Charter Schools and Accountability in Public Education.Practically everyone has an opinion about the values and purposes of the charter school movement, and these views tend to be spread across the political spectrum. These divergent di·ver·gent adj. 1. Drawing apart from a common point; diverging. 2. Departing from convention. 3. Differing from another: a divergent opinion. 4. opinions can be traced to the fact charter schools exist in 37 states and the District of Columbia District of Columbia, federal district (2000 pop. 572,059, a 5.7% decrease in population since the 1990 census), 69 sq mi (179 sq km), on the east bank of the Potomac River, coextensive with the city of Washington, D.C. (the capital of the United States). and are subject to substantially different laws and rules. In Arizona, schools may be chartered by several entities, including local school districts, and they can provide charters to schools outside their own service area. Other states, such as Massachusetts, have taken a slow-growth approach to chartering to ensure quality. Given the diversity of this movement, developing public policy requires information about how and whether these "public" schools are being held accountable for proper use of public funds See Fund, 3. See also: Public and achieving the purposes for which they were originally chartered. Paul T. Hill, a professor at the University of Washington, and Robin Lake, an associate director of the university's Center for Reinventing Public Education, attempt to answer these complex questions in Charter Schools and Accountability in Public Education. They explore the thesis that charter schools have multiple forms of accountability: political bodies that legislate To enact laws or pass resolutions by the lawmaking process, in contrast to law that is derived from principles espoused by courts in decisions. their existence, entities that issue charters, parents, teachers and various partnering agencies that support and sustain them. Hill and Lake assert that the very nature of chartering promotes school accountability by (1) identifying all adults involved with the schools as accountable parties; (2) creating freedom of action in the use of time and money; and (3) encouraging public and private investments in school capacity. Further, they contend, intense news attention on charter schools actually has driven most of them to "conservative, proven approaches." (Charter Schools and Accountability in Public Education by Paul T. Hill and Robin J. Lake, Brookings Institution Brookings Institution, at Washington, D.C.; chartered 1927 as a consolidation of the Institute for Government Research (est. 1916), the Institute of Economics (est. 1922), and the Robert S. Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government (est. 1924). Press, Washington, D.C., 2002, 124 pp. with index, $15.95 softcover soft·cov·er adj. Not bound between hard covers: softcover books; a softcover edition. ) William G. Keane Associate Professor of Educational Leadership, Oakland University History Oakland University was created in 1957 when Matilda Dodge Wilson, widow of automobile magnate John Francis Dodge, and her second husband Alfred Wilson donated their 1,500-acre estate to Michigan State University, including Meadow Brook Hall, Sunset Terrace and all the , Rochester, Mich. |
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