Word: charterers
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...given how hard it is to start just one small charter school, how will it be possible to remake the entire system? In New York City, Meier hopes to show the way by building a new citywide support system for independent public schools. "We want to create a system that cherishes their idiosyncratic qualities, that encourages them to be entrepreneurial and creative and in which we invent some new forms of accountability." Without it, she fears, charter schools will be nothing more than "cute exceptions...
...maybe not. Minnesota doesn't have many charter schools, but it does have the longest experience with them. Educators there say the schools have had an influence well beyond their numbers. In several towns and cities, education officials have been spurred to reform by the mere prospect that a charter school would open in town...
...Forest Lake, a suburb of St. Paul, after facing down a group of parents who wanted to charter a Montessori program, the local school board decided to form such a program of its own. In the small college town of Northfield, the threat of secession by a charter group led the district to create a Spanish- language immersion program for first- and second-graders, introduce multiage classrooms and enrich the math program for middle-schoolers. "The charter made it easier to change things," admits Northfield superintendent Charles Kyte. "If we weren't progressive enough and didn't change, then somebody...
Such change is inevitable in the view of Ray Budde, a retired University of Massachusetts professor of school administration who is credited with inventing the charter-school idea. "If you see kids leaving you and money leaving you and you're criticized about the job you're doing, you're going to respond," he says. "This is a wake-up call for the Establishment: the old organization doesn't fit the times. It's like the Berlin Wall -- it's got to come down. But it's going to take 10 or 20 years for something new to emerge...
...meantime, parents want better schools now. And in spite of the obstacles, they are organizing charter schools in droves and flocking to what few exist. Principal David Lehman of West Michigan Academy of Environmental Science, near Grand Rapids, has a sheaf of applications several inches thick for the year 1997, though his school has no track record. This summer he got a letter from Amy and Ron Larva of Grand Rapids. Their child was not yet born, they wrote, but they wanted to reserve a kindergarten spot for the year...