In Missouri, Charter Schools overwhelmingly serve African-American students. According to DESE, the 72 charter schools in Kansas City and Saint Louis enrolled over 21,000 students in 2016, two-thirds of whom were African-American.

How well did these schools perform? Take a look below at the 2015 Annual Performance Report scores for charter schools compared to traditional public schools (for context, 70 percent is required for full accreditation):

Sources: DESE St. Louis Academic Performance Data, DESE Kansas City Academic Performance Data

On average, charter schools in Kansas City tend to be higher-performing options than the traditional public school district. In Saint Louis, the results are more varied, but there are several charter options that perform as well as any school in the state.

The following tables show demographic characteristics of students in the top 5 schools in Saint Louis and Kansas City.

As you can see, several of the top-performing charter schools in the state (Northside Community School, Saint Louis Language Immersion, and Grand Center Arts Academy in Saint Louis and University Academy and the Ewing Marion Kauffman School in Kansas City) serve student populations that are more than 50% African-American. Does the NAACP really want to deny students the opportunity to attend schools like these?

Of course, charter schools should be monitored closely for their performance and closed if they are failing. Such was the case of Better Learning Community Academy, which had an APR score of 28%; it is now closed.

If new and better charter schools are not allowed to take its place, however, then parents are left with fewer quality alternatives to their neighborhood public schools. Instead of taking away future opportunities, isn’t it better to enhance the education of students, regardless of race, to give parents more choices and more control over their children’s education? The evidence would say so.

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It is vitally important that our community know the facts of the case, because there’s more here than meets the eye.

Beginning at the beginning

Courts first heard the issue of school segregation in St. Louis in 1972. That year, Minnie Liddell, a parent in the Saint Louis Public Schools, and a group of 4 other parents filed a complaint in U.S. District Court arguing that the policies of the school district and the State of Missouri were promoting segregation in Saint Louis. The case was complicated and difficult, because segregation in the region involved much more than just school policy. Housing policy, history, and the free choices of individuals all contributed to the problem.

In 1983, after several iterations of the original lawsuit (you can see the whole timeline here), and under the gun of a court-mandated consolidation of the city and county school districts, the St. Louis Public Schools entered into a voluntary transfer program with the 23 districts in St. Louis County. At the same time, investments were made to create magnet schools, offer kindergarten, and make other improvements within St. Louis. The hope was that the magnets would bring white students in from the county, and black students who attended overwhelmingly black schools would be free to go to schools in the county.

While the program satisfied the demands of the courts, the crux of the plan was its cost.  Because the courts found the state at fault for the segregated conditions of schools, the state initially had to pay the lion’s share of the program. By the mid to late-1990s, the state argued that it had done what was asked of it and should therefore be released from its obligation to pay for the desegregation efforts.  The compromise that resulted is central to today’s lawsuit.

In 1999, voters in St. Louis City agreed to a dedicated two-thirds-cent sales tax to fund the desegregation program. The voluntary transfer program became a standalone entity, financed by this new tax, and still exists today. According to its website, this year about 4,500 students will transfer out of the city and into the county and 140 students will transfer from the county into city schools (charter and district). The rest of the money went to provide quality options within the city, both to attract white students and to provide minority students who remained as good an education as possible.

Starting in 2006, when charter schools became their own local education agencies, a portion of those funds started being sent to them directly (previously, the money had to funnel through the district). And therein lies the rub. The district thinks that only it should receive the money. The state says charters, which operate within the boundaries of the district as open-enrollment public schools, should get it as well. As the Post-Dispatch reports, the St. Louis Public Schools want the $42 million charters have received returned to them, and want the $8.8 million that is supposed to go to charter schools this school year to be remitted to the school district as well.

Should charter schools receive desegregation funds?

The purpose of the various desegregation lawsuits in St. Louis is clear. First, they were intended to provide an opportunity for black students to get out of the segregated schools in St. Louis City. Second, they wanted to promote schools that would attract white students from the suburbs to help integrate the schools. Finally, they worked to create quality school options for all students, regardless of race, in St. Louis.

With respect to interdistrict transfers, charters have little bearing on the first goal of these lawsuits. Most charter schools participate in the Voluntary Interdistrict Choice Corporation (VICC), but because such a small number of county students want to go into the city, they play a small role in it. Charter schools do not adversely affect the students who want to leave.

Charter Schools do affect the second goal. As my colleague James Shuls pointed out last week, charter schools attract white students to the school district. In fact, they have been singularly responsible for increasing white enrollment, helping integrate the schools.

Charter schools affect the third goal as well, by providing quality education options for students within St. Louis. According to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, City Garden Montessori, Northside Community School, and the St. Louis Language Immersion schools all earned at least 90% of the possible points in the state’s Annual Performance Rating. That places them in the top echelon of schools in the state and well exceeds the citywide average 76.1%. The three St. Louis Language Immersion Schools provide instruction in French, Spanish, and Chinese. These are the very types of diverse, quality options the desegregation money was levied to provide.

Now, I imagine there are numerous legal technicalities buried in the various motions related to this case, but the plain Jane, average-citizen understanding of the issues couldn’t be clearer. Charter schools help the city’s desegregation efforts. If those dollars are being levied to aid in desegregation, charter schools should have access to them.

What’s up with the timing? Didn’t charter folks just come out for the District’s property tax increase?

Why, yes. Yes they did. And that is what makes this very interesting.

If there is some kind of violation here, it has been happening since 2006. According to the Post-Dispatch article, concerns were first raised in 2008. Why is the lawsuit being filed now?

Well, on April 5 (a Tuesday) the district won its first property tax levy in 25 years. Charter school supporters backed the increase, as they are slated to get about a third of the money that it raises (because charters educate about a third of St. Louis’ public school students). The following Monday, April 11, the District filed the lawsuit. Was it just happenstance that the lawsuit wasn’t filed until after the property tax levy vote?

What will the impact of this lawsuit be?

This is the $42 million question. On one level, the increased revenue from the property tax vote is slated to provide about the same amount of money to charter schools on an annual basis that they would lose should they lose the lawsuit. If they lose, the best case scenario for charter schools would be for the state to pay the $42 million.  While the district would be able to have its cake and eat it too (with both a property tax increase and a huge windfall of desegregation money) the charter schools would be in about the same financial position as they are today.  That position is tenuous, however, as charter schools are funded at a level significantly below that of traditional public schools.

There is also a second, much more troubling scenario. Under the wording of the lawsuit, the plaintiffs are asking the state for the money that was allegedly improperly paid to charter schools. According to the Missouri Charter Public School Alliance, though, the State of Missouri could require schools to pay back the money the state gave them. I am not one for hyperbole, but this could very well end charter schooling in St. Louis. None of the schools has the money to pay back 10 years’ worth of desegregation payments.

Either way, losing this funding stream would harm charter schools and limit the kinds of programming they would be able to offer to students in Saint Louis.

Summing it all up

This lawsuit would hurt charter schools in Saint Louis, many of which are getting great results and providing a high-quality education for city children of all races. The average citizen may see the Saint Louis Public Schools attempting to claim money they believe they are entitled to, but to a more cynical observer this might look like an attempt to stifle competition at the expense of students. Providing a quality education in Saint Louis is the expressed purpose of the two-thirds-cent sales tax, and so long as charter schools are playing their part, they should have the city’s support. This suit is misguided, and my only hope is that when it is heard, the judge dismisses it on the spot.

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“Funds raised from our Fourth Annual Soiree will fund the gap between public dollars and the true cost of educating every SLLIS student,” reads the invitation for an upcoming fundraiser for the St. Louis Language Immersions Schools.

Because SLLIS is a charter school, it does not receive the same amount of public dollars as a traditional public school. In 2011, on average, Missouri charter schools received $3,800 less than traditional public schools.

“Missouri’s charter public schools are living up to their end of the bargain and demonstrating the ability to provide a high quality education. It’s time to move past ‘stepchild’ funding and ensure every public school in Missouri receives equitable funding,” Missouri Public Charter Schools Association Executive Director Doug Thaman wrote in the Missouri Times.

While some argue that charters are able to fill the gap in funding through fundraising, a recent report found that charitable donations do not eliminate the funding gap between charters and traditional public schools.

Buckets of Water into the Ocean: Non-Public Revenue in Public Charter and Traditional Public Schools found that revenue from nonpublic sources (non-public food service, investment revenue, philanthropic fundraising, etc.) totaled almost 6.4 billion for traditional public schools and nearly 400 million for charter schools in the 15 states included in the study.

Interestingly, the authors found that traditional public schools receive most of their non-public revenues from selling meals to their students and investment profits. Charter schools receive most of their non-public revenue through philanthropy. Still, charitable donations do not make up the difference—adding as little as $74 (New Jersey) and as high as $1320 (Hawaii) to total per pupil revenue.

The findings of this report may change the conversation in Missouri as revisions to the way schools are funded are considered. One of the authors of the study, Arkansas Professor Patrick Wolf said:

If students in public charter schools are to receive funding on a par with students in traditional, district-run, public schools, it will have to come from more equitable public school funding laws.  Saying that charitable donations can make up the funding gap between district-run and charter schools is like saying that throwing buckets of water into the ocean will change the tide.

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Well, the school’s leaders have submitted a new proposal — and this time they’ve done away with the Hebrew-language specialty. Hebrew would still be an option at the school, but students would be free to concentrate on Spanish or Arabic instead.

It would be very detrimental to language-immersion charters if this board’s policy became the norm, and no charter could specialize in a single language or culture. For example, the St. Louis Language Immersion Schools teach French and Spanish — in two separate schools. This allows them to reinforce students’ exposure to the target language. Students hear the target language in class, but they also hear it on the playground and in the school office. If each school had to offer both languages, French students would end up hearing some Spanish, and vice versa.

If applied more broadly, this policy could make it difficult for charters to specialize, because as soon as a charter developed a program to focus on one subject, it would have to start over and create parallel programs for whichever students weren’t interested in that first course of study.

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“By requiring the students study Hebrew, I think you’re effectively limiting (who would apply),” said Dennis King, a former Hart school board member of 20 years. “So it’s sort of an ethnic school. It’s a school that appeals to a particular culture. . . . I suspect 95% of the kids will be Jewish.”

I hope this way of thinking doesn’t become prevalent in Missouri, because I’m happy about the growth of language-immersion charters here and I’m afraid the argument could be used against them as well. The St. Louis Language Immersion Schools have suggested the possibility of opening new schools in the future. Would they be barred from opening a Japanese school because many students would be Buddhists, or an Arabic school because many Muslims would apply?

As long as the school does not promote religion, there’s nothing wrong with teaching a language that’s associated with a religious group. Public schools do it all the time; Ladue teaches Hebrew, and Bunche teaches Arabic. If public schools can teach these languages for an hour or two a day, charters should be able to focus on the same languages and teach them in more depth.

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Several people have responded to my writing about charter schools and languages by pointing out the existence of language programs in traditional public schools. In some cases, these programs are indeed comparable to charter schools, like SLLIS. I believe SLLIS has visited some immersion classes within traditional districts.

However, most of the traditional public schools’ language programs are not as innovative as SLLIS and other charters. Often, schools recognize the value of immersion, but students are only immersed in the language for one class period each day — not enough time to gain fluency. Many international magnet schools, such as Bunche International Studies of SLPS, conduct the majority of the school day in English. Students are able to choose from several languages, and the school incorporates different cultures into activities and special events, but a science or math class there looks the same as in a traditional public school.

Charter schools have the flexibility to center the entire school day around a foreign language. They also have the parental support for long hours of immersion. These aspects of the charter model let them adopt immersion programs more completely than traditional districts — and with greater success.

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I expect to see more innovation like this from charter schools as that sector of the education market continues to grow.

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The number of certified Title III ELL teachers to serve these students is dismal – 372 students per teacher in Missouri and 19 students per teacher nationwide. The report says there are no teacher standards for ELL instruction in Missouri while 33 other states do have such standards.

Is there cause for concern here? Yes and no. The lack of official standards and certification doesn’t worry me. After all, many recent college graduates are successfully teaching English all over the world through programs like Fulbright. They do get some training beforehand, but nothing like what’s required for an education degree or ELL certification in the U.S. Teaching English in this country should be less challenging, because students here are simultaneously exposed to new English-speaking peers and hear English during the entire school day. Teachers shouldn’t need special credentials to teach English in this setting.

However, Missouri should strive to do better in this area, because only about 55 percent of Missouri English language learners are  showing improvement on the MAP tests. (That’s not bad when compared to other states, but clearly far from ideal.)

I’m looking forward to seeing how well language-immersion charter schools are able to teach English language learners. For example, a native Spanish speaker starting kindergarten at the St. Louis Language Immersion Schools would have an advantage in the early grades, and then would be formally introduced to English in late elementary school. Perhaps the strong foundation in the student’s native language would ease the gradual transition into English.

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