11 states now have policies to automatically close doors of low-performing schools
WASHINGTON, D.C.- Today the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools released a list of the 11 states that automatically close low-performing public charter schools. The paper details the specific provisions in each state and outlines the reasons behind this growing trend.
The promise of a public charter school is to offer students a high-quality education. If a school fails to meet that obligation, they should be closed, said Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. While we need to ensure these policies are enacted in a thoughtful way, legal provisions that require the closure of poor-performing schools set a high bar and help raise the standard for public charter schools.
The 11 states that have automatic closure provisions are: California, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Washington.
This year more than 200 public charter schools closed their doors, some of them because they didn’t meet academic standards, continued Rees. Though closing a school can be a difficult thing to do, we must be willing to make these tough decisions to ensure we are providing the best education possible to our students. We applaud the states that have thoughtfully incorporated a legal mechanism to ensure poor-performing schools are closed.
Despite the closure of low-performing schools, a majority of charter schools are serving their students well. Since 2010, all but one independent research study has found that students in charter schools do better than their traditional school peers. The most recent of those studies, by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, found that charter schools do a better job teaching low income students, minority students, and students who are still learning English than traditional schools.
Separate studies by the Center for Reinventing Public Education and Mathematica Policy Research have found that charter school students are more likely to graduate from high school, go on to college, stay in college, and have higher earnings in early adulthood.
About the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools is the leading national nonprofit organization committed to advancing the public charter school movement. Our mission is to lead public education to unprecedented levels of academic achievement by fostering a strong charter sector. For more information, please visit our website at www.publiccharters.org.
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