Education agency head shouldn’t match muscles with the Texas Legislature

By MIKE NORMAN

mnorman@star-telegram.com

Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott’s mouth might have been moving faster than his mind Tuesday in a talk to the Greater Austin Area Chamber of Commerce.

Scott said he is "lifting the cap" on the number of open-enrollment charter schools authorized to operate in Texas. He wants to hand out more charters than the cap allows.

Hold on there, cowboy. The cap, 215 charters, was set by the Legislature in 2001. Do you really want to cast aside a legislative mandate like that on your own? Remember, these are the folks who determine how much money your agency gets, can pass laws to change its operation and authority and might carry a grudge the next time you advocate a bill setting a new policy that you want.

To be fair, Scott is not saying he wants to go back to the days when Texas passed out charters to practically anyone who asked. Charters are privately operated public schools that are free of many of the regulations that apply to traditional public schools.

Scott wants to do what he can to show that there’s an open process for new charters in Texas. That could help the state snag a share of $4 billion in federal economic stimulus money available under a new education initiative called Race to the Top.

And the first thing he wants to do is allow some of the best Texas charter schools to open additional campuses.

There are some stellar performers here — like KIPP Academy, started in 1994 by two Houston teachers. The KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) quickly established an outstanding reputation for turning around the educational performance of at-risk, inner-city kids. Now, 82 KIPP schools in 19 states and the District of Columbia serve about 20,000 students. Most KIPP schools are charter schools.

There are others that deserve praise: YES Prep, with seven schools in Houston; Uplift Education, four schools in Dallas County and one in Arlington; and Harmony Schools, which has campuses throughout the state, including Fort Worth, focused on science and math.

But there have also been a lot of negatives since Texas’s first charter schools opened in 1997. Charter schools closed mysteriously, and students sometimes had to repeat a grade at traditional public schools to make up for lost time. Equipment bought with public money disappeared; sometimes, so did money itself. Academic performance at some schools was abysmal.

The idea behind the cap was to give Scott and other officials at the Texas Education Agency time to establish more effective oversight of charter schools.

The agency has tightened requirements for charter applicants. Charter schools are held to the same academic accountability standards as traditional public schools. But has it done enough?

Not by 2005, when the state’s Sunset Advisory Commission determined that TEA "cannot ensure that charter schools effectively educate students or properly use state funds."

In 2007 and again this year, the Legislature failed to approve major bills that would have eased restrictions on charter schools.

But there is pressure from the State Board of Education to allow more charters, including from the board’s chairwoman, Gail Lowe of Lampasas.

During his talk in Austin this week, Scott made good points about allowing the best charter schools to expand. Then, citing an "informal opinion" from the state attorney general, he said he has authority to waive the cap. He said he might start by allowing "five or 10" new charters a year beyond the 215 allowed.

I’ll bet he wishes he hadn’t said that. The Legislature has clearly established its authority over the cap and has declined — very recently — to raise it. To openly defy that authority would be a mistake.

Scott also said he might work with the Legislature when it meets again in 2011 to raise the cap. That would be a better choice.

Mike Norman is editorial director of the Star-Telegram/ Arlington and Northeast Tarrant County. 817-390-7830

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