Former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has the right idea about charter schools. On Tuesday, he proposed changes to the law he pushed through the legislature in 2003 — over significant reluctance from Democrats — that would help spread the charter school movement throughout the state and increase choices for parents. He proposed eliminating local school districts' veto authority over the establishment of charter schools, allowing charters to receive state school construction and renovation funding and freeing charters from local districts' collective bargaining agreements with teachers unions. The details of these proposals are important, and Mr. Ehrlich didn't provide them, but the reforms are all necessary to improve upon the success of Maryland public K-12 education — and spread that success to parts of the state where schools still fail.
Gov. Martin O'Malley rightly points out that the number of charter schools in Maryland has doubled under his watch, but that doesn't mean they have been widely embraced. Of the 42 charters in operation during the school year that just ended, 33 of them were in Baltimore. There are only three in the Baltimore region outside of the city — one in Baltimore County and two in Anne Arundel — and the most in any other jurisdiction is the four in Prince George's County, a district that, by many measures, now ranks below Baltimore City in educational success. The reason is that Baltimore has a reform-minded school board that has been willing to allow and encourage charter schools, an attitude shared by Superintendent Andres Alonso. But in suburban jurisdictions, the attitude among boards has been to see charters as competition, and good proposals have been rejected in places where they could do real good.
The answer is to provide an alternative path for approval. Mr. Ehrlich suggests giving that power to either the state school board or to some new organization, perhaps comprising representatives from state universities. The former idea is better. The state board and department of education are in a better position to evaluate the quality of a proposal and to see how it would fit in with existing educational opportunities, but unlike many local boards, it would likely be receptive to the idea of charters. By coincidence, the state board recommended reforms similar to Mr. Ehrlich's on the same day.
Capital funding has also been a barrier to the creation of charters. Although charters get operating funds through local school districts, they aren't eligible for the same state aid that traditional schools are for construction or renovation of facilities or for equipment. That's been less of a problem in Baltimore than in other jurisdictions, given the number of empty school buildings in the city, but it has been a real limitation elsewhere.
The big question Mr. Ehrlich's plan doesn't address is where the money for charter capital funding would come from. In response to Mr. Ehrlich's plan, Governor O'Malley's campaign sent out a fact sheet noting that he had invested $1.3 billion in public school construction during the last four years, a 53 percent increase over the Ehrlich years. When Mr. O'Malley faced severe budget troubles, he still placed a high priority on school construction. When Mr. Ehrlich faced budget shortfalls early in his term, he didn't. That's a germane comparison, since Maryland's budget problems are expected to continue, and Mr. Ehrlich has already proposed cutting state sales taxes without saying how he would make up for the lost revenue. Allowing charters to get capital funding does no good if there is no capital funding.
Finally, union rules have proved a significant complication for charters' ability to provide innovative educational programs. Case No. 1 is the KIPP Ujima Academy in Baltimore, one of the most successful middle schools in the state, despite serving a population made up mostly of poor inner city kids. KIPP, part of a national network of charter schools, relies on a long school day, Saturday school and summer school, and it pays its teachers more than other city schools. But not as much more as the city teachers union thinks it should, and the union succeeded last year in forcing KIPP to change its model. The school cut hours and staff as a result. KIPP and the union have a one-year deal that will allow the school to open as normal in the fall, but there are no guarantees after that.
Charters need flexibility to create models that are different from the standard union contract. Maryland shouldn't adopt an anything-goes standard, and some oversight will still be needed, and those are key details Mr. Ehrlich did not provide. But his idea is right.
Governor O'Malley touts Maryland's many educational successes — top rankings from Education Week and Newsweek and in the number of students taking Advanced Placement tests — but he has been reluctant to embrace the reforms that will be necessary for us to expand on that success and to eliminate disparities in educational quality. It took him months to accept that any changes were necessary to shore up Maryland's application for the federal Race to the Top competition.
That said, he did eventually endorse reforms to the teacher tenure process and the linking of student test scores to teacher evaluations. Mr. Ehrlich has been stronger so far on the issue of charter schools, but Mr. O'Malley has demonstrated that he can actually get education reforms the teachers unions don't like through the legislature. Rather than bristling at Mr. Ehrlich's effort to steer the governor's race toward a discussion of what the candidates would actually do if elected, the governor should take the chance to unveil a comprehensive education reform agenda of his own.