Reply #40: "for profit management" - equals appx 10% of all charters

[mzteris]

and are becoming fewer every day.

Do math much?

"Republican idea"? Al Shanker - former President of the American Federation of Teachers - a Republican, right . . .


a little more on the founding....

Some members of the public are dissatisfied with educational quality and school district bureaucracies (Jenkins and Dow 1996). Today's charter-school initiatives are rooted in the educational reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, from state mandates to improve instruction, to school-based management, school restructuring, and private/public-choice initiatives.

Many people, President Clinton among them, see charter schools, with their emphasis on autonomy and accountability, as a workable political compromise and an alternative to vouchers. The charter approach uses market principles while insisting that schools be nonsectarian and democratic. For founders, starting a brand-new school is an exhausting, yet exhilarating experience that "stirs the creative and adaptive juices of everyone involved" (Ray Budde 1996).

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Ray Budde, an education professor who defined the term charter school and stated the ideas that led to a nationwide school reform movement, died on June 11 in Springfield, Mass. He was 82. . . Dr. Budde, a former assistant professor at the school of education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, first suggested the term "charter" for use in education in the 1970's to describe a novel contracting arrangement designed to support the efforts of innovative teachers within the public school system.

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The League had a plan fairly well thought out by
October 1988 when the Minneapolis Foundation
brought Al Shanker to Minnesota for The Itasca
Seminar. Two legislators present - Sen. Ember
Reichgott and Rep. Ken Nelson (both Democrats) - picked up the idea
and, as legislators are wont to do, began thinking
about legislation.

Sen. Reichgott's charter provision got into the Senate
omnibus bill in 1989 and again in 1990. The House
would not accept it. As the conference committee was
breaking up in 1990 Rep. Becky Kelso (Dem) went over to
Reichgott and said, "If you'd like to try that charter
program again next year I'd like to help you". ...

Interestingly, in today’s highly partisan environment –
both in Minnesota and nationally – Reichgott, Nelson
and Kelso were all Democrats; Carlson (Gov of MN), a Republi-
can, picked up on the public school choice initiatives
advanced by his Democratic predecessor, Rudy
Perpich, in the mid-to-late 1980s.