Why do San Francisco education officials treat "charter" like a four-letter word? The answer has more to do with ideology than with the actual performance of charter schools.
This week, for the first time in seven years, the San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education heard testimony from supporters of a new charter school. The team proposing Dragon Gate Academy and about two dozen supporters showed up to Tuesday’s board meeting to make the case for their new K-8 Mandarin immersion charter.
They are unlikely to get approval when the board votes Aug. 26. For decades, SFUSD has been hostile to charter schools — with serious consequences for low-income children. The irony is stark: A district that champions “equity” has actively resisted one of the most effective tools for achieving it. Across California, charter schools have demonstrated how to raise the academic performance of low-income Black and Latino students to match that of their white and Asian peers. SFUSD must embrace charters in order to realize its own professed values.
As the board considers the Dragon Gate application, it should take the opportunity to completely reset its approach to charters. Regardless of how it decides the fate of this application, the board should pass a policy that acknowledges the success of charters where SFUSD has failed and welcomes charters as a valuable part of the San Francisco education landscape.
A look at SFUSD’s performance data shows that the district does pretty well by middle-class, Asian, and white kids, with more than 70% meeting California’s English language arts standards. Meanwhile, just 18% of Black and 27% of Hispanic students meet English standards.
Contrast that with the performance of Yu Ming, a standout Mandarin immersion charter school in Oakland, where 77% of Latino students and 79% of Black students meet state English standards. The math performance gaps between SFUSD and Yu Ming are even greater.
Across the state, charter schools are doing a better job than district schools, on average, of serving historically low-performing groups of students. A 2024 report from the California Charter School Association cites data from the California Department of Education showing that charters send more than double the percentage of Black, Latino, and low-income students to University of California and California State University schools. Some charters dramatically outperform their host districts, such as Oakland's AIMS High, where 48% of Black graduates head to UCs, versus 5% from the Oakland Unified School District. Ednovate-USC Hybrid High in Los Angeles gets 53% of its Black students into CSU colleges, far above the average of 14% from the L.A. Unified School District.
A 2023 Stanford study found that California charter students had the equivalent of 11 extra learning days in reading compared with demographically matched peers at district schools; Black, Hispanic, and low-income students saw the largest gains. High-performing charter networks like Alliance College-Ready and Rocketship delivered even stronger results: up to 107 additional days in reading and 75 in math, while 32 charter networks were identified as “gap-busters” for excelling with underserved students.
Despite the growing mountain of evidence in support of charters, SFUSD commissioners have historically cited three reasons for their opposition: Charters don’t serve the hardest-to-reach students; charters take money away from district schools; and charters are “privatizing” public education. The first point has some merit, but the other two do not.
It is true that California charters enroll a slightly smaller share of English learners, students with disabilities, and homeless students than district schools. However, this is no reason to reject charters wholesale and forgo the benefits they bring.
It doesn’t make sense to reject charters because they “take money” from district schools if charters can indeed better serve students. The board’s mission is to provide the highest possible quality of education for San Francisco families. If a charter school can provide a better service than a district school, it would be a smart decision for the board to allocate resources to that charter.
Finally, charters are not “privatizing” public education; they are run by publicly accountable boards. Governance and finances are transparent by law, and governing authorities have the power to shut down poor-performing charters.
The board should review the performance of San Francisco charters, considering where they are succeeding and failing. (Charters in SF enroll a smaller percentage of students than in many larger California cities, and their performance is all over the map.) The district should simultaneously move to invite proposals for new charters where there is a need and close persistently low-performing ones.
This approach would befit a city famous for its innovation in business and culture. Openness to charter schools — and a determination to hold them accountable — will allow San Francisco to benefit from the creativity and determination of education entrepreneurs, just as our economy benefits from innovation provided by tech entrepreneurs.
Over time, by embracing charters instead of rejecting them, the board will be able to better serve groups that SFUSD has struggled to help. That’s what real equity looks like.
Bill Jackson is cofounder of the Briones Society and chair of the San Francisco Republican Party. Iliya Zamanabadi is a student at Pasadena City College and summer intern with the Briones Society.