In many respects, the Charter School of Wilmington should make the charter school movement proud. It is considered the "flagship" of the Delaware public education system, and it posts the state's highest SAT scores and a nearly perfect college matriculation rate. An independent study found that the school is making greater test score gains than comparison schools, even controlling for demographics and prior student achievement. It's such a great school that U.S. Senator Tom Carper-one of the nation's leading Democratic proponents of charter schools-sends his sons there. There's just one catch: the school uses a selective admissions policy, complete with an entrance exam. That policy cuts against a central tenet of charter schools-that they are public schools open to all. As the excellent News Journal article points out, none of the nation's selective high schools (think Stuyvesant) are charter schools, except this one. The school's supporters argue that high-achieving students have special needs too; a math teacher eloquently explains, "Bush's mantra is no child left behind. My mantra is no child held back." Good mantra, bad politics. We say keep the school, but remove the "charter" label. Plenty of states have created schools for the gifted, such as the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics; Delaware can do the same, while keeping the notion that "charter" equals "public."
"Selective admission makes Charter too elite, critics say," by Cecilia Le, Wilmington News Journal, March 3, 2006