Viewpoint: Charter schools benefit students and families

Jason Critchlow’s Viewpoint against charter schools is misleading and misguided. As the founder of the Career Academy network of charter schools, I take exception to such arguments.

Critchlow refers to The Portage School of Leaders, the new high school recently opened by Career Academy of South Bend, as a new for-profit charter school. There are no for-profit charter schools in Indiana, all charter schools are nonprofit.

Critchlow complains that charter schools are taking resources away from traditional public schools. Charter schools don’t “take” anything: they accept students who choose to leave traditional schools for an alternative they find more attractive. Usually having a choice is recognized as a benefit. Anti-charter advocates don’t want students to have a choice: They want students to be trapped in traditional schools no matter how unsatisfactory.

Critchlow argues that charter schools don’t provide improvement in student outcomes. National studies have shown otherwise, see “CREDO at Stanford University Finds That Students In Charter Schools, On Average, Perform Better Academically Than Those Attending Traditional Public Schools.” Statistics aside, why would students take the trouble to attend a charter school if it wasn’t an improvement? Businesses such as restaurants are judged based on what customers think. How credible would we find a restaurant owner who’s angry at any competition and argues no one should be able to eat anywhere else?

Critchlow argues that charter schools admit and expel students as they please. That is not true. Charter schools are required to accept disabled students. Career Academy schools have consistently had a higher percentage of Special Education students than local traditional public schools. Charter schools are subject to the same rules on expulsion of students as traditional public schools.

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Critchlow complains that charter schools are not accountable and that charter schools close if things don’t go well. That’s self-contradicting: that unsuccessful charter schools close while unsuccessful traditional schools stay open demonstrates that charter schools are more accountable, not less.

Critchlow argues that because charter schools receive private philanthropic funding, they are not financially sustainable, which he says is demonstrated by the Portage School of Leaders serving 30 students with five full time teachers. But virtually all non-profit organizations rely on donation funding, since unlike traditional public schools they don’t have the legal power to impose taxes on the public. As for the Portage school, its enrollment obviously will grow, since the beginning of this school year it has already grown. Every year since the first Career Academy school opened in 2011, our enrollment has grown while the enrollment of the South Bend Community School Corp. has declined. Who, then, in the long run, is financially sustainable?

Critchlow does not mention, as the Tribune’s coverage made clear, that we have chosen to make the high-tech equipment in the Portage School’s “Future Lab” available, with adult supervision, in late afternoons and early evenings to teenage students enrolled in any school in South Bend. We want all students in our community to have the opportunity to learn about technology as our students do. Critchlow says charter schools and traditional public schools will need to find a way to coexist. How about cooperation, with a focus on benefit to students, rather than continuing bitterness focused on money?

Larry Garatoni is Career Academy board president and founder.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Charter-schools-are-accountable-provide-improved-student-outcomes