While state lawmakers debate how best to make allowances for charter schools in Mississippi, some people are still questioning why traditional public schools can’t be given the same freedoms.

It’s a question Tracie James-Wade asked Friday during a forum on charter schools at Koinonia Coffee House in Jackson.

James-Wade said her concern is the cost of opening charter schools in an already cash-strapped public school system. The traditional public schools that are performing well should be used as models for duplication across the state, she said.

“Why have a model school that you never duplicate?” James-Wade asked.

But charter school supporters argue traditional public schools have had decades to figure out what works best to boost student achievement.

“The problem is how we operate schools, and that is what charters are one solution to,” Jeanne Allen, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Education Reform, told The Clarion-Ledger last week.

The differences between charter schools and traditional public schools, she said, include how teachers are hired, retained and paid and how textbooks are chosen. All the money and time can be put into the traditional public school system, “but nothing very good happens in that school, nothing changes in that school.”

Like traditional schools, public charter schools do not charge tuition. Charters can be newly formed schools or they can be converted from existing public schools. Both bills getting most attention at the state Capitol include provisions for conversion schools, and lawmakers supporting those bills have said they hope that is the option most charter applicants take.

Charter school advocates say one major selling point is freedom from bureaucracy. Each school operates independently instead of being governed by a central office of administrators.

State representatives still need to take up House Bill 888, which would allow charter schools across the state. Some major provisions of the bill include multiple authorizing agents and no requirement that teachers and administrators be certified. Senate Bill 2401, which would allow charter schools but with more restrictions, is also pending.

“Charters tend to be places where educational opportunities are a little more innovative” than traditional public schools, said Martha Liddell, interim superintendent of Columbus schools.

Columbus schools use the Magnet Schools of America model, which allows for “having the innovative programs, competitive curriculum, more of the bells and whistles that a lot of traditional school systems don’t have,” Liddell said.

Columbus High and Sale International schools have International Baccalaureate certification.

Sale International School has gone from being on academic watch, a low rating from the state Department of Education, in school year 2008-09, to high performing, the second-highest rating.

The district as a whole is on academic watch. Some of the schools did not show the academic growth needed for higher ratings, Liddell said

“We have ramped up everything this year so we could continue to be successful and move to that next level,” she said.

“We’re going to have to be competitive,” Liddell said of public school districts. “Public schools are entering uncharted waters for many of us.”

But many districts don’t know how to promote and market what they do well, Liddell said.

Jackson has some top performing elementary schools that could be models, James-Wade said.

Some of those schools are not very different from schools in the Delta, she said.

“The needs are the same. You still have a high number of Title I students, a high number of free and reduced lunch students, and all these kids have the same types of issues,” James-Wade said.

She said she is concerned that charter schools would address the needs of a select group of students.

“What ends up happening is a small group of kids end up getting help and then a large group of kids are left outside,” she said.

Barksdale Reading Institute CEO Claiborne Barksdale is among those calling for state lawmakers to limit the number of charter schools that could be opened in Mississippi and to focus on chronically low-performing schools.

Barksdale also said he wants the provisions for virtual schools removed from HB 888.

The rationale for charter schools is not choice, but “to allow students who are trapped in chronically under performing schools to have a … potential escape from those under performing schools,” Barksdale said.

If a school “is providing a strong education, then they are doing what they’re supposed to do,” he said.

If not, he said, “get on the school board. Get involved in the school. Get involved with leadership at the school.”

“Go meet with the teachers,” Barksdale said. “Work with your child on their homework. Insist on excellence at the school board meetings. Make sure that they’re accountable. Get involved.”

Those are the available tools if a public school is failing, he said. “It’s not to set up a parallel school system.”

Mississippi has 17,486 students who are home-schooled and 48,414 in nonparochial private schools, he said. If half of the home-schooled students and a fifth of the private school students left to attend charter schools, “that would be 18,426 students for whom MAEP is now going to be drawn on,” he said. “And that comes to about $76.5 million.”

The Barksdale Reading Institute is trying to show the importance of leadership through a partnership with several rural schools.

After the first year of the three-year project, one school the Barksdale Reading Institute is working with saw marked improvements in students’ proficiency levels on state standardized tests. Gains at the other schools were moderate or flat, Barksdale said.

“We’re trying to put very passionate educators into these schools who work with data, who analyze data, who build education plans around the data, who work intensely with the students,” Barksdale said. Remediation is provided over the summer and after school.

“But at the end of the day, it’s who is in the school and what are they doing there,” Barksdale said. “There’s no magic to this thing. It’s people, people, people. And that’s the issue that faces Mississippi education.”

As state lawmakers work to relax requirements for opening charter schools in Mississippi, the unanswered question is can the state afford both or will it leave both underfunded.

Today, the House Education Committee will take up House Bill 888, which includes broader allowances for charter schools. Last week, the Senate passed SB 2401 that would allow charter schools in every Mississippi school district with some restrictions.

If a district has enough demand for a charter school, the state and local dollars should follow the child, said John Moore, chairman of the House Education Committee and principal author of HB 888.

The problem with the argument that scarce resources would be spread over a larger group of students is “you’re not increasing the number of kids,” said Moore, R-Brandon.

Critics of those groups are no longer in a fixed group. Most charter schools cap their enrollment, meaning some students who might have wanted to attend the new school can’t and would likely remain in traditional public schools, which would then be operating with less money.

“Mississippi has very scarce resources. We can’t afford to fund schools at the level that most people would acknowledge they need to be funded,” said Nancy Loome, executive director of the Parents’ Campaign. That’s also true for other public service agencies, she said.

Loome, who heads a network of more than 60,000 people, said she has heard from parents of students in home schools and in private schools who are interested in charter schools. Adding more students to the mix leads to less funding for all students and a less efficient use of resources, she said.

Superintendents of traditional public schools have said they increased class sizes, postponed building maintenance, made due with outdated textbooks, cut central office staff and, in some cases laid off teachers, because of cuts in state funding. Many have said additional cuts would force additional layoffs, which could include teachers.

There should be an analysis of what impact pulling students from school districts may have “on the resources left behind for the children who will remain in the public schools,” said Oleta Fitzgerald, Southern regional director for the Children’s Defense Fund.

Not requiring or discussing “a fiscal impact analysis in Mississippi just does not seem to be reasonable,” she said, “especially for people who pride themselves on fiscal responsibility.”

The bills should require no additional appropriations because “there is no money for new buildings that would be provided by the state,” said Forest Thigpen, president of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. Charter schools would have money donated to help with the costs of building or renting buildings and would not have access to bond issue money or other facilities dollars available to traditional public schools, he said.

“If a school is educating children well, then they should have nothing to fear from charter schools. If they are not educating children, then there is no reason that they should continue to expect to receive money from taxpayers,” Thigpen said.

Nationally, charter schools’ impact on traditional public schools’ funding has been mixed.

“The specifics of the policy in your state matter a lot,” said Macke Raymond, director of Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes.

“In some cases across the country, charter schools didn’t impact the local public school budget at all because there was a hold harmless provision so that the districts continue to receive the same budgetary amounts regardless of how many students they lost to a charter school,” Raymond said.

Addressing funding equity requires a different view than charter schools versus traditional public ones, she said. Instead, Raymond said, the view should be that public schools, including public charters, need full funding.

Legislators tend to make a common mistake of “trying to be all things for all people,” said Jeanne Allen, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Education Reform. They try to push for charter schools, but not full funding, and expect those schools to take on the most disadvantaged students anyway, she said.

“It’s not money alone, it’s having freedom to spend the money,” Allen said. “But it’s also being treated equitably, so there’s a level playing field between traditional public schools and public charter schools.”

Moore said today’s meeting will likely focus on HB 888. The House charter bill has to clear the committee by Tuesday and then be voted on by the full House.

He expects a charter school bill to go to Gov. Phil Bryant, a charter school supporter, in late spring.

Ask Mississippi.

Like a thief in the night, July 1st of this year came and went, slipping out the back door with the Magnolia State’s charter law as legislators allowed it to sunset without even a word.

Nobody seemed to notice. Not the press. Not the bloggers. Not the major edreform players. We didn’t even mention it, but in our defense, it was really hot that day and we were planning a cookout.

Another group that likely missed the significance of the loss of the law: the faculty and students of Mississippi’s lone charter school – The Hayes Cooper Center.

The school was basically a glorified magnate school, did not have true autonomy and was tied to the school district in so many ways as to make it indistinguishable from its conventional counterparts.

Each year, we analyze and grade the country’s charter school laws, assigning a letter grade to each.  Last year, Mississippi received an ‘F’ with an analysis that placed it last among the (then) 41 laws.

Certainly, The Hayes Cooper Center probably didn’t feel much different as kids ran out to greet the first day of Summer than it did when they trudged back for Fall classes.

And it was Mississippi’s weak law – one that its lead architect later referred to as “the sorriest” in the nation – that allowed this to happen.

The ‘Race to the Top’ competition has placed a national spotlight on charter schools and charter legislation as lawmakers everywhere begin to tinker with theirs in order to polish them up before the Department of Education passes judgment in the Spring.

Will their laws shine any brighter than Mississippi’s? Certainly. But, while the Mississippi law contained glaring obstacles to charter realization, will they remove even those subtle barriers from their laws that block growth and success for schools and for students? What we’ve seen so far raises grave doubts.

At least when CER’s grades are released next week, they’ll know where they stand and, hopefully, who to emulate.

(HINT: The country’s strongest charter law was never batted around a State House.)