As a longtime supporter of charter schools in the Commonwealth, I believe that charter schools create options, accommodate choice and serve as laboratories of innovation. All of these things, if properly developed, could translate into a workable strategy to keep residents in the city. Yet, one cannot help but assume that when the mayor reveals the details of his plan, a core element of it will be the actual existence of charter schools, and a necessary condition for that existence would be a climate that is amenable to continuing the charter school experiment in Philadelphia. But all evidence was to the contrary at the meeting of the Philadelphia School District, when only three applicants were granted their charters and first steps were taken to revoke the charter of one of Philadelphia's earliest charter schools. It's certainly possible that some of the charter school applicants were not up to standard.
Charter schools require more than a good idea.
And there is an art to packaging all that information into a winning charter-school application. It is also likely that as the first charter schools' charters come up for renewal in the near future, there will be some schools that have not succeeded in meeting their predetermined performance standards. With accountability as one of the major tenets of the charter-school movement, we must come to terms with the fact that when schools don't work, they will close down. But the message of the Philadelphia School District was glaringly clear. Despite the fact that a formal evaluation of Philadelphia charter schools has not yet been conducted and despite the fact that legislative relief is under discussion in Harrisburg, the Philadelphia School District took it upon itself to halt the progress of the charter-school movement in the city.