Let’s hope that we’re starting to see the fruits of Arne Duncan’s plan to shut down low performing charter schools while ramping up the good ones. Here’s a bad charter getting shut down in Philadelphia. Based on my travels, elite charters present the best opportunity for helping urban students, especially boys, but charter authorizers have to be ruthless about terminating the low performers, as Andy Rotherham and I argued in US News.
But while expanding those elite charters, it’s also necessary to close the clunkers, as Andy Rotherham and I argue in US News:
By Andrew J. Rotherham, Richard Whitmire
Posted June 17, 2009
Andrew Rotherham is cofounder and publisher of Education Sector and blogs at Eduwonk.com. Richard Whitmire, immediate past president of the National Education Writers Association, blogs at whyboysfail.com.
Former basketball star and current Education Secretary Arne Duncan has a new move. Not only is he pressuring states to raise their caps on charter schools and figure out ways to expand high-performing charters, he also wants states to close lousy charter schools-a smart action to take considering this week’s study revealing the high number of mediocre charters out there.
As part of the requirements accompanying the economic stimulus money for states, Duncan is ordering states to report not just how many charters-independent public schools-they allow to operate but also how many they have closed for low performance. The focus on quality signals a major change in the federal government’s posture toward state charter school laws.
Outstanding charter schools, often dubbed “no excuses” charters, have become the miracle workers of urban education. High-performing charter school networks around the country and outstanding charter schools like Roxbury Prep and MATCH in Boston or the Achievement First schools in Connecticut are debunking the notion that urban kids can’t be educated well absent an unprecedented social transformation of their communities.
But here’s the catch. All the schools in the elite charter school networks number only about 300 and there are 4,600 charters operating in the United States. What about the rest?
Al Sharpton and Joel Klein, pictured here at the National Press Club June 11 (along with former Colo. Gov. Roy Romer) visited our editorial board shortly after their press conference. Their campaign, to press the national candidates to pay attention to education deficits, is a good one. Oddly, however, it’s a long shot. To date, the candidates have mostly ignored the issue.
What struck me during the board meeting was the number of references to “boys” during the discussion (unprompted by me, except for one question). The academic problems of boys are unique, they said. Klein pointed to significant gender literacy gaps within every race and ethnicity in New York City. As a result, the city has pushed hard to launch single-sex education experiments. He singled out Excellence Charter School, a favorite of mine, in Bed-Sty, that’s been rocking the test scores. Here’s one story Andy Rotherham and I wrote about charters that included Excellence and an editorial I wrote about Excellence.
