차터스쿨은 학교에 대한 교육행정기관의 각종 규제를 없애는 대신 학교가 교육목표를 설정하고 운영성과는 학교가 책임지는 제도다. 91년 미네소타주에서 학부모 학생에게 ‘학교선택권’을 주기 위해 처음 도입한 이래 36개주와 수도 워싱턴시에 2,063개교가 생겨났고 학생수는 51만여명에 이른다.
학부모, 교사, 지역단체 등이 공동으로 위원회를 구성해 꾸려간다. 대부분 대학 진학을 목표로 삼는 학교들이 많다. 기존의 사립이나 공립학교가 차터스쿨로 바꾸려면 교사와 학교교육위원회의 과반수 이상의 찬성을 얻어야 한다.
교사 학부모들이 학교헌장(Charter)을 만들어 교육위원회와 계약을 맺는다. 계약기간은 3∼5년간이며 목표를 달성하지 못하면 인가가 취소돼 폐교되기도 한다. 교육과정, 재정운영 등은 완전 자율권을 주지만 실적에 대해 엄정한 책임을 묻는 것이다. 전국적으로 3,000개의 차터스쿨을 만들고 예산지원도 확대하겠다는 방침이다. ============
차터 스쿨이란?
'차터 스쿨'은 매사추세츠 애머스트 주립대학 교육학과 레이 버드 교수가 1974년 쓴 < 차터에 의한 교육(Education by Charter) > 이라는 논문에 처음 등장했다.
차터 스쿨은 '공적 자금을 받아 교사·부모·지역단체들이 설립한 학교'를 뜻하는 것으로, 버드 교수는 논문에서 공립학교 교사 중 혁신적인 교육 아이디어가 있는 이들이 뜻을 모아 '차터'를 통해 학교를 운영하는 것이 바람직하다고 주장했다. 버드 교수는 공교육 변화를 위해서는 학교 조직이 바뀌어야 한다고 강조했다. 차터 스쿨 이론을 담은 그의 논문은 시스템과학협회(the Society for General Systems)에 제출되었지만 전혀 주목되지 못했다.
10여 년 뒤 버드 교수는 미국 교사노조협회 앨 섕커 회장이 교사들이 학교를 독립적으로 설립하는 발상을 지지한다며 그 명칭을 버드 교수 자신이 내세웠던 차터 스쿨로 할 것을 주장하는 뉴욕 타임스 기사를 발견한다. 당시 미국은 '위기의 미국(the Nation at Risk)'이라는 보고서가 나온 뒤 비로소 교육 개혁의 필요성이 대두되던 떠들썩한 시기였다.
버드 교수의 원래 제안은 학군 감독에서 일반 교사까지 4단계로 구성된 학군 제도를 2단계로 줄이자는 것이었다. 그러면 교육위원회로부터 차터를 받아 교사들이 직접 학교를 운영할 수 있다는 결론이 나오는 것이다. 앨 섕커 회장은 버드 교수의 이론을 약간 변형하면 기존 학교 운영을 하는 데서 더 나아가 새로운 학교도 만들 수 있다고 주장했다. 이 같은 앨 섕커 회장의 적극적인 추진으로 이후 여러 주에서 차터 스쿨 법안을 통과시키게 된다.
차터 스쿨은 교육에 뜻이 있는 일반 시민이면 누구나 학교 설립을 신청할 수 있다. 설립 희망자들은 먼저 학교 운영위원회를 조직한 뒤 주 정부 소속 초·중·고등부 교육위원회에 차터 신청을 한다. 신청할 때 학교 운영위원회는 일반 차터로 할 것인지 호레이스 맨(Horace Mann) 차터로 할 것인지 결정해야 한다. 일반 차터나 호레이스 맨 차터나 교과과정, 운영 규칙 등 모든 면에서 학군과 독립적이라는 점에서는 같지만, 호레이스 맨 차터는 교사 전원이 교사노조 조합원이어야 한다는 점에서 일반 차터와는 다르다.
따라서 호레이스 맨 차터는 급여나 근로 환경 등에서 '노동조합 조합원 규칙'을 따르게 되며 주 정부 외에도 학군과 교사 노조의 동의도 얻어내야 한다. 학교 운영위원회 임원들이 공립학교 교사로 구성되었을 경우 대부분 호레이스 맨 차터로 신청하는 경향이 있다.
매사추세츠 규정에 따라 한 시점에서 허가를 내줄 수 있는 차터 스쿨은 120여 개, 그중 48개 학교가 호레이스 맨 차터 형식이다. 차터 스쿨의 최초 허가 기간은 5년이며 매사추세츠 종합평가 시험(MC AS) 성과에 따라 차터 갱신 여부가 결정된다.
차터 스쿨은 주 정부의 기본적인 지원금 외에도 연방·주 정부 지원금을 신청할 수 있고 기부금도 받을 수 있다.
차터 스쿨은 학군의 통제에서 자유롭지만 주 교육위원회 규정과 연방정부의 아동낙오방지법(NCLB)은 지켜야 하며, 입학 시험을 통해 학생을 뽑아서는 안 된다.
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Charter Schools
Although they serve only a tiny fraction of the nation’s public school students, charter schools have seized a prominent role in education today. They are at the center of a growing movement to challenge traditional notions of what public education means.
Charter schools are by definition independent public schools. Although funded with taxpayer dollars, they operate free from many of the laws and regulations that govern traditional public schools. In exchange for that freedom, they are bound to the terms of a contract or "charter" that lays out a school’s mission, academic goals, and accountability procedures. State laws set the parameters for charter contracts, which are overseen by a designated charter school authorizer—often the local school district or related agency.
With their relative autonomy, charter schools are seen as a way to provide greater educational choice and innovation within the public school system. Their founders are often teachers, parents, or activists who feel restricted by traditional public schools. In addition, many charters are run by for-profit companies, forming a key component of the privatization movement in education.
The concept of charter schools clearly has strong appeal. Since the first charter school was founded in Minnesota in 1992, charters have fanned out across the country. According to the Center for Education Reform (2004), an organization that advocates for charters, there were nearly 3,000 charter schools in 37 states and the District of Columbia in January 2004, with particularly high concentrations in some big cities. The schools enroll some 685,000 students. Charters serve the full range of grade levels, often in unique combinations or spans. On the whole, they also appear to enroll a diverse body of students. A 2002 survey report by SRI International, a nonprofit research institute, states that, "on average, more than half the students in charter schools were members of ethnic minority groups, 12 percent received special education services, and 6 percent were English language learners" (Anderson et al., 2002).
A chief reason for charter schools’ appeal is that they are typically smaller than their more traditional counterparts, advocates say. According to the Center for Education Reform (2002), the average charter school enrollment is 242, compared with 539 in traditional public schools. Researchers—and no doubt parents—link small schools with higher achievement, more individualized instruction, greater safety, and increased student involvement.
With their relative autonomy, charter schools are seen as a way to provide greater educational choice and innovation within the public school system.
Another attraction is charters’ often specialized and ambitious educational programs. Charters frequently take alternative curricular approaches (e.g., direct instruction or Core Knowledge), emphasize particular fields of study (e.g., the arts or technology), or serve special populations of students (e.g., special education or at-risk students). Recently, with the rise of distance learning, a growing number of "cyber" charter schools have even done away with the concept of an actual bricks-and-mortar school building.
Coupled with aggressive academic goals in charter contracts, such "alternative visions of schooling," according to a 2000 U.S. Department of Education report, are a primary motivating force behind the growth of charter schools.
If charters’ independence is central to their appeal, however, it is also a source of concern. Though charters must spell out performance goals in their contracts, some observers question how well academics and student achievement in charters are monitored. A high-profile report from the American Federation of Teachers (2002), for example, argued that many charter school authorizers have failed to hold charters accountable, leaving some students to languish in low-performing schools.
Likewise, some observers say that charters, by virtue of their autonomy, can be vulnerable to financial problems and mismanagement. Indeed, the fiscal arrangements of charters can be inherently problematic, in part because, in many states, charters’ access to facilities and start-up funds is limited.
Increasingly, such issues are coming to the attention of state leaders. After a series of well-publicized charter closures and compliance problems, some states have begun to re-examine their charter systems with the aim of giving the schools greater oversight. At the same time, many charter supporters remain leery of increased regulation.
Outside of such managerial concerns, some critics have also charged that, on a school-by-school basis, charters are more racially segregated than traditional public schools, thus denying students the educational "benefits of racial and ethnic diversity" (Civil Rights Project, 2003). Charter supporters have responded that some charters have high concentrations of minority students because demand for schooling alternatives is highest among such students, whom they say are often poorly served by the traditional public school systems (Center for Education Reform, 2003).
Other concerns about charter schools mirror those surrounding their private school choice counterpart—school vouchers. Skeptics worry that charters unfairly divert resources and policy attention from regular public schools. Other observers counter that charters improve existing school systems through choice and competition (Ericson and Silverman, 2001).
Meanwhile, the question of whether charters or traditional public schools do a better job of educating students is still open to debate. The research is highly mixed—in part due the complexities of comparison and wide performance differences among charters.
A case in point: One study by Western Michigan University’s Evaluation Center found that charter schools in Michigan posted significantly lower scores—and less-consistent gains—on state standardized tests than their host districts (Miron and Horn, 2000). Yet, in a later evaluation of charters in Pennsylvania, the center found that "student achievement appears to be a source of modest strength" for the schools, with some making steady test-score gains. That study points to best-practices evaluation and stronger accountability as ways to expand charter schools’ gains (Miron et al., 2002).
Taken together, other recent studies paint an equally varied portrait. Studies by the Goldwater Institute and California State University-Los Angeles found that students in charter schools show higher growth in achievement than their counterparts in traditional public schools (Solmon et al., 2004; Slovacek et al., 2001) A major state-commissioned study by the RAND corp. (2003), meanwhile, concluded that charters in California were making solid improvements in student achievement over time and generally keeping pace with other public schools on tests scores after adjustment to reflect students’ demographic backgrounds.
By contrast, however, a 2003 study of charters schools in Ohio found them falling short of traditional public schools on the majority of comparable performance measures, concluding that charter schools "were doing no better than low-performing traditional public schools with similar demographic characteristics" (Legislative Office of Education Oversight). Likewise, a 2002 study of North Carolina charter schools by the North Carolina Center for Public Policy concluded that charters schools were lagging behind traditional public schools in achievement growth and had not proven themselves to be any "better at serving at-risk students."
Still, that report allows that there is significant variation among charters: "Some schools have delivered on the charter school promise, and some clearly have not," the researchers found. Some charter proponents would argue that such individual examples of achievement may in themselves go a long way toward validating the charter experiment, representing successful new models of schooling that states and parents can build on.
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Charter Schools
IN THE LAST five years, a new phenomenon has arisen within communities either frustrated with local education reform. Some reformers felt that site-based management wasn't going far enough - schools would have to break their ties with all other beauracracies in order to make sweeping reform decisions. If a school could be free to develop its own educational charter, perhaps it would be able to find more teaching success.
During the early 1990s, US states began to change laws in order to allow a community to break away from the state's school district systems and form their own charter school. In 1991, Minnesota became the first state to pass legislation authorizing charter schools, followed by California in 1992 and four other states in 1993. In order to form a charter school, a community must develop a charter that explains both management and teaching methods. The charter is then brought to the state department of education for consideration. If the charter is approved, the new charter school will be able operate on their own authority, autonomous from the local school district. Charter schools are considered public schools that are eligible for state and federal funds.
Charter schools are now legal in 37 states, with campaigns to change the laws in the other 13. In 1994, there were 108 charter schools in the US. By the 1998-1999 school year there were 1,205 charter schools in operation, with another 200 expected to open by next fall. New York state, for example, approved its first charters in June 1999 - two schools in New York City and one in Albany, slated to open this fall. Fifty-eight percent are elementary schools, 20% are high schools and 22% serve both. The Center for Education Reform estimates that between 250,000 and 300,000 students are currently enrolled in these charter schools, with an average of 250 charter schools per school. Approximately 10% of charter schools are managed by for-profit entities known as Education Maintenance Organizations (EMOs). The majority of charter schools have smaller enrollment levels when compared to public schools. According to the National Study of Charter Schools, more than 60 percent of charter schools enrolled less than 200 students in 1997-98, compared with 17 percent of all public schools.The median enrollment in all charter schools is 132 students, compared with 486 students in all public schools. In newly created charter schools, the median enrollment is even lower (111 students).
Many public school teachers, however, have expressed concern over the impact of charter schools. The National Education Association, though not completely opposed to charter schools, has voiced its worries over the movement:
Researchers still have no clear answers to questions about the role of charter schools in increasing student achievement. And some state charter laws, particularly those funding home schooling or distance learning, and those funding charters to fly-by-night companies, could harm students and threaten the integrity of public education. Equity issues are also a concern because some charter schools, for instance, either do not serve or they underserve the needs of bilingual students, or students who require special education. And in some states, charter school laws do not build the critical factors of oversight and accountability into the process, which is a recipe for disaster in such a deregulated environment. Finally, funding for charter schools has become controversial, particularly where local school districts lose funding to charter operators even when the need for services in the rest of district schools remains the same, as has happened in some suburban, rural and small urban districts.
At the local level, some unions have raised the rhetoric even further. The Center for Education Reform recently reported that the Ohio Federation of Teachers has threatened to sue Ohio charter schools because they pose as "a leading threat" to public school education.
Because charter schools are such a recent phenomenon, the jury is still out whether they will be a long-term success. Syracuse University has opened a Charter Schools Research Center in the hopes of collecting and disseminating data regarding the successes and failures of charter school programs. The Clinton administration has thrown its support behind the charter school movement and is encouraging the creation of charter school-friendly laws in all 50 states.
I'd like to visit the Charter Schools Research Center.
I'd like to visit the Center for Education Reform.
I'd like to read the NEA's position on charter schools.
Tell me more about Education Maintenance Organizations (EMOs)
