Charting A New Course? | How the push for more charter schools fits with STEM education
A few years ago teachers at the North Central Charter Essential School in Fitchburg began a transportation engineering lesson that was a big hit with students.
The next year, school officials expanded the program to be an elective for 11th-grade students and this year, the school made the program a full-year course for ninth graders.
According to Carey Doucette, co-chair of the math and science department at the school, the fact that NCCES is a charter school allowed that transformation to happen.
“I think that we’re incredibly lucky that we have the flexibility to adapt our teaching in innovative ways,” she said.
The basic premise of charter schools is that they are public schools that are run separate from local municipal school committees and are instead governed by independent boards of directors. They also operate free from collective bargaining agreements with unions.
But whether or not charter schools are the solution to maintaining competitiveness in an increasingly global society is up for debate.
Charter schools were first started in 1995 in Massachusetts and have since grown to more than 56 in number. And the appetite for them seems strong. There are 25 new proposals before the state for next year.
While charter schools have traditionally been viewed as an alternative school settings in urban under-performing school districts, that is starting to change, according to Marc Kenen, executive director of the Massachusetts Public Charter School Association.
However, there is a limit to how much charter school growth there can be. The state has a cap on how much money school districts can allocate to charter schools. Originally a school district could not have any more than 9 percent of its budget go toward charter schools. The cap has increased to 12 percent and it will continue to increase 1 percent each year until it reaches 18 percent. That, Kenen said, will allow even more charter schools to open around the state in the coming years.
And he said there is demand for charter schools. There are about 30,000 students enrolled in charter schools around the state, but there’s also a waiting list about 28,000 strong for students to get into charter schools.
“We could double the size of charter schools overnight and just be meeting the demand,” he said.
Another limiting factor: space.
The state does not allow charter schools to apply for and receive state school building authority funding to build and renovate school facilities. Finding space to house charter schools is challenging, Kenen said.
“Charters can play a lot of important roles in society, from helping out in urban districts to creating these niche schools, and we hope to be a part of all of that,” he said.
Curriculum Choices
Charter school officials in the region say they are excited about the state’s newest initiative: encouraging STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education.
“Charter schools have a huge role in encouraging STEM education,” said Barbara McGann, executive director of the Advanced Math and Science Academy, a 966-student sixth through 12th grade public school. “Because of their flexibility, charter schools are poised to launch these successful programs and produce some of the strongest STEM students in the state.”
The autonomy of charter schools is one of the reasons state and federal education officials, and even businesses, are pushing for more of them.
Charter schools act as laboratories to find best practices in education and then are able to expand upon what works best, according to Julia Sigalovsky, executive director of the state’s newest charter school, the Spirit of Knowledge Charter School in Worcester.
Last month Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray held the annual STEM Summit in Sturbridge where he laid out a plan of how to encourage STEM education in the coming years across all schools, charter, public and private.
Murray set out a five-goal process for STEM education in Massachusetts. It includes increasing student interest in STEM fields; increasing achievement in STEM-related standardized testing; increasing the percent of students who are ready for collegiate-level STEM curriculum; increasing the number of STEM degrees offered at colleges and universities; and increasing the number of classes taught by certified STEM educators.
State Secretary of Education Paul Reville said increasing the number of charter schools and expanding STEM curriculum are two separate but equally important initiatives in the state.
Charter schools, for example, only educate about 3 percent of Massachusetts students, whereas the goal by state officials is to increase 100 percent of the students’ interest and achievement in STEM fields.
Lance Hartford, director of the MassBio Education Foundation, agreed. He runs the education division of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Collaborative, which gives grants to school districts to help train teachers in STEM fields and provides money for STEM teaching supplies.
The program is funded by contributions from biotech companies in the state. He said it doesn’t really matter what type of school students are in, it just matters that they are getting excited and excelling in STEM-related academics and careers.
“We see a lot of schools focusing on STEM, which I think is great,” Hartford said. “If there is an opportunity to increase STEM curriculum, whether it’s in charter schools or in traditional schools, we’re in favor of that. We really feel that, at least in Massachusetts, that’s where we need to be educating our students.”
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