Reform By Charter

School Administrator, August, 1997 by Donna Harrington-Lueker

Most superintendents insist that if it's good to allow one school or group of schools to operate outside the confines of a state's education code or a union contract, it's even better for all schools to be given the option. Most insist, too, that charter school legislation include local school boards as chartering authorities.

External Pressure

Charter school advocates see things differently. For one thing, they say, charter school laws that allow someone other than the local board to grant the charter result in higher numbers of charter schools. Among the states that allow or require another chartering authority are Massachusetts, where the state board of education approves charters; North Carolina, where charter organizers can go to the local board, the state board of education, or a university; and Michigan, where local boards, community colleges and universities, and intermediate school districts can sponsor a charter.

And having a significant number of charter schools is what's crucial, they say. "The goal isn't just to create isolated schools. It's to use charter schools as tools to bring a real and appropriate level of pressure on the [education] system as a whole," says Eric Premack, director of the Charter Schools Project at the Institute for Education Reform at California State University-Sacramento.

"I've had superintendents tell me, 'I can't get my schools to do what they need to do until they know that charter schools will do it if they don't.' ... Charters are just a powerful way to leverage change in a school system," Premack says.

Drawing Limits

And what about superintendents who've decided to take the plunge? Most don't talk about the need to put pressure on other schools in the school system. In fact, many reject that premise of the charter school movement. Instead, they focus on the importance of providing students and their families with public school choice.

"I'm a proponent of choices for families and children," says Mary Lou McGrath, who recently retired from the superintendency in Cambridge, Mass."

Harold Larson, superintendent of the LeSueur-Henderson Community Schools in LeSueur, Minn., takes a similar stance. "We view [our charter school] as providing our parents with the opportunity to choose nontraditional learning environment," he says of the district's New Century Charter School, which provides 95 students in grades 7-12 with an innovative hands-on curriculum that emphasizes community-based learning.

But the choices one superintendent might be comfortable with, another might shun. After California passed its charter school law in 1992, a group of parents approached the tiny Hickman School District (enrollment 900) with a proposed home-schooling program that enrolled 75 students in its first year. This year, Superintendent Richard Ferriera expects that number to soar to 650 when the three-school district opens a site 90 minutes away in Berkeley.

"The question is, [as a charter school] can we set up a site in another district's domain?" says Ferriera. He's arguing that they can, though, he allows, "we'll know when we end up in litigation."