Encourage charter schools

Innovation and parental involvement are essential weapons in the long-term battle to improve public schools. Charter schools encourage both. And though some charter schools fail, the intensifying push to develop successful ones is not a menace to public education but a proven way to enhance it.

S.C. Superintendent of Education Jim Rex has acknowledged that educational reality and called charter schools "an idea whose time has come." On today's Commentary page, another charter-school advocate, Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts, chronicles "what works" at two such schools in Gaston, N.C.

School choice advocates in our community want to replicate that educational progress by establishing two new charter schools in Charleston County. Unfortunately, the initiatives to start those charter schools downtown and on Johns Island continue to face opposition.

Charter schools, though still public schools, are governed by boards of community members and educators who enjoy considerable independence from local districts while striving to meet goals outlined in their charters. The freedom to try new ideas gives charter schools a distinct advantage in breaking cycles of academic futility.

The Charleston Charter School for Math & Science has already been approved by the state and the local district, and is scheduled to open in the old Rivers Middle School building on King Street next August. Another group is working toward opening a charter school on Johns Island — Horizon Middle Academy.

Some critics contend that those two charter schools would facilitate a return to segregation. Yet state law mandates that charter schools attempt to reflect the racial diversity of the districts they serve within 20 percentage points, with county school boards deciding if sufficient efforts have been made to attain those standards. Thus, any Charleston County charter school must aim for a black enrollment between 30 and 70 percent, which would be far more ethnically diverse than the current downtown and Johns Island public schools supposedly "threatened" by the creation of the two new charter schools.

Civic pride in long-time public schools is admirable. But so is the effort to deliver overdue educational alternatives to schools with long-term records of academic futility. Those who promote choice recognize that too many public schools have produced unacceptable classroom results for too long.

Mr. Pitts rightly hails the standard of "high expectations as a matter of policy" at those two charter schools in Gaston. We need more schools in our community and state with that same positive policy.