Charter schools divide candidates

The law allowing 100 charter schools in North Carolina won legislative approval more than 10 years ago in a wave of bipartisanship. But the prospect of allowing more of them has the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor in opposite corners.

Republican Pat McCrory, Charlotte's mayor, wants the state to allow more than 100 charter schools, an approach that fits his call for more competition in education and more choices for parents. He has not determined how many charters the state should allow.

"Choice is good in public schools," he said. "It's shortsighted to limit expanding the current cap on charter schools when you have a 30 percent drop-out rate."

Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, the Democratic candidate, said it does not make sense to allow more charter schools when some don't do a good job.

"The goal, with the whole charter philosophy, is shut down the ones that don't create innovation and change, and keep the stream of newness coming," she said.

The state passed the charter school law in 1996. Republicans held a majority in the state House at the time, and GOP members were pushing for vouchers or tax credits for parents who send their children to private schools. Charter schools, which are publicly funded but independent of their local districts, emerged as the agreed-upon way to introduce school choice to North Carolina.

Bipartisan cooperation on charter schools, which operate free of most rules that govern traditional public schools, largely collapsed in the later years.

Mike Munger, the Libertarian candidate for governor, is a fan of charters. Allowing more charters "is the first thing I would press for," he said. "It's the centerpiece of my education program."

Munger said the state should hire an ombudsman to help parents develop successful charter school plans.

"Rich people have choices now," he said. "I want everyone to have a choice."

Nearly one-quarter of the state's charters are in Wake or Mecklenburg counties, while more than half the state's counties have no charter schools.

Groups representing teachers, school administrators and school boards are against allowing more charter schools, saying existing charters haven't lived up to their purpose as laboratories for innovations that can be transferred to traditional public schools.

"You'll have more of the same," said Ed Dunlap, executive director of the N.C. Association of School Boards: some charters that are successful and some that fail. "I just don't think it's good public policy to play school with children's lives."

If the state's 97 charter schools were assigned grades, some would get As and Bs, others would flunk, and some would float along with Cs.

Their ranks include Raleigh Charter High School, which consistently lands on lists of the top 100 high schools in the nation, and three Knowledge is Power Program schools, a national model that has shown success in preparing minority students and children from low-income families for college.

Then there are the more than three dozen schools over the years that have voluntarily given up their charters or had them taken away. Nearly 30 percent of the state's charter schools were in the bottom 20 percent of state schools in 2006-2007, based on test scores.

Charter proposal

Despite legislative resistance to more charters, a tide seems to be developing in favor of lifting the limit. Earlier this year, a commission of legislators, business people, charter school principals and others appointed by the State Board of Education praised the schools because they offer choice.

The commission recommended the education board ask for legislative authority to add six new charters a year, and exclude from the limits the best charter schools and the first charter school established in a county. It also recommended quickly closing charter schools where students aren't learning as they should.

KIPP school organizers want to expand in the state by opening five schools in the Triangle and five in northeastern North Carolina by 2016, said Eric Guckian, executive director of KIPP North Carolina. "What we've heard at the state level is there is an intense interest in national models like KIPP that serve students of color and have proven results," Guckian said.

John Dornan of N.C Public School Forum, an education think-tank in Raleigh, favors adding more charter schools if they are aimed at filling specific needs.

A demonstration school at a university's school of education, for example, could be a training site for student teachers, he said. High school charter schools with strong technical or occupations programs could be encouraged, and KIPP schools could expand.

"Instead of a blanket 'no,' we should look at specific categories that could lead to positive experimentation," Dornan said. "There are a handful I think we really could learn from, and if you replicate their models, I think it's foolish to not allow them to grow."

(Staff writers Mark Johnson and Benjamin Niolet contributed to this report.)