Charter Schools Against the Odds is available from the Hoover Institution.
Major policy changes are needed to “level the playing field” for charter schools, a new book argues. It wants changes that include equitable funding in relation to regular public schools, empowerment of new authorizers besides school districts, and elimination of arbitrary caps on the number of charters.
The volume, issued Oct. 23 by the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, analyzes laws and policies that it suggests curtail the growth of charters and impede their quality, and makes recommendations on how to create a more charter-friendly climate. The Hoover Institution is a think tank based at Stanford University.
“[T]he playing field has been tilted more sharply against charter schools than charter enthusiasts first understood, and creating large numbers of good new schools has proven more difficult than expected,” the book’s editor, Paul T. Hill, the director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, at the University of Washington in Seattle, writes in the closing chapter.
