Nelson Smith, Progressive Policy Institute
July 9, 2003
California's decade-old public charter school program is one of the largest in the land. And, according to this summary of the evidence, the Golden State's 415 charter schools have nearly closed the achievement gap with the state's "century-old district system," while helping youngsters who need it most. Three recent studies utilizing schools' Academic Performance Index (API) show "striking progress" among students in California's charter schools and lead author Nelson Smith (now at New American Schools) to argue that charter schools "do a much better job than other public schools of improving academic performance of at-risk students." Yet California's charters face a wide range of obstacles. Smith criticizes California's 1992 charter school law for giving local districts too much control and providing too little oversight on how charter schools should be managed. Ending district monopolization of charter authorization (a major recommendation of the recent Fordham study on charter authorizers, available at http://www.edexcellence.net/doc/Full_report_no_embargo_notice.pdf), replicating effective charter schools and facilitating the creation of new ones, and establishing charter districts are among the reforms recommended here. For more information, see http://www.ppionline.org/documents/CA_Charters_0703.pdf.