Charters and Choice
From a parent’s point of view, public school choice in Wake County boils down to a student’s assigned school, magnet school options or a nearby charter school.
Wake’s magnet program is one of the largest and most developed in the nation. Its roots can be traced to the efforts of former Superintendent John Murphy in 1976, but the formal timeline of the current program typically begins in 1982 when five different magnet programs were introduced in 28 schools.
The magnet program now includes 31 schools and enrolls more than 10,000 students. In addition, another 20,000 students now choose schools outside the formal magnet program. The bulk of those 20,000 students request year-round or traditional calendars. In total, that means 22 percent of all students in the system attend their schools by choice.
Families obviously have choices outside the public school system, but a large majority send their children to public schools. Of the roughly 160,000 school-age children in Wake County, about 85 percent attend the Wake County Public School System. Fewer than 10 percent of all Wake County students go to private schools, according to the NC Division of Non-Public Education. The rest of the children in the county attend home schools and charter schools.
The goal of the school system’s magnet school program hasn’t changed much since its creation. It was designed to provide families with expanded choices to attract students to schools that would otherwise be underenrolled. This often puts magnet schools at the center of debates involving diversity and student assignment.
Occasionally, magnet schools are so successful in attracting new students that it can change the demographics of a neighborhood. That reduces the need for the magnet program in that school and puts the school board in the uncomfortable position of eliminating the magnet programs that made it successful. “Demagnetizing” a school is one of those issues where school board members simply can’t win. Regardless of whether you choose to keep or eliminate a program, plenty of parents are quick to criticize.
Several documents that follow in this section offer a history, overview and statistics about magnet schools.
Charter schools: Charter schools are paid for with public dollars, but they are not governed by the school board. There are 13 charter schools in Wake County and each one received its charter – or permission to operate – from the state Board of Education. The schools are funded on a per pupil basis based on the district average, but receive no money for expenses such as buildings or buses.
Charters have had mixed success in Wake County and the state as a whole. Some of the highest-scoring schools in the state are Wake County charter schools. The same can be said for some of the worst-scoring schools. The extremes fuel much of the tension in the charter school debate.
The schools were approved by the state legislature in 1997 with the thinking that public schools free from traditional school bureaucracy would generate new and innovative ways to educate children. Those good ideas could then be brought into “regular” public schools.
That has happened in a few small ways, but for the most part traditional schools have not embraced many charter school ideas. Moreover, many charter schools lack much socio-economic diversity and tend to prove what research has known for decades: If you fill a school with motivated, middle-class students who have supportive parents who applied to the program, the result is typically a high-performing school.
Charters have also demonstrated that if you create a school with mostly poor children, the relatively tight budgets of a charter school cannot overcome disadvantages of being poor even when parents are supportive.
Charter supporters are usually quick to highlight successful schools and slow to bring attention to failing schools. Traditional school supporters often do the opposite and are also slow to assimilate charter school ideas. The result is often a standoff that leaves parents confused, policy makers annoyed and school board members caught in the middle.
Student performance: One of the difficulties in reviewing student performance in schools of choice is the fact that many charter schools do not participate in free- and reduced-lunch programs. Participation in the subsidized lunch program is the standard that allows schools to track the performance of low-income students.
Moreover, those who collect test data assume all students who qualify for subsidized lunches participate in the lunch program. That means the socio-economic status of those who don’t participate is assumed to be at least lower-middle class, i.e., not poor.
This makes it impossible to cleanly review test data when a school such as Torchlight Academy – a school where most of the students are poor – reports all scores in the category of “not economically disadvantaged.”
Despite those limitations, a few basic comparisons can be made. Charter schools are far more likely to be segregated along lines of race.
Torchlight Academy, for example, enrolled no white students in 2007-2008, the most recent year for which racial breakdowns are available. Preeminent Charter was 98 percent minority. Passing rates in both schools hover near 20 percent.
Charter school enrollment in Wake County by race 2007-2008
School |
Indian |
Asian |
Hispanic |
Black |
White |
Casa Esperanza Montessori Charter School |
3 |
3 |
51 |
74 |
174 |
Community Partners* |
0 |
0 |
2 |
19 |
84 |
East Wake Academy |
5 |
9 |
31 |
116 |
691 |
Exploris Middle School |
1 |
7 |
3 |
24 |
153 |
Franklin Academy |
3 |
16 |
26 |
90 |
1009 |
Hope Elementary School |
0 |
0 |
0 |
113 |
0 |
Magellan Charter School |
0 |
15 |
8 |
26 |
348 |
PreEminent Institute of Learning |
0 |
1 |
9 |
548 |
3 |
Quest Academy |
0 |
7 |
0 |
5 |
123 |
Raleigh Charter High School |
1 |
40 |
7 |
47 |
433 |
Sterling Montessori Academy |
3 |
98 |
23 |
106 |
287 |
Torchlight Academy |
0 |
0 |
27 |
313 |
0 |
16 |
196 |
187 |
1481 |
3305 |
Other schools, such as Magellan and Franklin, were at least 90 percent white and Asian. Virtually every child is at or above grade level in charter schools with such demographics.
As the chart above indicates, roughly two-thirds of all students in charter schools are white. That compares to just above 50 percent in traditional schools.
Academic performance can be compared between charter schools, magnet programs and all Wake County public schools regardless of income level. In most cases, overall averages and charter schools tend to score higher than magnet schools. That is attributable in part to the differences in the demographic mix of the schools.
As is the case for all schools, data for magnet and charter schools can be found at this DPI link.
Enrollment data by race for all schools can be found here.
Locations, descriptions and web sites for all Wake County charter schools can be found here.