It’s the 20th anniversary of the nation’s first charter schools opening in Minnesota and the 16th anniversary of public charters setting up shop in the District of Columbia. Now, charters enroll 41 percent of the District’s public school students, for a rate second only to that of New Orleans. We caught up with Cane, the executive director of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, a charter advocacy group.
Charter schools have grown, sure, but how have they changed in nature and program offerings over the past 16 years?
The number of innovations is now far greater than we first started. When we got started 16 years ago, no one knew where this was going. Two schools opened with 160 students. It’s like comparing an infant to a 50-year-old. Extended school year and school day was really a charter school innovation, and most who are starting charters know that with some of the kids we deal with it takes more time.
The kids you deal with?
The economically disadvantaged children are often very far behind. If you just want to do a traditional 180-day school year, at a certain number of hours a day, you’re not going to have that impact.
What kinds of experiments were tried but maybe abandoned because they weren’t as successful as other innovations?
I don’t recall any innovations being abandoned. Individual schools failed. This is an unreasonable question to ask me. I can’t summon up every school. We had an early-immersion school that failed, but we now have other immersion schools that are very successful.
OK. … Well, what’s next in the great experiment?
There are other innovations coming down the pike, there are different charter management organizations, there are plenty other things to be inventive with, but I can’t predict what they’re going to be. The Public Charter School Board has nearly 15,000 names on waiting lists. The issue is not so much what’s coming down the pike, but how much, and when?
– Lisa Gartner
