Advocates Want Bigger Role for Charters Under NCLB

Speaking of charter schools and the renewal of NCLB, the National Alliance for public charter schools has come up with some great ideas!  (For details, see their publications at http://www.publiccharters.org/content/publication/detail/1914/ and http://www.publiccharters.org/content/publication/detail/1973/)

As Congress gears up to revise the No Child Left Behind Act, some charter school advocates are calling for changes to enhance the sector’s role in providing new alternatives for communities with low-performing public schools, and in replacing some troubled schools altogether.

Bush administration officials recently highlighted ideas to help make the autonomous public schools bigger players in the drive to reach the law’s goals for improving student achievement, such as having federal law trump state-imposed caps on the number of charter schools in cases where communities want to shut down chronically low-performing schools and reopen them as charters.

“The whole idea of restructuring [is that] … the old way didn’t work, all bets are off,” Karl Zinsmeister, President Bush’s chief domestic-policy adviser, said at an April 5-6 charter school conference here hosted by the Department of Education. “We need to try something dramatic, something new, and getting around the caps is, we think, an important first step.”

--------------------

Advocates Want Bigger Role for Charters Under NCLB

By Erik W. Robelen

Washington, Ed Week

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/04/18/33charter.h26.html

As Congress gears up to revise the No Child Left Behind Act...