Sara Mead and Andrew J. Rotherham, two of my favorite educational researchers, have inspired me to save the charter school movement with five brilliant if perhaps too far-sighted suggestions for reform.

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Here are my suggestions for fixing that situation, based largely on what I learned from Mead and Rotherham:

1. Stop letting local school boards authorize charters. Mead, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation, and Rotherham, co-director of Education Sector and a member of the Virginia Board of Education, used a grant from the Annie E.Casey Foundation to analyze reports they oversaw on charter schools in California, Minnesota, Arizona, Ohio, Texas, Colorado, Florida and Michigan and four cities: New York, Indianapolis, Chicago and the District. They conclude that "perhaps the most significant lesson of the charter school movement to date" is that the number and quality of charter schools depend on who does the authorizing and how well they do it. State school boards, universities and independent bodies like the D.C. Public Charter School Board appear to do a better job of authorizing charters than local school boards, which see charters as competition for students, funds and prestige. California, Colorado and Florida have built strong charter systems with local school boards as the prime authorizers, but only by creating alternative authorizers for charter proposals that get turned down by local school boards.

2. Don't listen to parents about charters. I have twisted Mead's and Rotherham's conclusion a bit, but not much. Here is what they say: "Charter advocates often point to parental choice as the ultimate form of accountability: If schools are not delivering results, the argument goes, parents will go elsewhere. Yet experience has shown that parents choose schools for a variety of reasons, and often, even low-performing charter schools are popular with parents." They are right. Many parents I have spoken with chose a charter for no other reason than it was close to their home, the same reason so many parents like their mediocre neighborhood schools. Since one of the salient points of the charter school movement was to be able to get rid of schools that aren't working, authorizers should put more weight on results in the classroom than how many parents have signed up.

3. Kill laws that limit the number and autonomy of charters...

4. Judge charters on individual student gains...

5. Get rid of the lemons...

For the complete article, please visit The Washington Post web site (direct link to article).