Word: charter
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...CHARTER-SCHOOL MOVEMENT IS NOT yet big. Just 11 states, beginning with Minnesota in 1991, have passed laws permitting the creation of autonomous public schools like Northlane; a dozen more have similar laws in the works. Most states have restricted the number of these schools (100 in California, 25 in Massachusetts) in an attempt to appease teachers' unions and other opponents. Nevertheless, the charter movement is being heralded as the latest and best hope for a public-education system that has failed to deliver for too many children and cannot compete internationally...
...Charters can bring real innovation into the classroom and challenge other public schools to raise their standards," insists Massachusetts Governor William Weld. Parents are clearly eager for alternatives: just consider the growth of the home-schooling movement, which now involves half a million children. Where charter schools have opened, they are thronged with applicants. Where they have not, parents and educators are moving mountains to create them, either from scratch or from the frayed cloth of old public schools...
...required to send reams of forms to district offices before they can fix a broken window, change the school menu, take a class on a field trip or buy new textbooks. To make real innovations, Chan found herself perpetually fighting for waivers. In 1992, when California enacted a charter-school law, Chan was one of the first to apply. "We wanted the waiver of all waivers," she explains. "The charter takes the handcuffs off the principal, the teacher and the parents -- the people who know the kids best. In return, we are held responsible for how kids...
...Granted charter status last fall, Vaughn Next Century, with a budget of $4.6 million, became a case study in how to take the money and run -- in the direction of greater efficiency and higher student achievement. Chan totally revamped spending. She put services like payroll and provisioning the cafeteria out for competitive bids; she reorganized special education. By year's end she had managed to run up a $1.2 million surplus, which she proceeded to plow back into the school. She added new computers, an after- school soccer program and, most important, more teachers, so that the number of students...
...academic achievement, in the four years since Chan has been principal, test scores have risen markedly. She believes that with charter status, further gains will come fast. For one thing, Chan has far more control over her staff and their duties than do principals working under union and district rules, including the power to hire and fire. Teachers at Vaughn work longer hours than they did before the school went charter, but they are paid more and given more authority. Every faculty member serves on one of eight parent-teacher committees that meet weekly and essentially run the school...