Charter Schools: Gain and Pain

Charter schools--public schools that operate with greater autonomy under individual “charters,” free of many state and district rules--are an important education experiment allowed under a 1992 state law. Offering the freedom to tailor a school environment to the needs of the students, charters have spawned great success stories. Witness Vaughn Street school in the San Fernando Valley, which boasted a surplus of more than $1 million after just one year of operation, and Westwood in West Los Angeles, where parents recently camped out in the wee hours in order to sign their kids up for the 1995-96 school year.

But experiments, by definition, are test cases, and there can be no chance for unbridled success without the risk of failure. And that brings us to Edutrain, the first charter school in the Los Angeles Unified School District at risk to be shut down. The school administrator--no longer in charge--demonstrated flagrant judgment, driving an expensive, school-leased car and spending lavishly for graduation ceremonies and staff retreats. There’s now a debt of about $500,000.

The LAUSD board will meet today to discuss Edutrain’s future. This comes on the heels of a major embarrassment: Fraud indictments were handed down Friday against operators of another school dropout program that allegedly bilked more than $700,000 from the district. Those indictments--and the looming fear that a more conservative state Legislature will reconsider breaking up the LAUSD--heighten the political pressure on the board to demonstrate that it doesn’t take mismanagement lightly. But in their zeal to show they’re tough administrators, board members must not forget the most important element here, the students.

Edutrain was established in 1993 to serve the needs of some of the district’s most troubled dropout students. Fifteen percent of Edutrain students are on parole and at least 85% have arrest records. The district’s other nine charter schools attract highly motivated students, typically with parents deeply involved in their children’s lives at home and at school. Those watchful parents provide much of the steam that drives the success at charter schools. That steam wasn’t there for Edutrain kids. Another missing element was proper oversight from the prestigious but lax governing board of the school. And the LAUSD, which must approve charter schools before they can begin operation, was slow to help address earlier complaints about school mismanagement. There’s plenty of blame to go around for Edutrain’s serious problems.

The school board should now hold Edutrain strictly accountable, by imposing a hard and short deadline for improvement, a time in which proper record-keeping, administration and student accomplishment must be clearly, publicly demonstrated. It’s the kids who deserve a second chance.