EDITORIAL: Where's proof that charter schools outperform?

In his Dec. 18 op-ed column in The Times, Pence spoke of three key education goals:

• Fund excellence.
• Promote choices for families.
• Fix what is broken.

There's plenty of debate on his proposals to achieve these goals. Today, we're narrowing the focus to Pence's high hopes for charter schools.

"Charter schools operate at a significant per-pupil funding deficit," Pence wrote. "We need to fix this to see more high-quality charters open their doors in Indiana."

Pence has proposed giving charter schools $1,500 more per student than traditional public schools receive. That extra money is being used as bait for additional for-profit corporations as well as nonprofits to jump into the charter school business in Indiana.

And of the new money for education in the next biennium, Pence proposes to give about 25 percent of it to charter and private schools — even though only 3.9 percent of Indiana's public schools are charters.

But how well does this really work in practice?

School superintendents, especially those in Northwest Indiana, are up in arms about this proposal, and well they should be.

East Porter County School Corp. Superintendent Rod Gardin put together a chart showing the bottom 10 percent of school districts ranked by the amount of state funding they receive per pupil.

Of those 36 school districts, 10 are from Northwest Indiana:

• South Central Community School Corp., $5,237.90
• Duneland School Corp., $5,210.83
• Hanover Community School Corp., $5,5153.95
• Tri-Creek School Corp., $5,152.12
• Crown Point Community School Corp., $5,115.42
• Porter Township School Corp., $5,081.02
• Union Township School Corp., $5,075.97
• Lake Central School Corp., $5,050.29
• East Porter County School Corp., $5,043.41
• School Town of Munster, $5,013.13

Of all 36 districts on the list, 34 were rated A and two rated B by the Indiana Department of Education.

Compare that with the top 10 percent of charter schools. There were just three rated A, four B's, one C, 14 D's and 10 F's. Here are the local schools on that list:

• Gary Middle College, $8,611.71, NA
• Aspire Charter Academy, $7,845.81, D
• 21st Century Charter School of Gary, $7,562.85, D
• East Chicago Lighthouse Charter, $7,274.22, D
• East Chicago Urban Enterprise Academy, $7,167.75, D
• Charter School of the Dunes, $7,038.26, F
• Thea Bowman Leadership Academy, $7,017.65, D

School funding in Indiana is complicated. School districts get a basic amount called the foundation base. A complexity index — based on percentage of students receiving free textbooks — is added to it.

And then there's the question of how admissions to charter schools, as well as private schools, are handled. Traditional public schools take anyone who qualifies based on residency. Is that fairness being addressed?

With so many local school districts hurting, why give $1,500 more per student to charter schools than to traditional public schools?

Further, where’s the accountability for charter schools? We've seen some lose their charter, and go fishing for another organization to sponsor them. Some have been closed outright. But where's the State Board of Education or Department of Education intervention in charter schools?

And where's the proof that charter schools deliver better results than traditional public schools? We haven't seen it.

So why throw additional money at them instead of keeping the playing field fair?

Don't harm traditional public schools to advance a theory that hasn't been proven.