Missouri charter schools aren't 'failing'

Since the confirmation hearing for U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, charter schools have been under increased scrutiny.

In Missouri, charter schools have only been built in Kansas City and St. Louis, but a bill now before the legislature may make it easier for the schools to pop up in other towns.

On March 17, the Missouri House of Representatives narrowly passed and sent House Bill 634 to the Senate to allow for the expansion of charter schools. One legislator who didn’t vote in favor for House Bill 634 was Rep. Nate Walker.

The Republican from Kirksville told MissouriNet that Speaker Todd Richardson, R-Poplar Bluff, tried to persuade him to change his mind, but Walker wouldn’t budge. One reason, Walker said, was because "(charter schools in Missouri) are actually failing in greater capacity than public school systems."

But are they? Walker didn’t provide a definition for what he meant by failing, and the Missouri education department doesn’t have a specific definition, either. However, after looking at the education department's performance reviews, the data shows that charter schools are performing about the same as nearby public schools.

Definitions of failing

When PolitiFact called Walker and asked him where he got his data, he said he got it from a "lot of different things," and began providing some numbers.

"Sixty-four percent of Missouri Charter Schools have failed or are failing," he said, without citing the source of these statistics. "Since 1999, we’ve had 59 charter schools open in the state. Thirty-eight of the 59 charter schools have failed or are failing students."

However, according to the data from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, for the 2016-17 year there were 72 individual charter schools within 39 charter school districts. And since 1999, the year after charter school law was enacted, there have been 63 charter school districts, and 21 — or 33 percent — have closed.

When we asked Walker in a phone interview what his definition was for "failing," this was his response:

"Well, they’re not meeting the standards of the (education department). You go check the facts, I’m not a reporter. You’ve got a degree in journalism and understand factual information, but I stand by my comments, and all you need to do is go do your research and find I’m absolutely right. Probably more than right."

We went to the education department to learn more. Sarah Potter, the communications coordinator for the department, wrote in an email, "There are no parameters in state statute for a ‘failing’ charter school."

However, the department does issue an Annual Performance Review score for both charter and traditional public schools to determine how well they’re educating the students. Charter schools are independent public schools freed from certain regulations. They are also subject to other rules defined by their contracts with their sponsors, such as universities, who then hold charter schools accountable for their results instead of the state.

This performance review takes into account standardized test scores, attendance rates and graduation rates along with financial status and leadership stability.

There are four levels of accreditation. "Accredited with Distinction" and "Accredited" signify that the school or district is meeting performance standards. Schools or districts must earn a 70 percent or higher on their performance review to earn those classifications. "Provisionally Accredited" and "Unaccredited" indicate that the school or district isn’t meeting performance standards and earned a performance review score below 70 percent and below 50 percent, respectively.

In fact, in our phone interview with Walker, he did mention accreditation, saying: "Of the 38 charter schools (districts) currently open for business, 11 have been deemed Provisionally Accredited, six would have been deemed Unaccredited and four were too new to receive a score. Right now 46 percent of the active charter schools would be classified as Accredited."

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These numbers are correct — though there were 39 districts and not 38 as Walker said — according to the latest data available at the state education department’s website.

For comparison, 99 percent of traditional public school districts earned Accredited or above while only 46 percent of charter school districts earned that status. It’s not looking so good for Missouri charter schools.

Charter schools vs. traditional public schools

Not so fast, said Doug Thaman, the executive director of the Missouri Charter Public School Association.

"One of the concerns we have is that when statements are made like (the one) Walker made, that’s a comparison of charter schools to an entire school district, and that is just not a true comparison," he said. "You can’t compare a single school to an entire district or to the entire state."

What Thaman means is that performance scores are assigned to both individual schools and the districts in which several schools reside, and the scores are often different. He also pointed out that charter schools, which have to accept any student who applies, often educate lower-performing students whose needs haven't been met by traditional public schools, so charter schools score poorly on the performance review because they're helping students who score below grade level catch up.    

Thaman suggested it would be better to compare the performance score of individual charter schools to individual competitor public schools within the same district. So we did.