Advocates celebrate 25 years of charter schools in NC, despite critics’ concerns

Twenty-five years ago, Tim Taylor was entering the sixth grade when he learned that his local middle school in Pamlico County was shutting down.

That was also the year that North Carolina’s General Assembly passed legislation authorizing charter schools across the state.

On Tuesday afternoon, as state leaders and charter school advocates gathered at the legislature to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the law, Taylor recalled his experience being a member of the inaugural class of charter schools.

After learning that the middle school was closing, Taylor said, families in his Eastern North Carolina hometown worked together to establish Arapahoe Charter School. He said the school was so community oriented that a local mechanic kept school buses in his backyard, a Sunday School teacher filled in when teachers were sick and he went on field trips to his teacher’s garden.

“How do you define freedom in one word?” Taylor said. “And the answer to that is choice.”

Today, 200 charter schools have been established across North Carolina, serving more than 126,000 students.

Though charter schools are more entrenched in the state’s educational landscape now, many people still advocate for them because of experiences like Taylor’s, despite critics’ claims that the schools can lead to resegregation and reduced funding for traditional public schools.

Charter schools — which are publicly funded — are exempt from some of the rules that traditional public schools must follow, such as providing transportation or free meals for students. The number of charter schools in North Carolina has doubled since 2011, when Republicans gained control of the General Assembly and raised the state’s charter school cap.

‘War’ between unions and parents

Speakers at Tuesday’s news conference shared their positive experiences with charter schools and advocated for the ability of parents to choose schools for their children.

“There’s a philosophical war underway right now,” said state Senate leader Phil Berger. “And that war is between bureaucrats and unions on one side, who’d like to force all children into one educational system controlled by those bureaucrats, and parents and children on the other side.”

Charter schools were originally intended to improve the academic performance of at-risk and academically gifted students, though any student can apply, and to promote innovation in teaching methods.

But critics argue that charter schools have not lived up to these goals.

“Charter schools in North Carolina were supposed to serve the most challenged and challenging students,” said Natalie Beyer, a Durham school board member and a board member of Public Schools First NC.

“But over more recent years, they have tended to be racially isolated and underperforming,” she continued. “So it’s not a time for celebration, but a time to pause and put more accountability in place for students and taxpayer dollars.”

Speakers at the press conference touted long waiting lists and some charter schools’ ability to teach in-person despite the pandemic as proof of the schools’ success. Seventy-eight percent of charter schools have waiting lists, and while traditional public school enrollment has dropped during the pandemic, charter school enrollment has increased.

Pandemic highlights charters

“COVID didn’t break the traditional school system,” said Corey DeAngelis, a prominent national school choice and homeschooling advocate. “In many ways it was already broken.”

State Superintendent Catherine Truitt also said that the pandemic has highlighted the importance of charter schools. “During the pandemic, parents showed us that they value choice, and we are now living in a time when the parent as the educational consumer has never been more prevalent,” she said. “And that is why, ultimately, I support choice in education.”

Some argue, however, that charter schools’ long waiting lists reflect a larger problem with public education in the state, rather than the success of charter schools.

Kris Nordstrom, a policy analyst with the N.C. Justice Center’s Education & Law Project, argued that charter school interest has increased because the state isn’t doing enough to support traditional public schools.

“As charter schools have gone from the 100 we had in 2010 to the 200 that we have today, our school funding efforts have gone from 42nd in the country to dead last,” Nordstrom said.

“That’s one of the reasons you see families desperately trying to find a situation that works for them, because you have underfunded traditional public school systems,” he continued. “But the only alternative that has ever worked are well-resourced, integrated public schools.”