Josephine Baker: Let’s be transparent — FOIA isn’t what makes schools successful

Having retired from the DC Public Charter School Board (PCSB) eight years ago, I have the luxury of paying only selective attention to arguments about public education. Lately, however, a debate over how to ensure accountability for our city’s charter schools has caught my ear. It is largely a conversation among people who were not here at the beginning of DC’s charter school movement in the mid-1990s. As a longtime teacher and a college professor, but more importantly as someone who has seen public school choice improve our education system, I feel compelled at this moment to do some educating about history.

What spurs me to speak up is legislation the DC Council is considering that seeks to treat charter schools not as what they are — nonprofit organizations entrusted with tax dollars to provide the public service of educating DC students — but instead as governmental entities, which charter schools were explicitly established 24 years ago not to be. In particular, a bill introduced by Ward 6 Council member Charles Allen would require charter schools of any size and means to respond to every request filed with them under DC’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

I agree with the many executive directors and board members of charter schools who oppose Mr. Allen’s bill — and were never consulted on its development. In the name of treating all public schools in DC the same, the proposed legislation unfairly piles on new responsibilities for a set of schools that have never been funded fairly in our city. Furthermore, it would not enhance the way most parents or teachers want to engage with their schools.

FOIA is an important mechanism for allowing the public underneath the hood of government. It is a tool employed almost exclusively by journalists, self-appointed watchdogs, activists and attorneys to demand information that is not otherwise accessible to them. (Often the information is accessible; they just don’t want to expend the energy to find it, or they like the drama of being able to say they petitioned to “uncover” it.)

For anyone who signs up to work in government, complying with FOIA comes with the job. At its most helpful, FOIA is a way for government to demonstrate transparency and accountability. At its least helpful — and I can say this from having led a government office subject to DC’s law — it is a paperwork burden that distracts from actual service to the public and expends scarce resources on legal reviews. FOIA rarely reveals anything broadly useful, and requesters can weaponize its sweeping scope for their own purposes.

What FOIA is definitely not is an effective tool for a parent to participate in decision-making at their child’s school or support their child’s education, or for a teacher to have a more impactful voice where they work. More helpful is what charter schools already provide willingly, regularly and in abundance to PCSB, including: 

• data on student demographics and academic performance, attendance and discipline;
• annual budgets, audited financial reports, IRS filings, and contracts for major expenditures; 
• salary ranges for each school’s teachers and specific amounts for top leaders; and
• minutes from the meetings of the volunteer boards of directors that lead charters. 

All told, it adds up to 96,000 pages of information freely available on PCSB’s website.

Now some history on how the DC Public Charter School Board became a national model for ensuring quality through high standards and real consequences. When the board was established in 1996, I was its first chair, before I became executive director. It’s a myth that Congress forced charters on our city. Plenty of us wanted more choice, and DC Public Schools’ superintendent at the time requested, and the council passed, legislation that enabled charter schools here. Congress subsequently passed its own law establishing PCSB, but by that point, DC already had a small number of charter schools overseen by the Board of Education. In 2006, that board, which is now defunct, requested that it no longer be a chartering authority. PCSB assumed oversight of its charter schools, which had been poorly monitored.

From the charter school board’s earliest days, we overseers of this new, more independent flavor of public schools recognized that we needed to focus on what we called the three A’s: autonomy, accountability and academic excellence. The first A was granted to charter schools in exchange for the latter two. If that bargain wasn’t upheld, we knew charter schools would be no improvement over the lackluster school district DC already had.

That first year, we received 26 applications to open schools. We approved 10. This year, PCSB approved only five of 11 applications for new schools and applied a variety of interventions to existing schools that were under-performing, including forcing closure. No DCPS school has ever been closed due to poor performance. If FOIA made schools better and more effective spenders of taxpayer money, schools run traditionally by government bureaucracies would be superior.

What has improved DC’s traditional schools is not regulation but competition. I would never have volunteered to serve on the charter school board if I thought charter schools were meant to put DC Public Schools out of business. The fact is, DCPS has become stronger since chartering began in this city. Enrollment has climbed over the past decade. Test scores have improved. DCPS teachers are making some of the highest salaries in the country in exchange for higher standards, and investment in new buildings and renovations has produced some beautiful facilities for learning. Does anyone think this progress would have naturally occurred without friendly competition from charter schools?

There is a misperception that FOIA and other transparency regulations cleanse a government system of corruption. The wrongdoing we have seen in government at all levels, in this city and elsewhere, belies that argument. Human beings work in government. They run school systems and schools. They lead unions, nonprofits and companies. No law is going to prevent some people from sometimes doing some things that they shouldn’t. But poor policy can very easily divert school personnel from doing the things they should.

So, let’s preserve the autonomy DC charter schools have to deliver results for students, families and our city. Charter schools were set up to be different, and the fact that 47% of DC public school students now attend one of them says to me that families appreciate the difference and are comfortable with the way charters operate. Let’s keep oversight of all our schools strong — and in the case of charter schools, let’s continue to invest that responsibility in the DC Public Charter School Board, which is equipped to demand and display real accountability.

An educator in DC Public Schools for 25 years, Josephine Baker became the first chair, and then executive director, of the DC Public Charter School Board. She retired in 2011.  

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