Another look needed at charter schools

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, July 4, 2000

Minnesota policy-makers and educators should take another look at the charter school movement after St.

Tuesday, July 04, 2000

Minnesota policy-makers and educators should take another look at the charter school movement after St. Paul’s Success Academy abruptly closed this month. Since Minnesota pioneered charter schools, it’s important that we safeguard the students who attend charter schools.

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Success Academy was not well-run. It’s more than 600 students were given only a day’s notice that the school would close. The 85 teachers and staff were not paid and the school’s debt exceeded $1.4 million. …

In the frenzy to create more charter schools with fewer restrictions, policy-makers seem to have forgotten the reason Minnesota created charter schools. As Education Minnesota, the state’s teachers union, pointed out in a recent newsletter, early charter school proponents envisioned charters as laboratories where teachers could experiment with and evaluate new ideas, provide alternative learning opportunities, and meet or exceed public school standards.

But those things aren’t happening in Minnesota or elsewhere. …

Even though charter schools are proliferating, assurances of accountability are few. Minnesota opened the nation’s first charter school in 1991, and the 60 charters we have now are among 1,700 charter schools in the nation. Minnesota’s original charter school law required charters to be approved by the State Board of Education and sponsored by a local school district. Today, the State Board has been abolished and almost anyone can open and operate a charter school. Originally, teachers were to be the majority on the charter’s governing board, but that rule was ended. Also, the number of charters was to be capped at 20, but there is no limit today.

Although charters were to have more flexibility and freedom, most of the original safeguards to make charter schools accountable have been lifted. As a result, more charters are being operated by for-profit entrepreneurs rather than teachers, and test scores of charters students tend to be the same as or lower than public schools students in demographically similar schools. …

We think the Legislature should enact a moratorium on new charter schools until lawmakers restore some reason and accountability in the process for creating and funding charters. The state should reapply the safeguards in the original law, teachers should be put back in charge, and proper accountability for budget, programs and students’ success should be restored. Also, lawmakers should mandate that the chartering entity be held legally and financially responsible for the schools it charters. If those steps are taken, then charter schools can become the educational innovators that they were meant to be.

-The West Central Tribune of Willmar