While some schools offer sliding scale tuition, the education still may be out of reach. Mary Goral, a professor at Mt. Mary College in Milwaukee and director of the early childhood education program, teaches graduate students and teacher enrichment classes on Waldorf-inspired pedagogy for public schools. Other administrators must agree. As of this fall, there will be about ten Waldorf-method charter schools in California and three in Arizona. Illinois currently has seventeen charter schools, but none are Waldorf schools.
Charter schools are state-funded public schools with permission to use alternative curricula.
Mark Birdsall, implementor at the Urban Waldorf School, says the students there have done well on tests. At the Yuba River Charter School, test scores start out lower than average in the lower grades, but by eighth grade, they are in the 75th to 85th percentile. In 1999, the seventh-grade Yuba River class was among the top in the state on its tests. Similarly, in Arizona, the Waldorf-inspired Pine Forest Charter School has some of the highest test scores in the state. Still, the future for Waldorf education in the public schools isn't easy to predict.