Trash the charter school model? Not so fast.

The Star Tribune‘s recent investigative articles on Minnesota’s public charter schools paint a very bleak picture of the model, stating they are “largely failing to make good on most of their promises.”

From lack of oversight, financial mismanagement, and low academic achievement, “the death of a charter school is nearly an annual event,” write Mara Klecker and Jeffrey Meitrodt with the Star Tribune. Minnesota’s “daring experiment in public school education” isn’t paying big dividends for students and their families like it is in other states, causing the Star Tribune to identify Minnesota’s model as a failure.

Counterpoints quickly followed.

First, poorly run and ineffective charter schools should, in my opinion, absolutely be shut down. Just like other mismanaged and ineffective schools.

One of the problems, though, is that current scrutiny isn’t applied consistently. Let’s have a debate about under-performing public schools — all of them. Minnesota’s public school system in general has a long history of troubling academic trends and achievement gaps, and traditional public schools have also had their fair share of financial, academic, and accountability challenges.

Second, calling out charter schools’ test scores in general compared with test scores at traditional public schools isn’t necessarily an apples to apples comparison because you end up comparing the average proficiency scores of urban charter schools in low-income areas with scores of suburban and rural students in traditional public schools.

Let’s take a look at proficiency in the Minneapolis school district compared with a number of Minneapolis charter schools that serve similar student populations.

As of spring 2024 test results on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs), black student reading proficiency in the Minneapolis school district is 15 percent and math proficiency is just under 8 percent. At Metro Schools Charter, a K-12 charter school in Minneapolis, 52 percent of black students are proficient in reading and 38 percent in math. At Universal Academy, a pK-12 charter school in Minneapolis, 50 percent of black students are reading at grade level, and math proficiency is just over 34 percent. At Northeast College Prep, a K-8 charter school in Minneapolis, reading proficiency among black students is 36 percent and math proficiency is 19 percent. At Hennepin Schools, also a K-8 charter school in Minneapolis, reading proficiency among black students is 38 percent, with math proficiency at 40 percent. Best Academy, another K-8 charter school in Minneapolis, reports reading proficiency is 34 percent and math proficiency is 19 percent among its black students.

Going one step further, let’s compare traditional and charter school proficiency between grade levels. At Loring Elementary in the Minneapolis school district, zero percent of 5th grade black students are reading at grade level. At Metro Schools Charter, 62 percent of 5th grade black students are reading at grade level. At Universal Academy, 56 percent of 5th grade black students are reading at grade level.

At Ella Baker Elementary, Barton Elementary, and Seward Elementary in the Minneapolis school district, zero percent of 4th grade black students are reading at grade level in all three schools. At both Universal Academy and Metro Schools Charter, 51 percent of 4th grade black students are reading at grade level.

This isn’t to say that there isn’t room for improvement at these charter schools, or that every charter school in the Minneapolis area is serving its students better than the district schools, because, well, they aren’t. (And some have been shut down as a result.) My point is that as we scrutinize charter schools, we need to also scrutinize issues in traditional public schools as well. (How many underperforming traditional public schools are getting shut down?) The narrative that “district schools are good, charter schools are bad” is misleading and harmful, writes Brad White in his Star Tribune counterpoint.

There are reasons why 68,000 students and their parents are choosing charter schools and why hundreds of others are on waiting lists to get in.

We have an opportunity to defend and learn from the charter schools serving students and families well, shut down the ones that aren’t, and prioritize strategies and reform that will benefit current and future public school students.