School Transportation News Magazine | November 2009


(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)


[Special Report]


Outlook for Charter Schools: Could a shift in support include more transportation options?


By Lisa J. Hudson


searcher with the Center on Reinventing Public Education, in a chat room interview produced by Education Week. But


the differences aren’t limited to


This past July, President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced that $4.35 billion will be available through the Race to the Top program, which will include incentives for states to lift caps on the number of charter schools.


According to the National Alliance


for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), as of the 2009-2010 school year, more than 1.5 million students attend 4,900 public charter schools in 39 states and the District of Columbia. Te association also says that an estimated 365,000 students are on charter school wait lists. But just what does “charter school”


mean to parents, educators and the op- erations that serve them? It’s difficult to come up with a one-description-fits-all statement for charter schools in the Unit- ed States as there are widely varying dif- ferences in how charters are established, funded and held accountable. Collectively, charter schools recently


got a big boost from the Obama Admin- istration, which supports the growth of successful, high-quality charter


schools.


However, even with federal support, so long as funding formulas and charter school transportation requirements vary from state to state, it becomes more diffi- cult to predict the exact direction charter school transportation is headed. In fact, when inquiring about current


trends and offerings from both national organizations representing the interest of charter schools and departments of edu-


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cation in states with charter schools, very little was found in the way of demograph- ics and data collection specific to charter school transportation. A 2009 STN survey of state pupil trans-


portation officials found that about a dozen states require by law that funding be pro- vided for transportation of charter school students. However, only a handful were able to report the number of charter stu- dents transported, among them Delaware, Florida, Minnesota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. What is more readily available is educa-


tional data collected on charter schools, the current federal position on the role charters can play in improving school per- formance, and what issues are inherent to the growth or stagnation of the number of charter school students receiving school transportation in the future.


HOW DO CHARTERS DIFFER? Currently, charter schools in the Unit-


ed States vary considerably in their size, school design and instructional model. If people think charters and think “smaller schools, safer schools or offering more focused schools,” the perception is often relative to what is available at local public schools, noted Betheny Gross, a senior re-


perceptions. According to the NAPCS, 39 states plus the District of Columbia have laws that enable charters to be established, while 11 states still do not. Among those that do, the NAPCS reports that 26 states and the District of Columbia have some type of limit on charter school growth restricting the number of charter schools allowed and/or restricting the number of students that a single school can serve. Te differences continue: states have dif-


ferent laws guiding what governing bodies can establish them, who can apply to start a school, what accountability is in place, what rules are waived for charters, wheth- er charter teachers must be certified, and whether staff members can unionize. Also, according to the NAPCS, just 15


states plus the District of Columbia pro- vide state funding for charter schools and these per-pupil funding formulas also vary.


STRONG FEDERAL SUPPORT, BUT STATE LAWS VARY At the NAPCS conference this past July,


U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that the administration will provide a $52 million increase in charter school funding in the 2010 budget. On July 24, President Obama and Sec-


retary Duncan announced that a new competitive school grants program will include incentives for states to lift caps on the number of charter schools. States will be eligible to compete for $4.35 billion in Race to the Top (RTT) competitive grants, but states are expected to accept reforms in order to increase their chances of eligi- bility. Among the changes the administra- tion is saying will help states with their eli- gibility include removing laws limiting the expansion of public charter schools. With a competition underway for over


$4 billion in grant money, states took no- tice. Time magazine reported in its Sept. 14 issue that, “Eight states have amended


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