Charter takeover of struggling NC schools is a risky step

Why, some might ask, was North Carolina’s Innovative School District – a plan whereby low-performing elementary schools will be run by charter school operators – so named after having originally been called the Achievement School District? Perhaps the change came about because a similar program in Tennessee, Achievement District Schools, didn’t improve academic results after some regular public schools were in effect made charters.

Skeptics, including some Democrats not in love with this Republican-led brainstorm and the N.C. Association of Educators, cite a skimpy track record as one reason why they’re not crazy about turning some low-performing public schools over to charter operators and management companies. Their objections are valid.

The record of improvement after changes isn’t great. And in fact, Eric Hall, hired to be the superintendent of the Innovative School District, acknowledges as much but believes North Carolina can come up with a system that works.

Hall is the one who will recommend to the State Board of Education which schools to put in the district, and at least two will be taken over for the 2018-19 school year. He’ll also have a role in picking management companies.

There is no question that North Carolina has too many low-performing schools and needs to do something about them so that all of the state’s children can get the “sound, basic education” they’re promised by the state constitution. And sure, some experimentation is appropriate. The model applied to charters, wherein those schools are allowed to experiment with curricula and scheduling, for example, might work.

But this type of “school district” was the creation of Republicans. Nothing wrong with that, by the way, except Republican leaders of the General Assembly have failed for years to adequately invest in the public schools to which most North Carolina families send their children.

Perhaps fewer schools would be “low-performing” if fewer GOP leaders were low-performing.

There should be a short window of measuring the success of this particular experiment. It didn’t work as expected in Tennessee, and it seems to be a fairly new concept. The children in those low-performing schools in North Carolina can’t be allowed to be the subjects of an experiment and lose ground in the process.

What lawmakers need to do, and soon, is re-examine their investment (or lack thereof) in public education and come up with appropriations and spending plans to address the shortcomings of public education to which legislators have contributed by shortchanging the schools.

Maybe this experiment will have resounding success. Reasonable people on all sides can agree on that. But much more remains to be done for low-performing, and for that matter, for high-performing schools in a state that long has prided itself on its educational system.

This story was originally published July 11, 2017 at 11:00 AM with the headline "Charter takeover of struggling NC schools is a risky step."