Charters: Open more, or rein them in?

"It's the wrong solution to the urgent problem of the moment, which is the charter supply overall," says Executive Director Elizabeth Evans. "In an ideal world, it would be a great bill. But we don't want to start shuffling around our too-small supply." "We're beginning to see waiting lists [for charters]," she says. "We're beginning to see that parents want to be able to send their kids to a smaller setting because there is more one-on-one. We're seeing that test scores have improved dramatically [in some charters]. And at the end of the day, it's still a public school." "If we got to the point where we could negotiate some type of arrangement where [charters] feÛ a little more fully under the fold of traditional public schools, then we might be more willing to be supportive," [John Ostenburg] adds. "But at this juncture, certainly that's not the case."