MO: Longtime Charter Sponsor Leaves the Biz (And Parents)

 The University of Central Missouri has been sponsoring charter schools since 1999, serving as the major sponsor of charters in Kansas City (in Missouri, the rule used to be that only St. Louis and Kansas City could house charter schools).

St. Louis schools have been a mess, with both public and charter schools having their share of legislatively-inflicted woes. And some legislators have continued to try hard to expand charter reach in the state, right up through this year.

But one notable feature of Missouri charter school law is that it allows institutions of higher education to circumvent taxpayers and sponsor charter schools. That's the biz that UCM got into.

From UCM's point of view, that makes some sense. UCM was founded as a Normal School, aka 19th century teacher training college, and they continue to educate teachers. UCM has used its charter schools as part of the teacher training program, placing their student teachers in charter classrooms. 

But in Missouri, as in the rest of the country, the teacher pipeline is drying up, as fewer and fewer young folks find the conditions and compensation with which they would work particularly attractive. The state is trying to fix that, with clever ideas like PSAs, because when you don't want to address a problem for real, you can always treat it as a PR problem. 

Last week, the news broke that UCM is getting out of the charter sponsor business. It has done wo without a whole lot of actual explanation; the decision is described as "mission-driven," which doesn't really mean a damned thing, and as coming from the UCM Board of Governors, which puts it behind a nice, opaque screen. If you like the longer version of the non-explanation, there's this: 

Action by the university’s governing board allows UCM to more closely align its resources to pursue its mission, which is focused on providing a quality post-secondary education to students in Missouri and beyond.

There's more--we've had a great time, these charters are swell, history, mission, blah. blah, confident the transition will go well. 

It's bad news for seven Kansas City charter schools which now need to find a new sponsor by the end of next school year. The charters are putting on their brave faces, but there are only three other sponsors operating in Kansas City-- University of Missouri in Columbia, Kansas City Public Schools, and the state's Public [sic] Charter School Commission.

Meanwhile, parents of charter students have some thoughts:

We would love to if they offer any opportunity for parents and families to have a voice in sharing what matters with them. We would love to play a role in that.

Spoiler alert: they will not play a role in that. The University's board does not answer to the taxpayers. The charter company does not answer to the taxpayers. Parents are just "customers," and they have as much say as you have when you angrily email Mark Zuckerberg over a Facebook format change, or when you angrily email McDonalds about changing the fry oil formula.

Charter advocates often argue that market forces are sufficient for charter oversight, because parents can vote with their feet. But the bipedal plebiscite is not really a thing when the whole structure is collapsing and the various parties with power are scrambling to save a chunk. As we have seen over and over and over and over again, when a charter school starts to go south, parents learn very quickly that they have no power, no say, and often not even anyone to call. 

It would be super-interesting to learn why, exactly, UCM bailed, but of course they don't have to explain any of their decision to anybody. In the school choice and charter world, that level of non-transparency is considered a feature, not a bug, but sometimes even the charter folks themselves get stung.