The U.S. Department of Education has issued guidance on how the requirements of the No Child Left Behind act should be interpreted as affecting charter schools. It includes specifics on how the highly-qualified-teacher requirement applies to charters, whether such schools must to make adequate yearly progress like other public schools, and how the public school choice and supplemental services provisions impact charter schools. While several of these "clarifications" are exceedingly complex and may prove clumsy to implement, it appears that the Department has done a conscientious job of trying to reconcile the dictates of NCLB with the singularities of charter schools. Still, one wonders if there may be a basic mismatch between an idea (charters) that wants schools to do things differently and a massive federal law that essentially wants them all to do the same things. The guidelines can be found at www.ed.gov/offices/OII/choice/charterguidance03.doc.
