According to its latest ranking (April 2000) of state charter school laws, The Center for Education Reform identifies 19 jursidictions as having 'strong laws,' and 18 states with 'weak laws'. This is a significant change from the 1998 rankings in which 24 jurisdictions were rated with strong laws and 11 with weak. The change reflects changes to legislation brought about in response, in part, to concerns about accountability and quality. The rankings and numbers of schools, by state, are provided in Table 1.

{Source: Rankings from the Center for Education Reform at http://www.edreform.com/charter_schools/laws/ranking_2000.htm , number of charter schools for September 1999 from the U.S. Department of Education, The State of Charter Schools 2000, for April 2000 from the Center for Education Reform. Note that the DOE counts a single charter operating at multiple sites as one school; it is not clear how the CER treats this situation.}

The fact that 26 of these jurisdictions have passed their charter school legislation in the last four years indicates not only how recent a phenomenon charter schooling is, but also its elevated prominence on both the public and official political agendas.

The total number of schools in operation according to The State of Charter Schools 2000 was 1,484 in September 1999, of which 421 were new schools. The CER count as of April 2000 was 1,701 schools.

An alternative set of criteria for assessing charter school legislation is provided and has been applied by the American Federation of Teachers, which supports charter schools, but insists that they must be accountable and responsible to public standards, institutions and regulations:

Government Support

Apart from legislation, another key element is the level of government support for charter schools. As noted, charter schools often face barriers because of their inability to access the same level of funding as public schools. This can be particularly critical if there is no access to start-up or capital funds, as is the case in Alberta. In the U.S., support for charter schools varies greatly at the state level, but has been growing steadily at the federal level. President Clinton has emphasized charter schools as a key component of education reform in each State of the Union address since 1996. The Clinton-Gore budget for fiscal 2001 contained $175 million in funding for charter schools, up considerably from the $18 million spent in 1996, and the $6 million allocated when the program first started in 1995.¹³ The 4^th Year Report notes for 1998-99 a significant drop in the number of schools citing difficulties with start-up funds, a change attributed to the increased levels of federal funding.¹⁴

7. CHARTER SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES

Proponents argue that while charter schools have not been in operation long enough for definitive evaluation, a number of encouraging trends can be seen. According to well-known charter schooling advocate Joe Nathan: "charter schools can have a positive effect on student achievement, attendance and attitude … [and] are serving many youngsters who have not succeeded in traditional public schools."¹⁵ The ability to demonstrate that charter schools consistently deliver positive educational results is critical to ongoing support for charter schooling, and yet that evidence, beyond favourable anecdotal accounts, seems difficult to gather. Part of the challenge here remains the recent birth of charter schooling in general, and of most individual schools in particular. Another part, no doubt, is the difficulty of quantifying outcomes which are qualitative in nature. It may also be that most of the studies have been performed by advocates or critics of charter schooling, rather than disinterested education researchers (if such exist).

Writing in 1996, Linda Jacobson observed that there have not been many thorough studies of learning outcomes in charter schools because "many independent researchers at colleges and universities and the major research organizations shied away from this politically charged subject, which has often been linked with vouchers and privatization. [As a result,] the field was left primarily to supporters and critics of the charter movement."¹⁶ While it may be true that some schools have now been operating long enough for an assessment of their performance, these account for only a small fraction of the schools now operating, and therefore, are not necessarily representative of the whole.

Quite apart from being authored by individuals on record as strongly supporting or opposing charter schools, many studies took place in the beginning years of charter schooling and/or focused largely on the issues of charter schooling implementation rather than on education delivery. For example, the 1997 Final Report of the Hudson Institute's Charter Schools in Action Project exemplifies all these tendencies: it was authored by well known charter schooling advocates such as Chester Finn, it studied 50 schools during the 1996-97 school year, and relied on four sets of quantitative data.¹⁷ To a considerable degree this data was generated through survey instruments which required parents, teachers, and students to describe their feelings and evaluations of their charter school experience. This is meaningful information, but it is neither the most objective evaluation of charter schooling, nor data that measures the ability of charter schools to provide superior education outcomes for their students.

Unfortunately, most of the studies on charter schooling to date suffer the defects just noted: either they rely on self-reporting from charter school operators or consumers (students, parents, etc.), or they present anecdotal evidence of experience in individual schools which is not generalizable to the population of charter schools as a whole. This is even true of the massive four-year study funded by the U.S. federal Department of Education, which is discussed in the next section.

The Four Year Study of Charter Schools

In 1995, the U.S. Department of Education initiated a four-year study—the most comprehensive of its type—of charter schools in operation in the U.S.¹⁸ This study was undertaken by the private research firm RPP International, in conjunction with the Department of Education, the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, and the National Institute on Student Achievement, Curriculum, and Assessment. The partners issued a report after each of the study's four years.

The object of the First Year Report was to "describe the range of charter implementation circumstances [the founding of charter schools] and issues that have emerged in this early stage of charter implementation."¹⁹ The Report goes on to note that future research will address the following:

• "What types of educational programs and practices do charter schools offer, and how distinctive are these approaches compared to those of other public schools?
• Under what conditions do charter schools' educational programs and practices improve (or worsen) student outcomes?
• How do charter school operations and organizational arrangements—including personnel policies, parent participation, and governance—affect their educational programs and practices?
• Do some charter schools provide models of educational programs and strategies that could be adopted by other public schools?"²⁰

These are precisely the questions that policy-makers need clear answers to in order to evaluate the charter schooling experience and draw informed conclusions about the wisdom of this particular education reform. For brevity's sake, we might call these the 'outcome and policy' questions as opposed to the 'implementation' questions with which the first report dealt.

The 'outcome' questions were not answered in the Second Year Report, which listed them among the matters to be dealt with in "subsequent reports." Instead, the Second Year Report provided an update on the 'implementation' issues treated in the previous report.²¹

The Introduction to the Third Year Report, released in May 1999, states as follows: "This Report, the third annual report from the Study, presents interim findings that focus on describing how charter schools are being implemented. Subsequent reports will address all of the questions listed above."²² Those questions "listed above" are the 'outcome and policy' questions which are (once more) set out in detail, along with a description of the methodology to be employed to answer them.

Finally, in February 2000, the Fourth Year Report: The State of Charter Schools 2000 was released:

This Report, the fourth annual report from the Study, presents findings that focus on describing how charter schools are being implemented. Other Study reports address the remaining questions listed above.²³

Once again the questions "listed above" are the 'outcome' questions about student achievement and impacts on public education, and the 'policy' questions about models of education developed that public schools might use, the lessons learned from charter schooling that public education might employ, and the policy implications for state and national legislators.²⁴

In short, the entire four year study ended up focusing on the 'implementation' issues of how many charter schools were started, the barriers they faced, their size, their student population, etc. These are all important sets of data. In particular, they provide information about how easy or difficult it is to establish charter schools within a variety of different legislative and social settings. They do not, for the most part, provide data about the central issue on which advocates and critics disagree: are charter schools, in and of themselves, a worthwhile education reform initiative?

The results of the Four Year Study, as reported in The State of Charter Schools 2000, include the following information:

• As of September 1999, a total of 1,484 charter schools operated on 1,605 charter school sites in 31 states and the District of Columbia, serving more than 250,000 students. This represents 0.8% of public school enrolment in the states operating charter schools.
• More than half of charter school students are found in three states: Arizona, California, and Michigan.
• Since 1992, a total of 59 charter schools have closed, almost 4% of those that have opened.
• The median enrolment at charter schools is 137 students per school, compared to a public school median enrolment of 475. The median student to teacher ration for charter schools was 16:1 compared to 17.2:1 in all public schools.
• Almost 70% of charter schools are newly created, 20% are converted public schools, and almost 10% are converted private schools.
• White students comprised 48% of charter school enrolment in 1998, compared to 59% for all public schools. In several states, charter schools enroll a much higher percentage of students of colour than do all public schools in those states. These states have 589 charter schools, or 40% of the total. On the other hand, charter schools in states with 264 schools, or 18% of the total, serve a higher proportion of white students than do all public schools in those states.
• The proportion of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch (a common measure of poverty) is slightly higher than the proportion in all public schools. On the other hand, the percentage of students with reported disabilities is 8%, compared to 11% in public schools in those states.²⁵

This last point, like much in the study, relies on self-reporting by charter schools, and it would not be surprising if, wherever possible, school operators reported this data in ways that reflect well on their schools. The same is true of several other questions posed by the study, such as the accountability of schools, their measurement of student performance, their relationship with the local or area school boards, etc. It is relatively easy to predict the responses when asking people if they think they are doing a good job.

Evidence Confirming the Pros or Cons of Charter Schools

Bearing in mind the limitations of the data provided by the Four Year Study and other examinations, this section examines whether charter school experience confirms the arguments of the advocates or critics of charter schooling.

Innovative Service Delivery

There seems little in the way of conclusive evidence that charter schools have, to date, fulfilled their promise of delivering an innovative education experience to their students.

As noted, after promising each year to address this question, by the fourth and presumably final report, the Four Year Study failed to even attempt to provide data on this question.

Well-known charter school advocate Joe Nathan has recently published a new edition of his work Charter Schools, originally published in 1996. The strongest evidence he is able to provide is the claim that 21 of 31 schools studied in 1998 (how these were selected is not discussed) "had clear evidence of improving student achievement."²⁶ Of these, five specific examples are noted. Of this particular study Seymour Sarason notes:

Methodologically the study is seriously flawed. Ten of the 31 schools did not submit full results or any results at all; data were obtained by questionnaires and telephone calls; and the Center had no way of knowing if negative data were withheld.²⁷

By contrast, writing in Education Week on the Web, Thomas Good and Jennifer Braden claim to have made an extensive review of the existing research on charter schools, and conclude that "hope for innovation has yet to be realized. ...To date, virtually no exciting new approaches to teaching have occurred in charter schools, despite their smaller classes and freedom from many bureaucratic structures and rules."²⁸ The same authors report that "student achievement, in general, has not been positively enhanced in charter schools when compared with other public schools."²⁹ Similar issues are discussed in a December 1999 article from the Akron Beacon Journal, where the authors examine the role of EMOs and their tendency to apply a "cookie cutter approach" to charter schooling.³⁰

Linda Jacobson has written about the difficulties in assessing innovation and success in charter schools. The objectivity of those observing charter school experience has been questioned. Advocates such as Joe Nathan advised the Four Year Study, and the sponsoring Clinton Administration is clearly on record as supporting charter school expansion. The tests taken by students in charter schools are not necessarily the same as those used in the public system. Charter school pioneer Louann Bierlein has noted that charters sponsored by school boards are more likely to grant charters to schools that will not provide strong competition, while charter schools sponsored by other agencies such as universities and state bodies "are beginning to resemble traditional schools."³¹

Parental Control

On this question, the evidence is much more compelling, as study after study shows high levels of parental satisfaction with charter schools. The Four Year Study reports that 70% of operating charter schools report that they have a waiting list, as demand for their product exceeds supply.

Serving Special Populations / Selectivity

As noted in the data from the Four Year Study, charter schools seem to be attracting a smaller proportion of students with disabilities, but a larger portion of children from minority communities and from poor families. Whether this means the glass is half full or half empty seems to be a matter of perspective. For advocates such as Joe Nathan, these data are evidence of the ability of charter schools to reach out to those not well served by traditional schooling, and they refute those "who feared that most of these schools would serve affluent, successful students, becoming 'taxpayer-supported elitist academies.'"³² Countering this assessment, Good and Braden argue that "charter schools in general have further segregated students on the basis of income level, ethnicity, and special needs. Some charter schools have even been organized around parents' cultural and religious beliefs."³³ Casey Cobb and Gene Glass have conducted a study of Arizona charter schools (Arizona is the state with the largest percentage of students in charter schools) which concluded the following:

Nearly half of the charter schools exhibited evidence of substantial ethnic separation. Arizona charter schools not only contained a greater proportion of White students, but when comparable nearby traditional public schools were used for comparison, the charters were typically 20 percentage points higher in White enrollment than the other publics. Moreover, the charter schools that had a majority of ethnic minority students enrolled in them tended to be either vocational secondary schools that do not lead to college or 'schools of last resort' for students being expelled from the traditional public schools. The degree of ethnic separation in Arizona schools is large enough and consistent enough to warrant concern among education policymakers.³⁴

Of course, even if this assessment is accurate, it may be judging features that are unique to Arizona's charter schools. A study by professor Amy Wells concluded "that charter schools in three California districts predominantly existed in wealthy neighborhoods where parents had high educational levels."³⁵ The National Education Association (NEA), in a 1999 Issue Paper, called for stronger requirements for Charter Schools to comply with the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).³⁶

Autonomy / Accountability Trade-Off

According to The State of Charter Schools 2000, a selected sample of charter schools "reported monitoring in the areas of school finances (94 percent), compliance with state or federal regulations (88 percent), student achievement (87 percent) and student attendance (81 percent)." At the same time the Report notes that "State legislation and regulatory practices differ greatly across states, and charter schools reported varying amounts of external monitoring as well as variation in which areas were monitored." Four states (Florida, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Wisconsin) representing 195 schools reported less than 55% monitoring in each of the areas.³⁷ One drawback to this data is that it relies on self-reporting by charter school operators, who are not likely to highlight any lack of accountability on their part.

The NEA, which supports charter schools, nonetheless has called for legislation that would strengthen the reporting obligations of charter schools, and make information about all their activities open to the public: "Charter school laws without adequate accountability measures open the door to gross abuses that hurt students."³⁸ This issue is a critical one, because many organizations that strongly support the growth of charter schooling, such as the Center for Education Reform (CER), consistently call for so-called 'strong' laws, which turn out to be legislation that maximizes the autonomy of charter schools. When the NEA recommends 'stronger' charter school legislation, in order to restrict autonomy and strengthen accountability, it is urging policy makers to enact what the CER would call 'weak' charter schooling laws.

Similarly, Good and Braden argue that charter schools "represent a mechanism for encouraging innovation, especially in inner-city schools ... with modified legislation." Their recently published book (The Great School Debate: Choice, Vouchers, and Charters) suggests that a variety of reforms in state laws and supervisory mechanisms is necessary.³⁹ The shift downwards of the CER rankings of legislation in several states suggests that some of this reform may have occurred.

Even strong supporters of charter schooling, such as the authors of the Hudson Institute report Charter Schools in Action (1997), identify accountability as one of the main problems the movement faces:

Yet today, it's hard to know-at either the "macro" or "micro" level-how well America's charter schools are actually doing. The evidence remains fragmentary. Much of the desired data simply does not yet exist. Part of the reason is that the charter strategy remains so new that it's hard to gauge its results. But part of the explanation is that today's charter-school accountability systems remain underdevelnped, often clumsy and ill-fitting, and are themselves beset by dilemmas.

As they note, part of the problem is with the charter lÚÔÂÔlation itself and its administration by the state: "we have not found a single jurisdiction with a well-formed plan for dealing with problem schools or outright failures. Few even have an adequate monitoring program to pick up early warnings of schools in trouble."⁴⁰

The challenge, as noted earlier, is the trade-off between autonomy and accountability. For charter schools to work, they require autonomy to engage in innovative education practices; at the same time, this autonomy must not serve as a means to engage in questionable practices. For example, should charter schools be a means to free operators from the constraints imposed by teachers' unions? If this is the effect, will it mean that charter schools attract superior or inferior teachers? The Third Year Report (1999) of the Four Year Study noted that of 24 states with operating charters, 14 required teacher certification. Nonetheless, of these, four states had at least 10% fewer certificated teachers in charter schools than in the public system generally. Another 10 states did not require teachers to be certificated, and all employed at least 10% fewer certificated teachers in charter schools than in the public system generally.

It should be noted that federal start-up funding for charter schools has been predicated from the outset (1994) on schools meeting criteria such as compliance with civil rights laws, having free tuition, and remaining non-sectarian. More recent changes have increased the funding for schools if the state charter legislation meets particular criteria, and require schools to participate in state assessments.⁴¹

Efficiency

As with many other areas, the evidence on this aspect of charter school performance tends to be anecdotal rather than systematic. Good and Braden report that "charter schools, as a group, have led to the transfer of a significant portion of states' funds from instructional to administrative costs.⁴² Hence, to date, charter schools have increased administration costs." The data on which this conclusion is based are not disclosed, but intuitively, it stands to reason that the economies of scale that a school board might achieve would be denied to charter schools, each of which must provide its own administration functions. The administrative load that operators must bear is often cited as a reason for poor reporting of administrative and education data to external authorities.

In addition, the suggestion has been made that education visionaries who establish charter schools may not have the "business, management, and legal expertise necessary to operate what amounts to a small business."⁴³

Charter Schools: As Yet Unproven

Despite extensive debate, and an expanding body of literature on charter schooling, the experience of charter schools in the U.S. to date cannot be said to confirm either the promises of their supporters, nor the fears of their detractors. Part of the reason for this is that the bulk of schools have been operating less than five years. Part also, is the great diversity in state legislation: the success or failure of charter schooling in any one jurisdiction may simply reflect the adequacy or inadequacy of state laws, or of the particular balance of state monitoring and support, not of the concept in general. If charter schools are to provide diverse, innovative experiments in education delivery, then it may well be that we will never be in a position to generalize about them, and it also follows that failures should be expected and even welcomed (for the lessons learned from them) along with successes.

The assessment of charter schooling can be crudely divided into two elements: its administrative successes or failures, and its achievement (or not) of improved educational results, the latter being measured not only in terms of charter school performance, but also with respect to improved practices in traditional public schooling. The strongest data, and the clearest lessons learned on the basis of U.S. experience of charter schooling to date, focus on the former: the challenges of implementing and running charter schools. What still remains very unclear—and it might be argued that for policy makers this is the most crucial information—is the ability of charter schools to make a real difference in education outcomes, for their own students, and for public education in general.

The difficulties documented with charter schools in the United States have reinvigorated debate over state regulation of them. For example, a senior social scientist with RAND Corp. and two education professors recently argued that if charter schools do become more widespread, there will need to be some means of community oversight to "ensure that there is a school for every student, that parents get help validating schools' claims, and that there is some connection between what students are taught at one level of education (for example, elementary school) and what the next higher level of education requires." Similarly, a further proliferation of charter schools will lead to increased demand for such things as external start-up capital, liability insurance, legal advice and other administrative and logistics support—all of which are typically more efficiently provided through a central source. These education experts argue that the best balance of private and public interests is to see charter schools as a means "to transform local boards from operators of a highly regulated bureaucracy to managers of a system of individual schools each with its own mission, clientele and basis of accountability."⁴⁴

8. CHARTER SCHOOLS IN CANADA

As elsewhere, interest in charter schools in Canada has been part of a broader debate on the directions and need for reform of public education, and represents one option within the broader movement for 'school choice'. As in the U.S., there are prominent proponents and critics of charter schooling, although institutions and organizations tend to divide on the issue on more predictably ideological grounds in Canada. Conservative institutes like the Fraser Institute are among the strongest voices for charter schooling, while teacher unions are invariably and implacably opposed. The Society for the Advancement of Excellence in Education (SAEE), based in British Columbia, is the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. Center for Education Reform (CER), strongly advocating school choice in general and charter schools in particular.

One of the most prominent proponents, Dr. Joe Freedman, has played a key role in building support for the basic idea, publishing a booklet arguing that charter schools can be a key means to break the "educational gridlock" that has been preventing significant education reform.⁴⁵ Murray Dobbin has been the most vocal critique of charter schools in Canada, with a report originally commissioned by the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation and published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.⁴⁶ In it, Dobbin stresses that models from other countries (primarily the United Kingdom and New Zealand), with very different education systems and problems, cannot simply be transferred to Canada. He rejects as overstated and unfounded charter school proponents' criticisms of the public education system, but nonetheless argues that these concerns need to be taken seriously. Reform of the public system to make it more flexible and responsive remains a key challenge.

Alberta

In 1994 Alberta became the first (and as yet only) province to enact legislation allowing charter schools, "as part of the move to expand the range of educational opportunities for Alberta students."⁴⁷ The rationale for and expectations of charter schools are set out by the Ministry of Education as follows:

Charter schools are part of the public education system and were set up to encourage innovative ways to improve student learning. They offer different or enhanced education programs, delivery methods or learning environments, and are only established when there is significant community support. Parents who choose to have their child educated in a charter school commit to being an active partner in that school.⁴⁸

Alberta legislation made provision for a maximum of 15 charter schools. In 1997-98, 12 schools were operation; in the current 1999-00 school year, only 10 schools are operating.

These schools range in size from 78 to 384 students, and serve a total enrollment of 2,069 students with an average enrolment of 207. Charter schools in Alberta serve 0.38% of the province's 549,064 students enrolled in public education.

As required by the legislation, all emphasize academic achievement, but the focus varies. Two schools target gifted children, one focuses on children whose first language is not English, one targets 'at risk' teens, another 'underachievers or those at risk of underachieving,' several stress a structured learning environment, and one combines basic education with a music curriculum based on the Suzuki method.⁴⁹ The most recent to open is operated by the Science Alberta Charter School Society.

Alberta's Charter School Legislation

Under the criteria which have been applied to evaluate the strength or weakness of U.S. state charter school legislation, the Alberta legislation would probably be judged a weak law. That is to say, it is fairly restrictive in terms of the conditions that charter schools must satisfy and limiting in terms of the number of schools and their funding. Although the Alberta charter school initiative has been criticized by many within the Canadian education establishment, the 'weakness' of Alberta's law should be, from the perspective of those worried about educational quality and integrity, a plus. Features of the Alberta regulations include the following:

Those wishing to establish the school are expected to consult with the local school board, become incorporated, hold public meetings and formally apply to the local board.

School boards consider and approve the applications.

If the school board rejects a proposal, the proponents can apply directly to the Minister.

The 'weakness' of the Alberta legislation is also confirmed by Dr. Freedman's criticism of the way Alberta has implemented charter schools: arguing that such a low cap should not have been placed on the number of schools that would be allowed, that existing schools should be allowed to convert to charter status, and that most of the charters should not have been granted to 'boutique' schools geared to special groups such as disaffected teenagers.⁵⁰ On the other hand, the extensive provisions and safeguards built into the Alberta legislation might be expected to help the province's charter schools avoid some of the problems (noted above) encountered in the U.S. experience. They may also account for the consistent operation to date of fewer than the maximum number of schools.

Alberta's Charter School Experience

Alberta's charter schools are now in their fourth year of operation. Some negative publicity tarnished the programme when the largest school (with 460 students) had its charter revoked by the Education Minister after financial and administrative irregularities led to a fiscal audit and a police investigation.⁵¹ Despite the attention Alberta has received for undertaking it, the charter schooling experiment does not seem to have caught hold in the public imagination, and there has been considerable hostility within the province to these schools. According to a 1998 newspaper account, considerable friction developed between charter school stakeholders (mainly operators and local boards) because of the "lack of accountability, poorly defined roles and a shortage of money."⁵²

In 1997, the Society for the Advancement of Excellence in Education, a pro-charter school research group in which Dr. Freedman is prominent, commissioned a two year in-depth study of Alberta's charter schools. This study's Initial Report, released in 1998, reported "high levels of satisfaction from parent and teacher supporters," with a majority of parents reporting "gains in student motivation and learning." Conducted by Lynn Bosetti, a professor of education at the University of Calgary, this study also reported that charter schools "face financial and regulatory obstacles that could threaten their long-term viability."⁵³

In February 2000, the final report Canada's Charter Schools at the Crossroads was released by SAEE. Its highlights include the following conclusions:

• "Charter schools ... are founded by parents and educators committed to seeking visions of schooling they could not realize in the regular public system. ... These innovations require an extended period of time to develop and to measure."
• "Parent satisfaction levels are generally high, and 82% of parents intend to keep their children in the schools. ... Most schools are fully subscribed and a number have lengthy waiting lists."
• "There is evidence that schools as they mature are dealing more successfully with the challenges of self-governance."
• "Performance results on provincial measures of learning show that charter school students are generally achieving at least as well as students in other jurisdictions."
• "Schools need to continue the development of specific benchmarks and means of tracking student performance over the long-term for provincially required learning goals and school-specific learning goals."
• "There appears to have been little concerted effort from existing school systems to inform themselves of what is being done at charter schools."
• "Some charter schools are attracting increasing numbers of students who have been unsuccessful in the regular system. Some of these students bring with them special needs that the charter schools may be ill equipped to handle."
• "The number of charter schools in Alberta has remained very small. Ten schools have a very limited impact on the system at large."⁵⁴

As in the U.S., charter schools in Alberta have struggled with implementation and operational issues, and Dr. Bosetti makes it clear that there has been little or no support for charter schools either from local school boards (which is predictable), or from the Education Department (which contrasts with the experience in many U.S. states). Most schools operating now are sponsored by the Minister of Education. As in the U.S., Alberta's charter schools have also been unable to demonstrate in any striking fashion that the quality of the education they deliver is superior to that of regular public schooling, nor that they have innovative practices from which traditional schooling in Alberta might benefit. On the other hand, the charter schooling experience in Alberta is only in its fourth year, and some schools have operated for only a fraction of that time.

Interest in Ontario

Increasingly, as developments in the U.S. and Alberta become more well known, charter school supporters and sceptics alike have pressed the Ontario government for some type of policy on charter schools. One of the first concrete demands came from parents at Samuel Genest, a French-language secondary school in Ottawa, who wanted the school to become a charter school in 1996. Then Minister of Education, John Snobelen was quoted in April 1996 as responding: "We've been studying charter schools. We have said that we would consider them, and so if someone sent a proposal to me for a chartered school, we'd have to look at it to see if it makes sense."⁵⁵ A second request came in February 1998 when Bob Bonisteel of the Ottawa-based Teachers for Excellence made another request for charter schools to be permitted in Ontario.⁵⁶ Then Minister of Education, David Johnson, was reported to have an open mind on the possibility of Ontario charter schools.⁵⁷

In October 1996, a two day conference was held in Toronto entitled Charting a New Course for Public Schools. During the conference, sponsored by the Ontario Coalition for Education Reform and funded in part by the Donner Foundation, Dr. Joe Freedman was a key speaker. A second conference was held in February 1998.⁵⁸ Editorials arguing the pros (London Free Press, 11 April 1997) and cons (Peterborough Examiner, 27 October 1998) have appeared in the province. Lyn McLeod, MPP, then education critic for the Liberal Party, argued that charter schools, as well as private schools, would flourish as school boards were cut under Bill 104.⁵⁹ In their December 1997 report, the Education Improvement Commission went so far as to recommend that charter schools should not receive public funding.⁶⁰

Despite the interest in charter schools, none exist in Ontario, and both the Premier and the current Minister of Education are on record as stating that there are no plans for charter schools in Ontario. While some observers have speculated that the school councils which were mandated in the Education Quality Improvement Act (Bill 160) could be a basis for the creation of charter schools, there are equally compelling reasons to see charter schools as being at odds with other crucial elements of the current government's education reforms. The centralization of control over education funding, the strengthening of province-wide elementary and secondary curricula, and the funding of school operations and capital costs according to province-wide benchmarks are just three examples.

In October 1999, the Coalition for Education Reform released its 'report card' on education reform in Ontario. The coalition and Bill Robson (an economist with the C.D. Howe Institute who authored the report card) strongly support charter schools. At this time Education Minister Janet Ecker flatly rejected any move towards charter schools in the province: "We've been very clear what we're doing. We're strengthening the public education system, charter schools are not strengthening that public education system."⁶¹

9. CONCLUSION

The charter school experiment in North America is still in its early days, particularly in Canada. The record to date demonstrates that there is considerable diversity in what charter schools can offer and in what they are able to achieve. Whether these schools live up to the expectations of their supporters or realize the worst fears of their critics will depend on a variety of factors. As noted, one of the most crucial determinants is the character of the legislation establishing and regulating their charters, and even advocates of charter schooling disagree on the ideal 'strength' or 'weakness' of such laws.

The ability of charter schools to flourish will also depend ultimately on their ability to demonstrate that their autonomy can deliver a superior education to students. As yet, that has not been systematically or consistently shown. The attitudes of both political leaders and parents toward the traditional public education system will also have a bearing here. Where the status quo is clearly in crisis, as in many U.S. jurisdictions, implementing charter schools may not seem much of a gamble: there is little to lose. In other settings, where support for the existing public education system remains high, charter schooling will need to demonstrate its superiority in clear, objective ways.

NOTES

¹ In a 1998 document, the National Council of State Legislatures notes that "Seven years after the first charter school legislation was enacted, there is still no definitive research demonstrating the effectiveness of charter schools." National Council of State Legislatures, Charter Schools website (click on 'public user').

² As of April 2000, the Alberta Department of Learning lists ten Charter School Authorities.

³ The term 'state' is used here in the generic sense of referring to whatever jurisdiction has responsibility for legislating and regulating education policy. In Canada, this is the province, in the U.S. the state government, but in unitary constitutions such as New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the national government.

⁴ Ontario's universities each operate on the basis of a charter, but the conditions that they must meet are quite limited in comparison.

⁵ Murray Dobbin, Charter Schools: Charting a Course for Social Division, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives: Ottawa, 1997, p. 19.

⁶ National Education Association, Press Release: NEA Calls for Stronger Charter School Laws to Spur Innovation, 14 April 1999.

⁷ The Society for the Advancement of Excellence in Education, a British Columbia based organization that promotes school choice generally and charter schools specifically, reports that projects implementing school choice have been undertaken in British Columbia and Manitoba within the existing public education systems. See Katherine Wagner, Choice in Public Education, and Daniel Brown, Study of Alternative Model Public Schools in B.C.: Executive Summary.

⁸ See Ministry of Education webpage: School Councils.

⁹ It should be noted that delivering any good at the same or better quality but more efficiently is always rational, but where efficiency is simply a byword for reducing costs, achieving it may be accompanied by reductions in quality.

¹⁰ Dennis Willard and Doug Oplinger, "Charter Experiment Goes Awry," Akron Beacon Journal, December 12, 1999.

¹¹ Canadian Teachers' Federation, Background Document, "Ten Charter School Myths".

¹² National Education Association, Press Release: NEA Calls for Stronger Charter School Laws to Spur Innovation, 14 April 1999. What the NEA calls 'stronger' laws, the CER would call 'weaker' laws.

¹³ David Hoff, "Under new budget, charter schools cash in," Education Week, 30 October 1996, p. 22; Joetta Slack, "Researchers recount the pluses of charter schools, Education Week, 16 April 1997.

¹⁴ U.S. Department of Education, Fourth Year Report: The State of Charter Schools 2000, (The Department: Washington, D.C., 2000), p. 2.

¹⁵ Joe Nathan, Charter Schools: Creating Hope and Opportunity for American Education, (Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, 1996), p. 168.

¹⁶ Linda Jacobson, "Under the microscope,"; Education Week, 6 November 1996.

¹⁷ The Hudson Institute, Charter Schools in Action Project: Final Report, (The Institute, 1997).

¹⁸ Lynn Schnaiberg, "ED Study Paints Portrait of Charter Schools,"; Education Week on the Web, 4 June 1997.

¹⁹ RPP International and the University of Minnesota, A Study of Charter Schools: First Year Report, U.S. Department of Education (Washington D.C., 1997), p. 40.

²⁰ Ibid., p. 40.

²¹ Paul Berman et al., A National Study of Charter Schools: Second-Year Report, U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Development, (July 1998). See pages 3 to 8.

²² Paul Berman et al., A National Study of Charter Schools: Third-Year Report, U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Development, (May 1999).

²³ Paul Berman et al., The State of Charter Schools 2000: Fourth-Year Report , U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Development, (May 1999).

²⁴ Ibid., p. 5.

²⁵ Ibid., pp. 1-3.

²⁶ Joe Nathan, Charter Schools: Creating Hope and Opportunity for American Education, 2nd edition, (Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, 1999), p. xvii.

²⁷ Seymour B. Sarason, Charter Schools: Another Flawed Education Reform? (Teachers College Press: New York, 1999), p. 103.

²⁸ Thomas Good and Jennifer S. Braden, "The Charter School Zeitgeist,"; in Education Week on the Web, 15 March 2000.

²⁹ Ibid.

³⁰ Dennis Willard and Doug Oplinger, "Charter Experiment Goes Awry," Akron Beacon Journal, December 12, 1999.

³¹ Linda Jacobson, "Under the microscope,"; Education Week, 6 November 1996.

³² Joe Nathan, Charter Schools, p. 171.

³³ Good and Braden, "Charter School Zeitgeist", Op. Cit.

³⁴ Casey D. Cobb and Gene V. Glass, "Ethnic Separation in Arizona Charter Schools," in Education Policy Analysis Archives, an electronic journal.

³⁵ Linda Jacobson, "Under the Microscope," in Education Week on the Web, 6 November 1996.

³⁶ National Education Association, Issue Paper: Charter Schools (1999).

³⁷ The State of Charter Schools 2000, p. 50.

³⁸ NEA Issue Paper: Charter Schools, Op. Cit.

³⁹ Good and Braden, "Charter School Zeitgeist", Op. Cit.

⁴⁰ Chester Finn et al, Charter Schools in Action, The Hudson Institute, 1997.

⁴¹ NEA Issue Paper: Charter Schools, Op. Cit.

⁴² Good and Braden, "Charter School Zeitgeist", Op. Cit.

⁴³ RAND Corporation analyst Marc Dean Wilmot, quoted in Linda Jacobson, "Under the Microscope", Op. Cit.

⁴⁴ Mark Millot, Paul Hill, and Robin Lake, "Charter schools: escape or reform?"

⁴⁵ Joe Freedman, The Charter School Idea: Breaking Educational Gridlock (Lethbridge, AB: Society for Advancing Educational Research, 1995); see also Adrienne Snow, "Learning to choose: break up the school boards and give choice a chance," Next City VI:3 (Spring 1996): 31-2.

⁴⁶ Murray Dobbin, Charting a Course for Social Division.

⁴⁷ Alberta Ministry of Education, "Charter Schools in Alberta".

⁴⁸ Ibid.

⁴⁹ Ibid.

⁵⁰ Ijeoma Ross, "Albertan selling charter-school concept" Globe and Mail, 5 October 1996.

⁵¹ Brian Laghi, "Closing of Calgary charter school stirs call for program's suspension," Globe and Mail, 27 May 1998, A4.

⁵² James Clarity, "Alberta's charter schools face trouble", The Globe and Mail, 02 July 1998, A6.

⁵³ Jennifer Lewington, "Alberta charter schools need money, study finds," Globe and Mail, 24 November 1998, A4.

⁵⁴ Dr. Lynn Bosetti et al, Canada's Charter Schools at the Crossroads: Executive Summary, (SAEE: 2000).

⁵⁵ Ottawa Citizen, 3 April 1996.

⁵⁶ Joanne Laucius, "Give charter schools a chance, group says," The Ottawa Citizen, 14 February 1998, p.C3.

⁵⁷ Ian Urquhart, "Is there a hidden agenda?" Toronto Star, 19 September 1998, E1.

⁵⁸ Joanne Laucius, "Give charter schools a chance, group says."

⁵⁹ Dave Battagello, Education forum slams Tories," Windsor Star, 15 April 1997.

⁶⁰ Ontario, Education Improvement Commission. "Education Improvement Commission supports strong school boards and changed roles for trustees," News Release, 19 December 1997.

⁶¹ Caroline Mallan, "Group says Ontario failing its students; Minister rejects coalition call for charter schools in province," The Hamilton Spectator, 28 October 1999

Copyright (c) 2000: Office of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.