Regular Public Schools Start to Mimic Charters

A student in the Advancement Via Individual Determination program at Lincoln High School in Tacoma, Wash., solves a math problem. The school’s Lincoln Center program is modeled after charter schools.

—Dan Lamont for Education Week

By Mary Ann Zehr

Collaborations popping up across the country between charter and traditional public schools show promise that charter schools could fulfill their original purpose of becoming research-and-development hothouses for public education, champions of charters say.

But both supporters and skeptics of charter schools agree that so far the cooperative efforts are not widespread nor are most of them very deep.

The U.S. Department of Education spent $6.7 million in fiscal 2009 on grants to states for charters to share what they've learned with other schools. It is now conducting a feasibility study on ways to support the spread of promising charter school practices, said Scott D. Pearson, the department's acting director of...