Charter school students surpass public school peers

OLYMPIA – Charter schools in the state are doing a better job educating children in math and English than traditional schools.

That is one of the main takeaways from the Washington State Board of Education’s Charter Schools Report.

“The overall finding for all of the prior charter school reports and this seventh edition submitted by the SBE is that students attending Washington charter schools perform similar to or better than academically, economically and ethnically similar students attending traditional public schools,” the report stated.

Liv Finne, Washington Policy Center’s director of the Center for Education, said she is not surprised.

“Traditional schools are doing a poor job educating students from low-income backgrounds and charter schools are doing a much better job in educating these populations,” she said.

“We’ve only had charter schools in Washington state for about eight years, but charter schools are doing a much better job than schools where students are assigned by ZIP code.”

According to charter school backers, one of the largest obstacles to leveling the playing field is funding.

Charter schools are not allowed to receive local tax levy dollars, so expenses like rent or other capital improvement costs have to come out of per-pupil funding from the state.

Lawmakers budgeted additional funding for charter schools this year, but Finne said it’s “one-time money.”

Charter schools received about $1,500 per student from the Legislature

The report recommends opening a new application window for charter schools.

The initial law was designed to allow up to 40 charter schools to open within a five-year period.

“But they made it so difficult for those wanting to open charter schools, so we’ve only got 18 charter schools right now,” Finne said. “They’re trying to slowly starve them of dollars in hopes they collapse.”