The Charter School Express

Is proliferation interfering with quality?

By Gary Miron & Leigh Dingerson

The latest policy train gathering steam in education focuses on lifting caps, or limits, to charter school expansion. Currently, 24 states and the District of Columbia have some type of limit on charter school growth. These limits, some charter school supporters say, interfere with the goal of a thriving school marketplace.

The latest institution to jump on the expansion express is the U.S. Department of Education. In its July guidelines for the $4 billion Race to the Top program, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that funding priority would be given to those states that lifted or removed caps on charter expansion. In reaction, legislatures around the country began doing just that.

We believe there needs to be more consideration of the implications of lifting charter caps before this train leaves the station. A study released in June by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that, overall, charter schools are performing at levels lower than traditional public schools. Combined with evidence from an increasing number of statewide evaluations, the state-level findings from the Stanford study also suggest that quantity is the enemy of quality in the charter marketplace. ( "Study Casts Doubt on Charter School Results," ...