter school with on-line courses that starts next year.

“It takes at least four years of operation for a school to show the track record the legislature can relate to,” Frew said. “But the political climate can still change. We’re on the cusp of getting that data. Just hang on. We have lawmakers now who can carry our message.”

Deb Byrne is the principal at Cocheco Arts and Technology Academy in Barrington and said the state needs to decide if it wants charter schools. Last year CATA did almost $10,000 in charitable fundraising and got the school boards for Oyster River, Nottingham, Rochester and Strafford to pay additional voluntary tuition of $3,202 per student. That extra $38,000 helped.

“We save them money,” Byrne said. “It costs them less for the education we provide. The Dover vocational center has a cosmetology and a small-animal program but nothing for arts and technology. Why not fund us for that?”

Christine Stewart, the Cocheco business manager, said her school faces a projected revenue shortfall of $268,000 in 2008-2009. The current budget is $614,000.

“Could we make that up with fundraising?” she asked. “That’s the question. We hope the climate changes through legislation, but we’ll keep moving forward. We’ll mail out a solicitation letter soon to all our sending districts. We’re hoping the schools that supported us last year will do it again, with maybe some new ones.”

Scott Fletcher of UNH trains future teachers and thinks charter schools should position themselves as incubators of promising ideas, and never as rivals to the public schools.

“As part of the public schools they can promote innovation,” he said. “In a decade we need all schools to be open to a variety of student goals and approaches to teach critical thinking skills, imagination and the ability to talk about important issues. Those schools need to be deeply imbedded in their communities.”

Karen Geary chairs the Seacoast Charter School board in Kingston and has two kids there. A third child graduated to middle school. She lobbied the legislature last term and brought some of her young students to the Statehouse to testify on bills.

“We can make it on $8,000 per student,” she said. “Anything more enhances the program. But $4,000 (in 2008-2009) just isn’t enough.”