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Charters Adjusting to Common-Core Demands

Morgan Smith, 6, a student at the Intergenerational School in Cleveland, works on an English assignment. The charter school is preparing for the common-core standards.

—Dustin Franz for Education Week

Schools' flexibility seen as potential benefit

By Katie Ash

Charter schools throughout the country are coping with myriad challenges in preparing for the Common Core State Standards, an effort that could force them to make adjustments from how they train their teachers to the types of curriculum they use to the technology they need to administer online tests.

Charter schools were designed to serve as independent entities with a great deal of autonomy to operate outside the rules that govern traditional public schools. Yet charters, as public schools, are also expected to adhere to the common core, a set of uniform academic expectations adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia.

Many of the academic, financial, and administrative issues charters face closely mirror those of their regular public school counterparts, including concerns about the high costs of implementing the standards and the challenges of putting the technological infrastructure in place for online testing. Charter advocates have complained for years that they have not received funding comparable to that of regular public schools, which could...