Broken Promises: Half of All Charter Schools Close by Year 15

NEW YORK, Aug. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Analyzing a database that tracks charter schools over two decades, a new report from the Network for Public Education (NPE) documents an astounding 50% failure rate of these schools over a 15-year period. More than a quarter of the schools folded within five years.

The report, Broken Promises: An Analysis of Charter School Closures from 1999-2017, and an animated map that shows the accumulation of failures across the United States can be found at: https://networkforpubliceducation.org/brokenpromises 

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Commenting on Broken Promises NPE Executive Director, Carol Burris, said, "Dr. Ryan Pfleger analyzed the U.S. Department of Education's Common Core of Data to determine charter school failure rates at the 3-, 5-, 10- and 15-year marks. Even by year five, less time than it takes for a child to complete elementary school, 27% of new charter schools had disappeared."

Using enrollment numbers from the final year that each charter school was open, Pfleger documented that more than 867,000 students were enrolled in charters that closed between 1999 and 2017. "If we added closures prior to 1999 and subsequent to 2017, it is likely that one million students have been displaced," he observed.

The study also revealed that charter closures were most likely to occur in the poorest neighborhoods of America's poorest cities.

Dountonia Batts, an NPE Action Board member and former Indiana charter school teacher, agreed with the findings of the report. "I had students whose high school experience was completed at three different schools because of closing after closing. The students who often feel the hurt first are in black and brown communities where the charter product is cynically peddled as a civil rights solution."

Commenting on the report, historian of education Diane Ravitch concluded, "The public school should be a stable institution in every community, always there for children and families. Unfortunately, as this report shows, charter schools are inherently unstable. Charters fail for a variety of reasons, mainly because they are a market mechanism, like shoe stores or restaurants—here today, gone tomorrow."

The Network for Public Education is a national advocacy group whose mission is to preserve, promote, improve, and strengthen public schools for current and future generations of students.

Contact: Carol Burris
Phone: 516 993 2141
Email: [email protected] 

SOURCE Network for Public Education

Related Links

https://networkforpubliceducation.org