D.C. Charter School Applications Halted

The matter is not nearly as drastic as the headline would indicate. Charter school applications may stil go forward under the auspices of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, but just not the D.C. Board of Education.

But the story does raise one particularly salient issue. Who should be in charge of overseeing public charter schools. The D.C. Board of Education has a point at least as far as the charter schools are concerned, in a system as troubled as the D.C. school system, should the Board of Education be responsible for overseeing charter schools?

There are two reasons why I say no. First, the current Board of Education, indeed most Boards of Education, are generally ill-equipped and staffed to properly oversee traditional public schools and overseeing charter schools, with widely disparate goals and operating procedures, complicates matters for the school board. Second, there is an inherent conflict of interest in having the supervisory body of traditional public schools overseeing alternative schools. The power of the School Board is proportional to the number of students enrolled in those schools. With charters competing for and taking market share from traditional schools, the School Board may not be in a position to impartially oversee charters.

Obviously, there needs to be some oversight of charter schools, after all, charter schools are funded with taxpayer money and the taxpayers have a right to know how that money is being spent.

Although I generally abhor more government in favor of less government, I do believe that there will come a time when there are two bureaucracies responsible for school management. One will oversee traditional public schools and another will oversee alternative schools, charters, private school taking vouchers and the like. Both agencies would report to a body that is responsible for more higher level policy making, a "super school board" that meets a little less frequently and has much less day to day impact on the operation of schools. By the way, the agencies with supervisory authority would actually be much smaller in my hypothetical model. The agencies would be staffed with lots of auditors to oversee spending by principals, but not many other people. I could see a few cirriculum experts, a small legal staff, and HR staff and not much else. The idea is smaller, more efficient supervision, not micromanagement.

At any rate, the traditional school board is really not in a position to effectively manage charter schools, charters simply exist outside of the traditiona bureaucracy for a reason and forcing them into a management structure alien to their very purpose defeats the concept of a charter school being public, but outside the traditional management structure.