Jon Schroeder, Progressive Policy Institute
May 2004
Veteran charter-school ace Jon Schroeder authored this fine new report for the Progressive Policy Institute, the second of six case studies of the evolution of the charter movement at the state or (in New York City) municipal level. Supported by the Gates Foundation, this worthy series distills valuable lessons from actual experience. This fifty-pager does a nice job of extracting nine lessons and seven recommendations from Minnesota's saga, ranging from the role of private funders to the need for more diverse sponsors, to the challenges of dovetailing the idiosyncratic essence of charter schooling with the uniform demands of NCLB. Schroeder concludes that neither "past success" nor "current momentum" will propel the charter movement (in Minnesota or elsewhere) to its needed "new level as a proactive strategy for changing and improving public education." He's surely got that right. Have a look, online at http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=110&subsecid=134&contentid=252555.
