Report: Minnesota’s charter schools are failing

CATHY WURZER: Minnesota's charter school experiment is failing. That's the conclusion of a sweeping three-part report from the Minnesota Star Tribune looking at dismal student test scores and administrative mismanagement and misconduct.

In fact, just yesterday, the State Department of Education announced another charter school in Minneapolis abruptly closed earlier this month. The LoveWorks Academy for Arts was struggling financially and had terribly low student test scores for more than 10 years. One of the reporters working on the series is Mara Klecker, the K-12 education reporter for the Minnesota Star Tribune. Mara, thank you for joining us.

MARA KLECKER: Thanks for having me.

CATHY WURZER: Charter schools, as you know, were this innovative idea, born right here in Minnesota several decades ago. They're public schools that operate with more autonomy. And gosh, I remember covering the story in the legislature. There was a there was a lot of hope for charter schools. What were the original goals of the system, do you remember?

MARA KLECKER: Yeah, so Minnesota is the birthplace of the charter school movement. We were the first state to allow charter schools. And they are public schools, but they were thought of back then to be, really, the research and development arm of public education. This was supposed to be a better option for families and students who might not be finding success in the traditional public schools.

So this was a way to offer teachers and school leaders the opportunity to experiment with education, to find solutions for these kids. And one of the quotes in our stories was they promised these would be better schools, particularly for the students who needed them the most.

CATHY WURZER: So what do we know about student performance at Minnesota's charter schools over these years? Has it been upholding the goals?

MARA KLECKER: Not really. Not upholding that initial promise of being better. So out of the 203 charter schools in our state, only 13 have consistently exceeded state averages in math and reading. So that tells you a lot about the academic proficiency.

And actually, the Minnesota Department of Education does not include academic proficiency when evaluating charter schools, again, because this idea was that they were allowed to experiment so there would be less oversight on them for the sake of being this research and development arm of education. But this is 30 years later, and we're not evaluating them on academic performance. And when only 13 out of 203 are consistently meeting those proficiency rates, that's alarming.

CATHY WURZER: I'm wondering, because these schools are set up as experiments, I know they have to be sponsored by another organization, right? So I wonder, it sounds like, as I read through your series, there's a fair amount of administrative mismanagement. And I'm wondering who exactly is overseeing these schools? Is it the principals or the directors in the school? Does it happen to be the sponsoring organization? Who's kind of watching the store?

MARA KLECKER: Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, one of the things we found over the course of eight months of reporting is that there's a lot of finger pointing. And at one point, I think I said to my editor, like, how many fingers do you have, right? How many fingers can you point?

But without overarching oversight here, there are many examples of financial mismanagement, and it's not always malfeasance. Sometimes it's just because these schools come out of ideas that come from the community and parents. It can be someone with a great idea for a school and maybe even a great idea for a curriculum.

But because these are operating as an entire school district, this person in charge of the school is wearing all of the hats that would normally be split across a whole district. So again, they might have great experience with curriculum and with a new, innovative idea in education, but maybe not the school finance expertise to keep the school functioning and open. So, yeah, lots of examples of financial mismanagement.

CATHY WURZER: I was going to say, it sounds like there are some serious financial problems at some of these charter schools. And I'm wondering, and in your piece, you also mentioned that the state of Minnesota has poured about $1 billion into charter schools over the years. Who does pay for these schools?

MARA KLECKER: These are public schools. And I think there's still a lot of confusion in the community about this. These are taxpayer-funded schools.

CATHY WURZER: So what happens, Mara, when a school is starting to struggle? And as you say in the series, gosh, more than 100 charter schools have closed over the past 30 years in Minnesota. And then it seems like more recently, we're seeing more and more schools shutter-- and quickly, by the way. What options do some of these students have when their school closes?

MARA KLECKER: Yeah, so and the second story in our three-part series really follows the closure of a school, one of four that closed last academic school year, Upper Mississippi Academy in St. Paul. And they tried to make it work once they figured out financially they just couldn't make it work to stay open another year. So they did get through the end of the school year, but they really had only a few months to kind of figure out where they were going to go for the following year.

And that's actually a lot more lead time than some other schools that we know about, where the financial situation is so dire that they have to shut their doors pretty abruptly, sometimes with just days' notice for these families that then have to scramble to find another school, often during the school year, sometimes a few days into the school year, sometimes mid-school year. And then sometimes if, like in the case of Upper Mississippi Academy, they're able to finish the school year, then, these students have to find a new place to be for the following fall.

CATHY WURZER: Oh, wow. That's got to be really disruptive for these students and their families.

MARA KLECKER: Absolutely, and again, a lot of these students end up in charter schools because they found that the traditional public schools weren't working for them for a variety of different reasons. So they likely have already had some churn in their academic career. And then, maybe finding a charter school is a good home for them and then finding out that they have to leave because the school can't afford to stay open is pretty sad for these kids.

CATHY WURZER: Your reporting indicates that Rhode Island appears to be doing charter schools pretty well. What are they doing that we're not doing?

MARA KLECKER: Yeah, so again, Minnesota, birthplace of the charter school movement, 45 other states have picked up that movement, and Rhode Island is one of them. And the state itself is the only authorizer of charter schools in Rhode Island, whereas in Minnesota, we have nonprofits and educational organizations that are actually authorizing charter schools and responsible for a lot of the oversight.

So in Rhode Island, it is an arm of the Department of Education. So there is a very standardized oversight. And they do include academic proficiency in their evaluation of charter schools. And they have pretty strict requirements for applying to be a new charter school.

Any application has to prove that they have financial expertise and that they can budget five years out. So there's just a lot of evaluation pieces that we don't have in Minnesota, both on the front end before opening a charter school, and then as the charter school continues to stay open in Rhode Island.

CATHY WURZER: Say, final question here, Mara, given all your reporting, what you've discovered, do you think lawmakers might weigh in to some of this come next session in St. Paul? I mean, what are lawmakers saying these days about charter schools?

MARA KLECKER: Yeah, so far, we haven't heard from them. I mean, that's certainly the hope, right? And we want to be the birthplace of the charter school movement, but also a successful state in the charter school movement. So, yeah, that's always the hope with an investigative series like this, is it sparks a conversation and meaningful change for these students.

CATHY WURZER: All right. Say, by the way, before you go, what did you learn? What really surprised you? There's always something when you dive, as you have dove, into the pool here over the past eight months, there's always something that's going to be surprising, I think, as a reporter. What bubbled up for you?

MARA KLECKER: Yeah, that's a great question. I think I learned a lot about the system itself, right? I mean, I knew that we were the home of the first charter school. And I knew because of my own reporting, all of these one-off stories of charter schools closing or failing.

But just to kind of really step back and dig into the whole system of charter schools here was fascinating. And I learned a lot about why families and students choose charter schools and what they hope to get out of them, right? They believed in that initial promise that the state made 30 years ago, too. And that was something I guess I hadn't really delved into before starting this project.

CATHY WURZER: You did a good job, you and the team.

MARA KLECKER: Thank you.

CATHY WURZER: Thanks, Mara. Appreciate it.

MARA KLECKER: Thank you so much, Cathy. Appreciate it.

CATHY WURZER: Mara Klecker is the K-12 education reporter for the Minnesota Star Tribune. You can read the entire three-part series on the Star Tribune's website, and we'll link to it as well.