Charter-school bandwagon avoided by some states
By Jessie L. Bonner and Dorie Turner, The Associated Press
BOISE — In her small timber town in northern Idaho, Christina Williams enrolled her son in the closest public school because she had few other choices near her home.
But as she watched him struggle for years — many mornings prying him out of bed and forcing him to go to school — Williams sought an alternative to the traditional classroom. The single mother now drives about 140 miles roundtrip each day to her 12-year-old son's charter school inSandpoint.
"It's killing my poor little car, but it is so worth the drive to me," Williams said in a telephone interview. "He was not getting the education he needed."
Williams would like a closer alternative, but Idaho allows just six new charter schools a year.
Several other states also put strict limits on the number of new charter schools. Another 11 states don't allow charters at all, even though the federal government has created a $4.35 billion competition to encourage charters and other educational innovations.
Most states adopted only modest measures to improve charter schools as a result of the "Race to the Top" competition and no new substantive charter school laws were passed, said Jeanne Allen, president and founder of the Center for