The Boston Herald Editorial - Charter school halt is bad choice

May 5, 2004 Wednesday
ALL EDITIONS

HEADLINE: OP-ED;
Charter school halt is bad choice

BYLINE: By Mitt Romney

BODY:

While students and parents across the country mark National Charter School week, there is a cloud over the commemoration here in Massachusetts. Last week, the state House of Representatives voted to place a moratorium on the approval of new charters.

Unfortunately, the move would also delay until at least September 2005 three school openings scheduled for this fall. If it becomes law, the moratorium would deny meaningful educational choice to the 376 children already enrolled or wait-listed at charter schools in North Adams, Salem and Lynn.

The KIPP Academy Lynn Charter Public School is perhaps the best example of what is at stake. KIPP, which stands for Knowledge is Power Program, operates 31 middle schools in 13 states and the District of Columbia, and has an unparalleled record of success in urban education.

KIPP New York Academy opened in 1995 in a Bronx neighborhood where less than 10 percent of all students went to college and two-thirds didn't graduate from high school. Two-thirds of KIPP's entering fifth-graders were below grade level in reading, writing and math; the average lag was two full years. Ninety-five percent qualified for free or reduced lunches.

Graduates of that middle school now earn an average of $50,000 in private high school scholarships over four years. Today, 90 percent of the students who entered in 1995 are attending four-year colleges.

KIPP's success is not the only reason to add to the 50 charter schools now operating in Massachusetts. Last year's MCAS results are instructive. Roxbury Preparatory Charter School had the highest percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced on the eighth-grade science exam of any predominantly African-American school in the state and the highest percentage of any public school in Boston; higher even than Boston Latin, a prestigious exam school.

On average, a greater percentage of students in public charter schools scored either proficient or advanced in every subject at every grade level when compared to their district school peers.

Critics claim the funding formula is unfair and that charter schools take too much money from district schools. When a student attends a charter school, the school district's average per-pupil funding is transferred from the district to the charter school. The state then partially reimburses school districts.

A 1998 KPMG Peat Marwick study commissioned by the Legislature found just one major inequity in the formula: It fails to provide capital money for charter schools, meaning they must stretch the same dollar districts use for operating costs to cover facility financing as well.

Still, my administration is willing to make adjustments to ensure fairness for all public schools, charter and district. But this examination should not prevent the opening of schools that have already enrolled students for the fall, and that's why I would veto the moratorium legislation.

Massachusetts charter schools have built an impressive record. Part of the reason for that success is accountability. When an earlier school in Lynn failed to achieve results, it was closed.

Like most success stories, this one is no accident. Just last year a national education reform organization graded charter-school approval, oversight and accountability procedures in 23 states and the District of Columbia. I'm proud to report that Massachusetts earned the highest rating.

For nine years, charter schools have provided poor and working-class families across the state with real public school choice. We should not retreat fom the progress we have made and return to a time when educational opportunity was the exclusive province of the affluent.

Mitt Romney is governor of Massachusetts.

Copyright 2004 Boston Herald Inc.