The Charter School Movement: New York City and Beyond

The St. Croix Valley isn’t an island of isolated debate, discussion and finger pointing, when it comes to looking at the options available in K-12 education. There are options out there and they are being tried. The results vary, but I’ve long been under the impression that a huge part of education is trying and erring and learning from our mistakes. Charter schools are an option being tried. Below is a brief overview of charter schools. There is a link at the end that will lead you to a variety of articles and discussion of the pros,cons and history of charter schools. Charter schools seem more appropriate for larger metropolitan areas, but there maybe useful ideas and insights contained in the information linked to this post.

The charter school movement began in the 1970s, the brainchild of Ray Budde, a professor of education at the University of Massachusetts. He suggested that individual teachers could be given contracts, which he dubbed charters, to explore new approaches. United Federation of Teachers president Albert Shanker then expanded the idea to call for granting entire schools charters (with union approval). The first charter school in the U.S. opened in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1992. Today about 580,000 students in the country attend 2,400 charter schools.

Charter schools receive public money but are independently and privately run. Though they must comply with certain state regulations and health and safety rules, they do not have to operate under union contracts, and they exist largely outside the Department of Education bureaucracy.

While much of the adamant opposition to charters has faded, conflicts remain over their performance and how they should be controlled and regulated. In many ways, these disputes come down to a battle over who should control education, what some have likened to a "power struggle."

Charter schools offer parents choice, particularly in poorer neighborhoods. But they also provide a counterweight to the so-called "educrats" and unions, often derided by Bloomberg and others. The lack of the union and of longtime school administrators holds particular appeal for many on the political right. It is no coincidence that one of the leading academic proponents of charters schools is the Goldwater Institute in Arizona -- named for the founder of the modern American conservative moment.

Want more information and details on the pros and cons of charter schools in New York and elsewhere? Check out the complete articles and numerous other articles and links in the Gotham Gazette…