Fitzsimon File

The Blue Ribbon Commission on Charter Schools met for the last time Wednesday and that’s good news. It means an end to the six months of pretending the commission was actually formed to make some thoughtful recommendations.

There’s nothing to celebrate in the committee’s decisions, which were a foregone conclusion when the panel was appointed. The committee voted to expand the number of charter schools well above the current cap of 100.

The plan would increase the cap by 6 schools each year and not count high performing charter schools against the cap. It would also not count charter school applications from counties currently without a charter school against the cap.

Under one interpretation of high performing, 27 schools last year fall into that category. That means that at least 33 more charter schools could be authorized plus any schools from counties without a school currently operating.

The following year, with 133 schools operating, if the same number of charters were designated as high performing, the cap could increase by 33 again, or more. In a few years, there could easily be more than 200 charter schools, an astounding expansion when the research about the schools effectiveness is mixed at best.

But this commission was never much concerned with research anyway, especially when it came to the controversial cap. Chairman Michael Fedewa announced at the first meeting that the cap should be raised and the committee hired a research consultant who works with charter schools.

His report recommended raising the cap, contradicting an in-depth report from the North Carolina Center for Public Research that concluded that the cap should remain.

The committee’s membership was also heavily stacked in favor of raising the cap and in support of charter schools in general. That also explains why the commission recommended a repeal of the law that requires charter schools to reflect the racial diversity of the district in which they operate.

That contradicts what used to be consensus, that segregated schools are not in the state’s best interest. The Center for Public Policy Research report identified several schools that have a student body of almost entirely one race, in clear violation of the law.

The Commission’s response is simply to change the law. Fedewa claimed that the diversity requirement conflicts with the mandate that schools hold a lottery to admit students if they have too many applicants, which is absurd.

Schools could easily make sure that children of different races were selected for the spots, but the committee marched on ignoring that fact.

The recommendations now go to the State Board of Education and then to the General Assembly if the Board approves them. The Blue Ribbon rubber stamp commission was appointed by State Board Chair Howard Lee, so Board approval is likely.

It will be up to the General Assembly to have an open, honest debate about charter schools, raising the cap, and the perils of segregated schools. And the House and Senate will need to start from scratch. There’s no way to use the Commission’s work as a basis for anything. Its work was an embarrassment and barely worth the paper its recommendations were printed on.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.