OxBlog

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

# Posted 3:01 PM by Patrick Belton  

CHARTER SCHOOLS: The New Democrat-aligned PPI has released two reports recently assessing charter public schools and their performance, in New York City and in Indianapolis. Lessons learned: (1) these schools do best when public officials adopt an active approach to engaging in recruiting qualified applicants to run charter schools and engage thereafter in ensuring their success, rather than viewing themselves as neutral arbiters whose role is limited to accepting or rejecting applications. (2) they also do best when public officials evaluate their performance along comprehensive and measurable criteria and publicise their performance to citizens. (3) charter schools are often at a funding disadvantage compared with public schools, particularly in the start-up phase; cities such as Indianapolis have raised the success rate of charters by creating a facilities fund to remedy this financial gap. In New York, they enjoy broad political support (including, extraordinarily, from teachers unions), but changes in statutes are neccessary in order to remedy funding and other disadvantages.
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