Sentences with phrase «school authorizers seemed»

Early on, the role of charter school authorizers seemed so straightforward that little focus was placed on them, while the politics of chartering and the action surrounding the schools themselves consumed most of the attention.

Not exact matches

They commonly serve disadvantaged students; they are all under pressure to attract parents and to satisfy a small number of authorizers; one school may deliberately imitate another by adopting a policy that seems to be working in the other school; schools may also imitate one another unconsciously (as when teachers who have worked at one school are hired by another and bring their knowledge with them).

I am not suggesting that the Arnold Foundation (or the charter movement in general) abandon all quality control efforts, but I think quality is best promoted by relying heavily on parent judgement and otherwise relying on a decentralized system of authorizers with the most contextual information to make decisions about opening and closing schools if parents seem to have difficulty assessing quality on their own.

In short, the takeaway from the charter literature seems to be that they are, on average, more effective than traditional public schools in urban settings and perhaps should be encouraged there, but that authorizers and policy contexts matter tremendously in determining whether these schools succeed or not.

I'm not sure I can prove it with hard data, but it sure seems clear to me that the cities and states with some of the highest - performing charter schools (Boston, Washington, D.C., New York State, Tennessee) are also home to some of the most thoughtful and effective authorizers.

So it seems that authorizers are generally unwilling to close a school that is failing to comply with federal or state law, but they are also unwilling to require the school to make changes to its special education program, presumably because the authorizers see this as infringement on charter autonomy.