In the News Back-to-School
2000 E-Mail
CER
CER and Education In The News
THE OTHER REFORM: More growth in charter schools
U.S.
News and World Report, September 11, 2000
School vouchers may be attracting most of the high-voltage political and legal debate lately, but another education reform - charter schools - is having a far more rapid impact on the nation's classrooms.
Charter schools are independent public schools, running the gamut from back-to-basics academies to Montessori schools, that are freed from traditional bureaucracy in exchange for meeting performance goals. They're increasingly popular with parents looking for an alternative to the public-education status quo.
According to the Washington-based Center for Education Reform, a record 519,000 children will be attending more than 2,000 charter schools this fall. That's still only about 1 percent of all American schoolchildren, but it's up 20 percent since last year and represents huge growth for a movement that began just nine years ago in Minnesota. In some cities with especially troubled school systems the impact of charter schools is even greater: They now enroll 18 percent of public-school students in Kansas City, Mo., and 14 percent of students in the nation's capital.
It's no wonder that charters have attracted far wider and more bipartisan political support than vouchers, says Bruce Fuller, a professor of public policy and education at the University of California-Berkeley and editor of a forthcoming book on charter schools. "Charters take the steam out of the voucher movement by clearly signaling to voters that government can encourage school innovation without privatizing public education," he says. Charter schools now enroll 43 times more students than the number participating in the nation's three publicly financed voucher experiments.
Critics worry about charter-school accountability. But unlike traditional public schools, says Center for Education Reform President Jeanne Allen, if a charter school runs into problems "you can shut it down." -- B.W.
###
For more on the growth of charter schools, see CHARTER SCHOOL RANKS SWELL; Schools and Attendance Above Former Projections, CER Back-to-School Press Release, August 17, 2000
For more on school choice and education reform in this issue of US News and World Report, see Black Students in Voucher Programs Score Higher and Odd Politics Could Doom Vouchers in Two States.