CAPPED OUT: JUST 18 CHARTERS LEFT FOR 40 APPLICANTS, REPORT FINDS

This report highlights that, within a few months, New York State will hit the charter cap, which means no new high-performing charters for the hundreds of thousands of students who so desperately need better educational options.  It’s idiocy like this that Race to the Top was meant to rectify, so I say not a penny of Race to the Top money for NYS until the charter cap is lifted (along with many other needed reforms)!

 

CAPPED OUT: JUST 18 CHARTERS LEFT FOR 40 APPLICANTS, REPORT FINDS

 

More than half of applicants eager to follow existing New York charters’ model of academic achievement to be shut out; 40,000-student waiting list for charter schools likely to grow

 

State University of New York to be final authorizer as New York City Chancellor and New York State Education Department to meet their caps in early 2010

 

(NEW YORK):  Forty school planning teams are now competing for the remaining 18 charters that will be available come February, 2010—meaning the artificial state cap on charter schools has been reached, an analysis by the New York City Charter School Center released today found.

 

With charter schools often taking two years or longer to move from the initial planning phase to opening day, entrepreneurial school leaders today thinking of opening a charter school will have to do it in another state if the cap is not lifted or augmented, the authors of “The Class Ceiling” found.

 

“More than nine of 10 New York City charter students are proficient in Math, but any school-aged child could tell you that you can’t open 40 new charter schools when just 18 charters are available,” said James Merriman, CEO of the New York City Charter School Center. “The artificial cap on the number of charter schools in New York State isn’t a future problem—it is a problem today and is already stopping us from offering students the great public education that they and their parents want and deserve.”

 

New York lawmakers are now in danger of repeating a mistake from 2006, when they waited too long to raise the cap on charter schools from 100 to 200 and organizers took their schools to other locales, where many have thrived and offered sterling educations to students.

 

“There’s not a moment to wait,” Merriman said. “We must lift the cap now.”

 

The full report, “the Class Ceiling,” can be found at www.nycchartercenter.org.

 

This also highlights the need to lift the charter cap in NYS:

Nearing charter cap, DOE says it won’t approve any more schools

by Maura Walz

The city’s Department of Education has nearly hit the ceiling on the number of charter schools it is allowed to authorize and will not approve any more until the state cap is lifted.

On Monday, the DOE sent a list of 15 approved charter schools to the State Education Department for final authorization, leaving it and other school boards with only three new charters available.

State law limits the number of charter schools to 200 and there are currently 164 charters operating around the state. Of the 36 remaining new charters available, half may be authorized by the State University of New York. The other half may be authorized by the New York City Schools Chancellor or other local school boards and then approved by the state Board of Regents.

“From our perspective, we’ve approved 15 applications and submitted them to the state and if the cap is not lifted, we will not be submitting any more,” Ann Forte, a spokeswoman for the DOE, said.

This leaves three charters remaining for other local school boards or the State Education Department to approve and 18 charters left to be authorized by SUNY. In a report released earlier this week, the New York City Charter School Center estimated that about 40 charter school operators would compete for those remaining spots.

The question of whether to raise the cap on charter schools, or to remove it entirely, has been hotly debated in recent months. States with charter caps are at a disadvantage in the competition for the $4.3 billion Race to the Top grant funds, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said. Charter school advocates argue that the cap encourages school operators to open schools elsewhere.

State education commissioner David Steiner and Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch have argued that the cap prevents charter school authorizers from acting recklessly. Steiner and Tisch have said that a state-wide cap allows charters to expand at a measured pace and ensures that only the best schools will be opened.