The majority of Maine’s non-charter public schools would not only fail to meet at least one of the higher standards set by law for charter schools in the state, but charter schools also outperform them when it comes to fiscal responsibility, a Monday report from the Maine Policy Institute (MPI) revealed.
“If the standards used to judge charter schools are valid, they should apply to all
schools. If they are too onerous for noncharter schools, they are also too onerous for charters. The state must either level the playing field or acknowledge that its current system penalizes innovation and rewards failure,” said the report.
Maine allows for a maximum of 10 public charter schools statewide, and those schools must meet a variety of higher standards not applied to non-charter public schools.
MPI’s report, “Accountability Gap,” focused on nine of those standards and examined how public schools would perform if held to those same standards. The report placed particular emphasis on schools that failed to meet three standards because that was enough for the state to close down the Harpswell Coastal Academy in 2023.
These criteria included graduation rate, academic performance, absenteeism, safety, and financial efficiency, among others.
While there is no official number of violations that compel a school’s closure, three violations were enough to close Harpswell Coastal Academy, and one is enough to initiate disciplinary action.
The report found that 61 percent of non-charter public schools failed at least one of the nine standards, 14 percent failed three, and 29 percent failed to meet graduation rate standards.
Charter schools averaged a 91 percent graduation rate compared with other public schools’ 85.9 percent.
MPI also found that the charter schools significantly outperformed non-charter in fiscal efficiency, spending an average of just $14,000 per student compared with an average of $24,800 for non-charter, and producing better per-dollar academic outcomes, though not necessarily better overall academic outcomes.
At the same time, the report detailed where charter schools underperform their non-charter counterparts.
For example, charter schools underperformed compared to non-charter in a significant number of academic performance results and had a slightly higher rate of chronic absenteeism than non-charter.
The MPI report recommended that the state hold charter and public schools to the same standard, focus on educational outcomes per dollar spent, improve access to charter schools, and remove limits on the number of charter schools and the number of students who can be enrolled in a single charter school.
“View charter schools as complementary to traditional schools, rather than as threats. Policy should prioritize student outcomes, not bureaucratic parity,” said the report.
Read the full report here:
Full Disclosure: The Maine Wire is a project of the Maine Policy Institute
