April marks 10 years since Mississippi set up its charter school program, designed to give students in low-rated public school districts the option of attending a different school.
Charter advocates are understandably disappointed at the progress so far. The state’s Charter School Authorizer Board has approved only eight schools over a decade’s time. Six of them got graded last year by the state Department of Education, but the results were unimpressive: one charter school got a B, two got Cs and three got Ds.
A story on the Magnolia Tribune website recently explored why charter schools have been so slow to open in Mississippi. It’s pretty elementary stuff:
• State law says charter schools only can open in public school districts that have a D or F grade from the state. In 2022, many low-rated schools received a covid-based bump-up in grades that got them to a C, meaning a charter school could not locate there. The question is whether this improved performance continues.
• It’s hard to start a school from scratch, even with just one or two classrooms, and then adding more students each year. It takes leaders with vision, determination and organizational skills. They also must convince state, federal and private donors that they’re in it for the long term and serious about making a difference. The worst thing the state could do is let poorly prepared or underfunded operators open a charter school. That would be a setup for failure.
• The story didn’t say this directly, but a lot of the low-rated school districts are in low-population counties. In many cases, the people from those places who might be moved to organize a charter school have left for larger communities. That’s why half of Mississippi’s existing charter schools are in Jackson.
Charter school supporters tend to blame the state authorizer board for moving so deliberately. There’s no doubt everyone thought the state would have green-lit more charter schools by now, but the authorizer board deserves more credit than it’s getting.
The board is wise to be selective. The closure or two or three charter schools would be incredibly damaging. That is a trap to avoid.
The Tribune story said the executive director of Mississippi First, an organization that supports charter schools, believes people in the sector need to figure out what kind of game the authorizer board is playing, and adjust strategy accordingly.
This is not legitimate criticism. Republican political leaders have appointed most or all of the charter school authorizer board members over the past decade. Does anyone seriously think people named to that board are trying to sink charter schools?
The good news for charter school advocates is that two more schools, in Natchez and Canton, are expected to open this fall. So the lesson from the past decade is that while building a successful business takes time, building charter schools in small-town Mississippi takes longer.
