Ep. 57 "Why America Needs Charter Schools" - Guest Nina Rees (Part 1 of 2)

ANNOUNCER: In order to have accountability in a school, you must connect with families. That’s why Nina Reese sees charter schools as a step towards restoring quality education in America because charter schools offer parents a chance to keep schools accountable. Reese, a long-time advocate of charter schools and school choice, has decades of service behind her, including a stint with the U.S. Department of Education. Listen in this week on The State of Education as she and Melvin uncover the benefits and possibilities charter schools offer to America.

ADAMS: Welcome to The State of Education with Melvin Adams. We’re glad to have you join us and today we have a very special guest: Nina Reese. 

Nina Reese is the president and chief executive officer of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the leading national non-profit organization, committed to advancing the charter school movement.

She is responsible for setting the strategic vision of the organization, fundraising and working with her senior team to foster a climate in which charter schools can grow and have a positive impact on the academic achievement of all students.

Reese has over twenty years of experience in Washington, D.C. Most recently as senior vice president for strategic initiatives for Knowledge Universe, a leading global education company with investments in early childhood education, before and after school programs, and online instruction.

Prior to her ten years at Knowledge Universe, she served as the first deputy under-secretary for innovation and improvement at the U.S. Department of Education. In this capacity, she oversaw the administration of twenty-eight grant programs, supporting 1,300 projects, and was responsible for spearheading innovative federal programs and policies such as school choice, charter schools, alternative routes to teacher certification, and school leadership.

Before moving to the Education Department, Reese served as deputy assistant for domestic policy to the Vice President at the White House. Prior to serving in the executive branch, Reese was the senior education analyst at the Heritage Foundation, where she authored more than two dozen policy briefs, and served as the foundation’s chief spokesperson on education.

She previously worked at a public interest law firm and an advocacy organization. She began her career in Washington, D.C. on Capitol Hill, where she worked for then-Congressman Porter Goss, a Republican from Florida, in 1991. 

Reese has appeared on various news outlets including Bloomberg, CNBC, C-SPAN, and PBS’ NewsHour. Her articles and opinions have been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. 

Reese serves on the board of directors of the P. I. E. Network, the advisory committee of the program on education policy and governance at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and the advisory boards of honored and National Association of Charter School Authorizers.  

She is the Pahara Aspen Fellow and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. She lives in McClean, Virginia, with her husband and daughter.

So, Nina, so good to have you with us today.

REESE: Thank you for having me.

ADAMS: Alright, so we’re going to just jump right in here with a few questions and have a conversation. I think—let’s start with really some basic stuff. Many of our listeners understand what public charter schools are, but there are probably some who don’t. And so why don’t we just start out with that kind of broad approach. 

When we say “public charter school,” what in the world are we talking about?

REESE: That’s a great question. In fact, most of the polls done on charter schools demonstrate that the vast majority of the public still don’t know what they are.

Charter schools are public schools. We have charter school laws in forty-five states. And they are as public as they come in terms of adhering to state standards and accountability systems. But they are schools of choice, so no one is forced to send their kids to a charter school. 

And they’re accountable through a governing structure that’s handled by an authorizer. So depending on your state law, that authorizer can either be a school district, it could be the state education agency, it could be a university, or a non-profit.

In that sense, it kind of combines the best of, you know, both worlds in terms of being fully public but also accountable to the needs of families. And to an authorizer that’s ultimately charged with making sure that the school is raising school achievement. 

ADAMS: So I heard you use the word “accountability.” And you used that in conjunction with “public schools.” And so, that’s something that a lot of people don’t usually put together. And so, what do you mean by accountability for public charter schools.

REESE: Well, they are accountable to the parents who send their kids to these schools. If a charter school cannot attract enough families, they won’t be able to operate because they’re pupil allocation depends on having students in seats.

But they are also accountable to an authorizer, so they have to be fiscally responsible to an entity. And the terms that they sign with that authorizer, which is on average about five years, stipulates certain things they need to do to stay open.

So if for any reason they’re not meeting the terms of their agreement— and academic achievement is one of them—that authorizer can also close them. So they are accountable to the public through the authorizer, but most of all they’re accountable to families because their existence depends on having students in their schools.

ADAMS: So if I’m understanding correctly, when we use the word “public,” that sense is because they are publicly funded. In other words, the funding model comes through the tax revenue process just like all other public schools.

They’re charter because they run under their own independent board of directors, they have their own documentation and identity of governance. So they’re not like just, you know, one of the state schools, but they are controlled by their own leadership model. Is that correct?

REESE: Yes. They have a board that is not a school board. So the board also holds them accountable. But the authorizer is the entity that makes sure the school is dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s, because ultimately, as you indicated, they are funded by the public through the same revenue streams that support public schools.

ADAMS: Okay.

REESE: In some states the local revenue follows the students to those schools, and in most places, in fact, it does—but in some instances the revenue only comes from the state education agency. For that reason, you need another entity that’s also holding the school accountable.

But as I said, again, these are schools of choice. So if you don’t attract enough families, if families are not interested in sending their kids to school to these schools, no one’s forcing you to attend a charter school and in order to stay open, they have to meet the needs of their communities. 

ADAMS: Alright. So I was just asking some general questions there to try to lay out that broader concept for people who maybe don’t understand. But here’s what we do know: practically every public charter school out there has a waiting list of students trying to get in. 

Would you like to speak a little bit to that and really maybe answer this question: why are public charter schools important?

REESE: That’s a great question, and it’s the reason why people like me are interested in expanding the reach of charter schools. And we have 3.7 million students in charter schools right now. A poll that we did this summer indicated that over 80% of the population in this nationally-representative sample of people who were polled would support sending kids to a charter school, even if they themselves did not want to send their own kid to that school.

So from a public opinion strategy standpoint, people want charter schools. The more they have them in their communities, the more they want them and if they don’t know—so one of the other things that happened during the pandemic, for instance, is parents were looking for options. We saw 240,000 families enroll their kids in charter schools, while 1.3 million left the traditional system.

So in those communities where charters existed, where they had room, they were the school of choice. The reason they’re attractive is very simple; they are schools of choice that fit the needs of the community at a time when more and more individuals are starting to realize that the assigned school—their district-assigned school—may or may not be a right fit for their kids. 

If you are an affluent family or able to move to a different district with strong public schools, you usually do that. You make a choice by voting with your feet. But if you’re low-income, unfortunately in this country, you’re relegated to a school you are assigned to. 

And that is what charter schools are intended to address. Making sure that low-income families have access to higher-qualities options within their neighborhood. Not by having to bus and go, you know, far distances. And certainly because they’re free, people can send their kids to these great schools.

The track-record of charter schools has been extremely positive, every study done about charter schools demonstrates that the students, especially low-income students, minority students, and students with disabilities and English learners, do better in charter schools compared to the neighboring schools.

There is some evidence that some of our networks are better able to send students to and through college. The voting patterns of students who end up attending these charter schools also improves, in the sense that they become more engaged in civic duty and our democratic system.

And finally, there’s also some evidence that charter schools have a positive impact on the district in general. So right here in Washington, D.C., which is where I live, the impact of charter schools is seen in the academic performance of the CPS. And as a result more families are staying in D.C. in order to send their kids to a public or charter school.

And also when you look across the board, the waiting list [unintelligible 11:35] is very high. Again, we did a survey a few years ago to see if people would want to send their kids to a charter school if they didn’t have one available to them and we found that up to five million families would want more access to charter schools.

Within individual schools, though, you have huge wait lists depending on the community that you’re in.

ADAMS: So oftentimes, you know, you think public school, and then you think public charter school. What are the things that are different? Typically, the distinctions that make charter schools so in demand.

Is it the diversity and some of the differences in curriculum options? Is it leadership and approach to operation within the school? Or is it all of the above and then some? Will you speak to that?

REESE: Yes, that’s a great question. We did a poll this summer, by the Harris Poll, and school school safety was one of the reasons why more parents wanted options and why they were attracted to options like charter schools.

The diversity of curriculum certainly plays a role. So again, charter schools can do things differently so you have a group of schools that are focused on STEM—science, technology, engineering, and math. Some that are focused more on the liberal arts; these are the more classical academies. And then you also have some that are just focused on students that are at risk of dropping out or have already dropped out. Adult learners.

So depending, again, on the community that they’re in…again, remember, because they’re schools of choice, they have to attract students to them so they can fit the needs of the community after doing an assessment of what the community needs. They’re not one-size-fits-all solutions that can work in any community that you go into.

The other thing that’s really important to note with any school is the quality of the teaching staff. Again, the teachers who teach in charter schools have more autonomy to decide how to create their curriculum. The management of the school can expand the school day and the school year and offer differentiated pay to those teachers. So in that sense, the quality of the teaching staff as well as the autonomy that they get matters a great deal in attracting families to them.

Their class sizes and the size of the school in general also tends to be smaller, which allows for more individualization. So families feel a part of that school and its governance. More so than they would feel in some of our district schools that are unfortunately too large and where you can’t come up with a more customized approach to education.

ADAMS: I think you made a statement to the effect that, you know, because these are schools that have to attract, they are “choice” schools—choice, in other words, people have to choose them. They don’t just automatically get all the kids in the neighborhood. Parents have to decide I want my children in that school. 

And so I assume then, with that, that the leadership of the school is much more engaged in responding to and engaging, working with parents to reach their goals for what they want for their students. Would you say that’s an important element of most public charter schools?

REESE: Oh, absolutely. That is one of their key secret ingredients.

ADAMS: Well, let’s kind of switch a little. We’ve been talking about some of the distinctions of public charter schools and some of the reasons parents like them or are attracted to them or might be attracted to them.

But then there are those who also oppose public charter schools. And there are some common objections to those. What are the things that you hear most often? I’ve got a list of some here, but talk to us a little bit. Where’s the opposition coming to public charter schools and what are the cases that they’re making?

REESE: Yes, so I’ve been doing this for thirty years. When charters were first born, the criticisms that came back then are the same that we’re getting today and they usually come from those who don’t want charter schools to exist.

The first augment is that these schools drain public dollars out of traditional public schools. And our answer simply is: the finding is there to educate students and charter schools are public schools. So rather than seeing charter schools as competition, we need to see them as part of the public education fabric. They just happen to be in a slightly different place from a governance standpoint.

Again, this money that taxpayers are putting into the coffer is intended to educate family’s kids. It’s not there for a system of schools.

The second argument against it is that they’re engines of privatization and that the people who support charter schools, you know, don’t believe in public education. Again, if you look at the vast majority of the people who are running charter schools, these are individuals who really and truly believe in public education and that common school ideal that public education embodies.

They were simply frustrated by the fact that in some communities, individuals who are running traditional schools are not committed to the education of the kids in the system, for a variety of reasons. 

So these individuals who are running charter schools are often democrats, they’re people of color, they’re community leaders, they’re former teachers at traditional schools who simply want the freedom to do something differently in service to the student.

Our mission is about the kids. It’s not about a system and the adults in the system. You know, there are other criticisms out there and I’m happy to answer them, but I think the key ones are that this is further moving us toward privatization, when in fact, it is about going back to the roots of public education. 

No one is saying that these schools should be private, they are open to everyone. No admission standards, no tuition and fees. So, you know, those are definitely myths that are out there and unfortunately because most people don’t know what charter schools are. Sometimes they fall prey to those criticisms, or those myths. But at the end of the day, they are intended to improve public education as we know it. 

For us as an organization, our mission is to improve the overall trajectory and quality of public education and we’re using charter schools as a mechanism to get to that goal. And so the more charters we have that are creating high-quality seats the better. And we would also very much like for whatever it is we’re learning to be transferred to the traditional system so the overall quality of our public schools improves.

Ultimately, that we live in a world where the principles of our traditional schools have as much freedom as charter schools and that we’re sharing more information with one another. Because ultimately, there’s always going to be some kids who want to go to those traditional schools and they should have the option to do so.