Charter Schools Take Root In Maryland
Movement Succeeds With Many Parents, But Questions Linger

By Matt Zapotosky
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 23, 2007

Four years after charter schools started making inroads in Maryland, the institutions are growing in popularity among parents despite lagging test scores and frequent clashes with school systems.

Eleven of 23 Maryland charter schools failed to meet federal standards for "adequate yearly progress" in the past school year. Three in Baltimore failed for the second year in a row, jeopardizing their charters. Two Washington area schools were closed at the end of the school year after one failed to find space to continue operating and questions were raised about the management of the second.

Still, nine charters are opening this school year, including the first one in St. Mary's County yesterday, bringing the state's total to 30 and enrollment to nearly 7,000.

Maryland charter school officials and advocates say the charters are fiscally healthy, provide school choice and help students learn, even if that learning isn't reflected in federal progress assessments. Critics say the schools don't always live up to the high expectations they set and drain money from traditional public schools.

The only thing that most officials agree on is that the state's charter schools are popular, if unproven.

"I do think in Maryland, because we are so late to the charter game, we have a very fragile promise with the public right now," said Laura Weeldreyer, director of the Office of New, Charter and Innovative Schools in Baltimore, which will add six charters this year. "We're all flying the airplane while we're building it, and we're hoping everybody's wearing a parachute."

In Maryland, charters have been most popular in Baltimore, where struggling traditional public schools were converted in the hope that new curricula would produce better results. Advocates say that many of the schools had low test scores before they became charters and that they have been hamstrung by inadequate funding.

Charter schools are independently run but function within local school systems; local school boards decide whether a school can open, and they dole out much of the funding. But a recent state appeals court ruling that could force local school systems to spend as much money per pupil on charter schools as they spend on regular public schools has given hope to advocates.

"Given the law that we have and the environment of the charter schools in Maryland, I think we're making pretty amazing progress," said Joni Berman, president of the Maryland Charter School Network, a support organization based in Bowie. "They offer parents options that weren't there before. They've pulled kids back into the districts from private schools and home schooling."

Long before the charter boom began in Maryland, charter schools were authorized in the District 11 years ago. Nearly one-fourth of the District's 75,000 students now attend one of the city's 52 charter schools. Virginia has just two charters, none in the Washington region. Maryland has charter schools in Baltimore and in Anne Arundel, Prince George's, Frederick, Harford and St. Mary's counties.

Parents in rural St. Mary's County jumped on the charter bandwagon this year. Schools in the Southern Maryland county generally perform at or above the state average on the Maryland School Assessment test, but a group of parents said they pushed for Chesapeake Public Charter School to give their children a more rigorous curriculum.

Tara Duarte, a Leonardtown mother of three school-age children and one of the founders of Chesapeake Public Charter, said she thought her children were not being adequately stimulated, especially in math. She also did not want to send them to the county's middle schools, three of which did not make adequate yearly progress this year.

"We wanted something a little bit more challenging," Duarte said. ". . . Basically, it just gives all us parents and students a different option."

St. Mary's parents struggled for months to get the charter approved because of conflict that is all too common between charter schools and local school boards, Berman said.

"We have districts who don't necessarily want charter schools who are the ones who are charged with implementing the program," she said. "For the most part, most of the districts are implementing a law that they didn't want."

Montgomery County school officials successfully fought attempts to bring charters into the county by arguing that low-income students have shown improvement on tests and that charter proposals lacked innovation and adequate financial planning.

And the conflicts don't end when the approval process is over. Problems in Anne Arundel and Prince George's prompted heated exchanges between charter and school system officials. In Anne Arundel County, officials at KIPP Harbor Academy in Annapolis accused the school system of not providing the academy with available building space; school officials countered that they offered portable classrooms, which the law does not require them to do. KIPP Harbor closed at the end of the past school year. In Prince George's, officials shut down Potomac Public Charter School, citing financial and management problems.

The remaining charter schools have had varying degrees of academic and fiscal success. Chesapeake Science Point Public Charter School in Anne Arundel is on probation after questions were raised about its financial health and record keeping.

But KIPP Ujima Village Academy in Baltimore has made adequate yearly progress for the past two years and is deemed fiscally sound. The key to its success, said KIPP Baltimore's executive director, Jason Botel, is good teachers.

"I think constantly focusing on student achievement and doing whatever it takes to maximize student achievement, that's really what's allowed us to be a success," he said.

JoAnne Carter, the state's deputy superintendent for instruction and academic acceleration, said it is too early to assess the performance of charter schools. She said state education officials have been "pleased" with the schools' growth and academic performance so far, noting that parents overwhelmingly trust the charter schools. A 2006 evaluation found that 92.3 percent of charter school parents surveyed were satisfied with the schools.

Still, Carter said, it's unclear whether Maryland's charter schools have yet earned that high level of trust.

Baltimore's Weeldreyer said: "I think we are fortunate to have public perception that, right now, charter means better. But now I think we have to live up to it, and that doesn't mean that we'll always authorize perfect schools."