"Charter schools will have a new place to turn for advice next year when members of the D.C. Public Charter School Board start a nonprofit organization that will research how the schools can best be run.
The group will focus on finances and governance and is being set up by Chairman Thomas A. Nida, who steps down from the Charter School Board in February, and Dora Marcus, who was on the board until last month. Both reached their two-term limits."
"There's a lot of focus with academic achievement for schools," Nida said. "There's not nearly as much work done helping establish best practices for financial management and governance."
The Charter School Board has been criticized for tending to shut down charters for financial reasons rather than for academic ones. Nida said that's because it was easier to catch financial problems early and that it underscored the need for more research about how to evaluate charter schools' finances.
