Jackson Free Press

Charter schools are on their way to Mississippi, but passing legislation is just the beginning. As the process moves forward, I urge our policy makers and educational leaders to consider three things about charter schools.

First, charter schools should strengthen our public schools, not gut them.

The coalition of strange bedfellows who back charters in Mississippi include those who believe deeply in the importance of public schools and those who see charters as a step toward privatizing public education. Which out--come proves true depends largely on whether our public schools are willing to see them as a model and a resource rather than as a threat.

Our governing institutions have a stubborn habit of disregarding evidence of progress that happens outside Mississippi. Lessons from hugely successful reforms--charter schools among them, in Cincinnati, Oakland, Calif., and New Orleans--have been slow to trickle down to Jackson Public Schools where I work. When charter schools in Mississippi start delivering results that blow our public schools out of the water, our school boards and superintendents will have no choice but to turn and ask, what are they doing right?

Second, if Mississippi charters are to provide any lessons worth learning, we need to be discerning about whom we allow to operate here.

Here again, we can look beyond our state borders to see what has been accomplished and therefore, what we can expect to happen here. We should only invite to Mississippi charter-management organizations with proven records of success. Such organizations, typically nonprofits, perform vigorous self-reflection and continually refine their best practices.

A recent study by Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes showed that while great charters outperform the average public school, plenty of existing charter schools deliver results no better than the traditional public schools they replaced. Moreover, the study found, an organization's performance in its early years--whether good or bad--remains consistent over time. It should not be difficult to anticipate a charter school's success before it opens, provided each district does due diligence and carefully examines the CMO's track record elsewhere.

Third, if Mississippi offers charter schools as an alternative (rather than a replacement) to traditional public schools, they may well end up drawing an above-average group of students.

An inevitable result of being able to choose one's school is that the students who exercise that power come from families with the savvy and motivation to navigate the enrollment process. Even if students are selected by lottery, someone has to be there to put in their names, and some charters have even more stringent requirements for parent participation. In this way, while charter schools may be tuition-free, they may still be out of reach for a district's neediest families.

It is a common criticism of successful charter schools, therefore, that they are not due quite as much credit for the results they deliver because their student body is self-selecting. As many charter opponents fear, this self-selection could mean an exodus of the best students from public schools to more desirable charter schools.

But what of the students who, by choice or lack thereof, remain in their public schools?

Their public, non-charter schools could see a drop in average test scores, as well as other important indicators like graduation rates, simply by virtue of the departure of the most driven students. Even more damaging would be a shift of the best teachers from around the district to the charter school. This would seem to punish the students who do not end up in charter schools by making their non-charter schools worse off--even as it provides potentially life-changing benefits opportunities for the students in the charters.

What does this mean for Mississippi, already home to a stratified K-12 education system if ever there was one?

For one thing, it reminds us that a change in policy can only do so much. Improving our worst public schools will be a lot harder than improving our best ones. The former will require change in every classroom, teacher-by-teacher and principal-by-principal.

Our public schools could learn a lot from the nation's best charter networks, which I hope to see operating in Mississippi soon, but they can only better all our students if public-school leaders are willing to ask the hard questions and look for best practices wherever they can be found.

Alexander Barrett was raised in New York City and joined Teach for America after college. He teaches high-school math in Jackson Public Schools and would be happy to help you with your homework.