Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform is her usual blunt self in a recent exchange with the editors of USA Today, who bemoan financial, curricular, and administrative scandals among charter schools and call for greater accountability for them. Allen points out that the fact that some charters have been closed is a sign that accountability is working - and places the fault for bad charters squarely at the feet of sponsors who aren't doing their job. (Of course some schools have closed because their founders just weren't qualified to run a school. Or it was a school that nobody wanted to attend.) She also calls for greater diversity in charter sponsorship - an important and timely idea that Colorado has just embraced (see below) - and for removing obstacles that many sponsors and districts deliberately place before charter schools. As if to prove Allen's charge, an Alameda, California charter school may have to go to court to force its district to release funding from a parcel tax increase slated for local public schools. District officials give no reason for withholding the money, besides vague assertions that distributing it might be illegal. Such nickeling and diming of charter schools is widespread and gives credence to the notion that sometimes the greatest obstacles to successful charter schools are the very districts that are supposed to be sponsoring them.
"Charters lack accountability," USA Today, May 3, 2004
"Resistance hinders success," by Jeanne Allen, USA Today, May 3, 2004
"Charter school feels cheated out of funds," by John Gelaurdi, Alameda Times-Star, May 1, 2004