Charter schools hold promise, but they're no magic bullet -- latimes.com:
"The Obama administration may be over-relying on them as a means of remedying the nation's educational mediocrity."
Charter schools are on the cusp of national stardom. After gaining increased acceptance in the last decade, they now are central to school reform under the Obama administration, which wants states to remove any limits on their growth.
Charter schools are publicly funded but operate free of many state and school district regulations. The idea behind their creation was to empower schools to make their own hiring and curriculum decisions in exchange for guarantees in their contracts -- or charters -- to deliver high scholastic achievement in a certain amount of time or risk closure. The schools were intended to model innovations that might be replicated on a grand scale and to eliminate cumbersome labor contracts that work against better education. They would give disadvantaged students their first real alternative to violence-prone, low-performing public schools and create pressure for those schools to bring about quicker, more dramatic reform lest they lose enrollment.
After a decade of rapid growth, charters have begun delivering on some of these promises. They were among the first smaller, more personal schools; "smaller" has become a rallying cry among urban school districts. Families in low-income areas flocked to the new schools, where expectations were higher and children felt safer. Some have delivered impressive test scores.
"The Obama administration may be over-relying on them as a means of remedying the nation's educational mediocrity."
Charter schools are on the cusp of national stardom. After gaining increased acceptance in the last decade, they now are central to school reform under the Obama administration, which wants states to remove any limits on their growth.
Charter schools are publicly funded but operate free of many state and school district regulations. The idea behind their creation was to empower schools to make their own hiring and curriculum decisions in exchange for guarantees in their contracts -- or charters -- to deliver high scholastic achievement in a certain amount of time or risk closure. The schools were intended to model innovations that might be replicated on a grand scale and to eliminate cumbersome labor contracts that work against better education. They would give disadvantaged students their first real alternative to violence-prone, low-performing public schools and create pressure for those schools to bring about quicker, more dramatic reform lest they lose enrollment.
After a decade of rapid growth, charters have begun delivering on some of these promises. They were among the first smaller, more personal schools; "smaller" has become a rallying cry among urban school districts. Families in low-income areas flocked to the new schools, where expectations were higher and children felt safer. Some have delivered impressive test scores.