Yesterday’s News
What do you call it when the arrival of charter chains forces the closure of other charters? Choice.
By Sue AltmanBe warned, starters of small charters!You may have enjoyed a red-carpet spotlight in the past, but don’t expect much loyalty from reformy fashionistas these days. It’s a school-eat-school world out there, and on the path to global competitiveness and *bigger rigor,* there is no room for last season’s trends. Such is the hard lesson learned recently by City Invincible Charter of Camden, New Jersey, which is being forcibly closed by the state in order to make way for the bigger, more disruptive charter chains.
A sadly familiar taleCity Invincible Charter got the bad news just four months shy of its second birthday—and a few months before its second year of test results arrived. The school’s supporterscharge that they are the victims of political favoritism towards corporate charter chains like Uncommon, Mastery and KIPP, all of which are about to set up shop in Camden. The irony is thick, the sad story all too familiar. As City Invincible Charter board member Randy Ribay laments here, the state didn’t care that the school was reaching its *benchmarks,* or that countless changes had been made, from rewriting the curriculum to increasing security measures to bolstering Yesterday’s News | EduShyster: