Baltimore Sun Reacts to Charter School Ruling

Normally, the Baltimore Sun is not a group of people I would agree with, but while they don't like the ruling by the Court of Appeals on charter school funding, they do make some good suggestions for future activity:

a more practical solution might be for Baltimore's school board members and new schools CEO Andres Alonso to sit down with members of the state board and try to convince them that a recent funding formula offered to charter schools by the city school system is satisfactory even under the court's ruling.

This is a common sense approach.

The Court of Appeals opinion does not enshrine the State Board of Education's funding model, only the supremacy of the State Board's rulings over local school district wishes. If a local school district can make a good case for a different model, and the charters are willing to accept it, I don't think the State Board of Education should be so inflexible as to outright reject the new funding model.

The Sun digresses badly at the end of the editorial though:

That's why the latest ruling begs for some clarification by the General Assembly, which has not gotten far with proposals that offered more-realistic calculations for charters. After all, the money for charter schools is likely to come out of money allocated for traditional schools. Pitting charter schools, which should be prized for their independence and different approaches to learning, against traditional schools is not the way to help students.

The last sentence is dead on accurate, the competition does not help anyone. But the solution to this funding issue is not for the General Assembly to come up with a one-size-fits-all funding scheme for all Maryland Charter Schools. Just because chaters are entitled to equal funding does not mean they will need or want equal funding.

Flexibility in funding will have to be the key. The Court of Appeals ruling said that services are not necessarily precluded, but are also that charters are not required to accept services in lieu of straight funding. The only body with the necessary flexibility in approaches to this question is the State Board of Education. If the Court of Appeals ruling says nothing else, it does place a great deal of faith in the SBE's judgment. Let's allow the SBE the flexibility to address the issue-either through a series of declaratory rulings or a promulgated rulemaking. Inflexible legislative solutions will do more harm than good.