[lg policy] New Jersey: Charter School Battle Shifts to Affluent Suburbs; Mandarin Immersion is an issue

[Harold Schiffman]

Charter School Battle Shifts to Affluent Suburbs

By WINNIE HU


MILLBURN, N.J. — Matthew Stewart believes there is a place for charter
schools. Just not in his schoolyard.

Mr. Stewart, a stay-at-home father of three boys, moved to this
wealthy township, about 20 miles from Midtown Manhattan, three years
ago, filling his life with class activities and soccer practices. But
in recent months, he has traded play dates for protests, enlisting
more than 200 families in a campaign to block two Mandarin-immersion
charter schools from opening in the area.

The group, Millburn Parents Against Charter Schools, argues that the
schools would siphon money from its children’s education for
unnecessarily specialized programs. The schools, to be based in nearby
Maplewood and Livingston, would draw students and resources from
Millburn and other area districts. “I’m in favor of a quality
education for everyone,” Mr. Stewart said. “In suburban areas like
Millburn, there’s no evidence whatsoever that the local school
district is not doing its job. So what’s the rationale for a charter
school?”

Suburbs like Millburn, renowned for educational excellence, have
become hotbeds in the nation’s charter school battles, raising
fundamental questions about the goals of a movement that began 20
years ago in Minnesota. Charter schools, which are publicly financed
but independently operated, have mostly been promoted as a way to give
poor children an alternative to underperforming urban schools — to
provide options akin to what those who can afford them have in the
suburbs or in private schools.

Now, educators and entrepreneurs are trying to bring the same
principles of choice to places where schools generally succeed,
typically by creating programs, called “boutique charters” by
detractors like Mr. Stewart, with intensive instruction in a
particular area. In Montgomery County, Md., north of Washington, the
school board is moving toward its first charter, a Montessori
elementary school, after initially rejecting it and two others with
global and environmental themes because, as one official said, “we
have a very high bar in terms of performance.”

Imagine Schools, a large charter school operator, has held meetings in
Loudoun County, Va., west of Washington, to gauge parental interest in
charters marketed partly as an alternative to overcrowded schools.
In Illinois, where 103 of the current 116 charter schools are in
Chicago, an Evanston school board committee is considering opening the
district’s first charter school.

More than half of Americans live in suburbs, and about 1 in 5 of the
4,951 existing charter schools were located there in 2010, federal
statistics show. Advocates say many proposed suburban charters have
struggled because of a double standard that suggests charters are fine
for poor urban areas, but are not needed in well-off neighborhoods.

“I think it has to do with comfort level and assumptions based on real
estate and not reality,” said Jeanne Allen, president of the Center
for Education Reform in Washington, which studies and supports charter
schools. “The houses are nice, people have money, and therefore the
schools must be good.”

Ashley Del Sole, a founding member of one of the rejected charters in
Montgomery County, said that regardless of how well a district
performed, children benefited from choice because not everyone learned
the same way. She added that competitive pressure would invigorate
schools that had grown complacent.

“There’s sort of this notion that if it’s not broken, why fix it,” Ms.
Del Sole said. “But there are people who are not being served.”

With high test scores and graduation rates to flash around, suburban
school officials have had an easier time than their urban counterparts
arguing that charters are an unnecessary drain on their budgets. In
some states, including Virginia, where only local school boards
authorize charters, suburban boards have all but kept them out.

“It’s like you’re Burger King and you have to go to McDonald’s to get
a license — in most cases you won’t get a friendly reception,” said
Roy Gamse, executive vice president of Imagine Schools.

District school boards in Georgia have rejected so many charters that
lawmakers created a commission that approved 16 schools over local
objections. But after several boards sued, the law was overturned in
May, leaving in question the fate of some of those schools.

In New Jersey, where the State Education Department approves charters,
school boards and parents have been fighting a proposed school in
another suburb, Montclair, north of Millburn, and another
Mandarin-immersion school in the Princeton area that was approved last
year but has yet to open. Statewide, 15 of 73 charter schools are in
the suburbs.

The latest battle, over Hua Mei and Hanyu International — which would
start in 2012 with 200 kindergarten through second-grade students
drawn from Millburn, Maplewood, Livingston, South Orange, West Orange
and Union — has divided neighbors and has spurred calls for
legislation to require voter approval to open charters.

Jutta Gassner-Snyder, Hua Mei’s lead applicant, said some of the
school’s 12 founders had received threatening e-mails.

“This is not just about the education of my child,” said Ms.
Gassner-Snyder, who sends her daughter, Kayla, 4, to a private
Mandarin-immersion preschool. “If we just sit back and let school
districts decide what they want to do without taking into account
global economic trends, as a nation, we all lose.”

Millburn’s superintendent, James Crisfield, said he was caught off
guard by the plan for charters because “most of us thought of it as
another idea to help students in districts where achievement is not
what it should be.” He said the district could lose $270,000 — or
$13,500 for each of 20 charter students — and that would most likely
increase as the schools added a grade each year.

“We don’t have enough money to run the schools as it is,” Mr.
Crisfield said, adding that the district eliminated 18 positions and
reduced bus services this year.

Millburn offers Mandarin only in high school, fueling the arguments of
those seeking the new charters. “Kids are like sponges,” said Yanbin
Ma, a Hanyu founder. “There are so many things they can absorb and
become good at, and I feel that our public schools haven’t done enough
to take advantage of that.”

But to Mr. Stewart, a leader in a growing opposition that includes
Livingston mothers who have helped collect more than 800 petition
signatures, this sounds “selfish.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/education/17charters.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=charter%20schools%20AND%20affluent%20suburbs&st=cse

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