In haste, charter school bill slips
Senate amendment inadvertently cuts district eligibility
As the state Senate rushed last month to pass a bill that would expand the number of charter schools in certain districts, it added an amendment that would probably prevent them from opening in Boston, Lawrence, and several other cities where the quality of education has long been a concern.
The amendment, added in the final hours of debate without any analysis of its impact, creates a second set of criteria to determine which school districts would be eligible for new charter schools. Instead of basing eligibility purely on low MCAS scores, as originally proposed, the amendment would also require the district to show that it is among those slowest to improve their scores.
The effect of the amendment is to dramatically shrink the number of districts eligible for new charter schools, from the projected 33 districts to about four, according to an analysis by the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association.
No charter school bill has been enacted; the House has yet to take up the measure.
The amendment undermines the spirit of the legislation, said Paul Reville, the state’s secretary of education. Reville’s office is conducting its own evaluation of the amendment, but he said that the charter school association’s calculations appear to be on target.
“It’s problematic,’’ Reville said.
The amendment, proposed by state Senator Sonia Chang-Díaz and approved on a voice vote, was one of 95 that the Senate plowed through during two days in order to pass the bill on Nov. 17, the day before the legislative session ended. The hope was that the House would pass the bill as well, but Speaker Robert A. DeLeo refused to push ahead, arguing there was not enough time for his members to evaluate all the changes.
Since then, Governor Deval Patrick has criticized DeLeo for not extending the session to vote on the bill. Patrick has been strongly pushing for more charter schools, which could help the state secure hundreds of million dollars in additional federal stimulus aid. The deadline for the state to apply is mid-January, soon after the new legislative session opens.
Debate on expanding the number of charter schools, public schools that operate independently of local districts, has divided the Legislature, primarily over the way the state funds the schools. Charter schools, which are designed to foster innovative teaching, receive thousands of dollars in state aid, funds taken away from local school districts for each student who chooses to attend. Allowing more students to attend charter schools could create a backlash of anger for some legislators in financially strapped districts.
Initial debate on the Senate bill broke down early in the session on Nov. 16, as senators wary of creating more charter schools persuaded colleagues to change state law to allow local districts to approve charter schools, a move the Senate eventually pulled back.
Chang-Díaz, a Boston Democrat, said she decided to introduce the amendment on the improvement rates in order to recognize the hard work that might be taking place in some districts with low test scores, work that she said would otherwise be masked by a strict reliance on test score rankings.
She stressed that it was not her intent to block new charter schools from opening in Boston or other districts initially identified for more such schools and that the final language might need to be tweaked so the pool of eligible districts is not diminished.
“I’m perfectly open to changing it,’’ said Chang-Diaz, a former Lynn school teacher who did her student teaching in Boston public schools. Boston loses nearly $50 million a year in charter school tuition, an amount that could have doubled under the original bill.
Both Reville’s office and the Charter School Association have interpreted the amended provisions, which are somewhat ambiguous, to mean that a district would have to be in the bottom 10 percent on two lists, one based on test scores, the other based on improvement rates.
But Chang-Díaz said it was her intent to have a matrix developed that would blend both measurements to create a single eligibility list based on both factors. The bottom 10 percent on that combined list would be targeted for charter expansion.
Reville said he supports developing a common matrix, but not one that would give improvement rates as much weight as test scores.
Yesterday, the charter school association discussed its concerns about the amendment, as well as other provisions of the bill with leaders of the House, which is to vote on the bill next month.
“I’m grateful the House did not try to pass this bill without careful examination because there are issues that obviously still need to be resolved,’’ said Marc Kenen, the association’s executive director.
