Pondering Chartering: Getting the incentives right for the good of the whole!

This from School Finance 101:

I had a fun chat with EduShyster the other day about my recent report on charter school business practices. It was during the course of that conversation that I articulated some of my major concerns about how we are currently approaching “chartering” as public policy, and, for that matter, academic researchers of chartering as public policy. Here are a few points that I think are key takeaways from my recent ramblings.

First, I discuss the fact that there are “better” and “worse” actors in the present system. But a major problem is that there’s little pressure for anyone to do anything about the “worse” actors (or “bad apples” as Edushyster called them). I explained:

It’s to the benefit of the good guys to have the bad guys there because it makes them look better. When you’re KIPP, you look that much better when White Hat does something awful.

Further, because we (including policy researchers) are obsessed with what I refer to as “pissing match” studies of whether charter schools on average “outperform” matched, district, or schools of “lotteried out” kids, it’s in the interest of charter  operators to gain every edge they can over the “competition” (or the “comparison” group, or “counterfactual”). In other words, it’s NOT in their interest to support strengthening the “competition.”  I explained:

It’s just like the way that they continually argue for boosting their own subsidy, even if they know full well it’s at the expense of the district.

The problem is that there’s no incentive under the current policy structure for them to want the district schools to do better. And there’s every incentive for them not to. That’s what’s wrong with this system. Even when they’re good folks and trying to do a good thing, there’s still that undercurrent.

It’s time for all of us to rethink how we frame this conversation to get the incentives right!