Check the original charter-school blueprint.
Specs say "choice for all."
Photo by Will Scullin
As originally conceived twenty years ago, charter schools were to offer alternatives to the traditional public-school model—maybe Betsy wants a school that focuses more on drama than the football team or Davey wants one that prioritizes STEM learning. Somewhere along the way, however, many states restricted charters to “high need” communities awash in disadvantaged kids and failing schools. As a result, 70 percent of charter students are on free or reduced-price lunch, and most charters are urban. But that’s starting to change. Greater numbers of suburban students are venturing into the halls of charter schools—central Ohio alone had more than 10,000 suburban and rural students attend charter schools last year—sparking what Fordham’s Terry Ryan dubbed a “second generation” of charters. And it couldn’t come fast enough. Like their urban counterparts, kiddos in suburbia deserve the ability to choose schools that are right for them. Just ask any of the original architects of the charter theory.
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“Charter schools lure suburban kids, too,” by Jennifer Smith Richards, The Columbus Dispatch, November 27, 2011. |