Nashville Forecast: Cloudy with a Chance of Charter Schools

Robin Lake, via a kind Deb Britt email:

In the last few years, those at the helm of the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) have become increasingly hostile to the city's fast-growing charter school sector. Last year, the school board refused (despite a directive from the state to approve) a charter application from Great Hearts Academy, a respected Arizona charter management organization. This is despite the fact that only about 40% of the district's students in grades 3-8 are meeting proficiency standards. In the past few weeks, the relationship between the MNPS directors and charter schools has deteriorated to the point that some describe as nuclear war. Schools Director Jesse Register has engaged lawyers to argue that the decade-old charter school law is unconstitutional.

Last week, a Nashville paper called for MNPS to adopt a portfolio strategy, meaning that the district should stop trying to be a monopoly operator of schools. Becoming a portfolio district would not mean that Nashville would put all its schools out to bid to charter schools. It would mean that the district would stop treating the students in Nashville charter schools as somebody else's responsibility and start seeing its job as ensuring that all children in the city are well served by the public schools, no matter who runs them. If a particular neighborhood was not being well served and a renowned district principal wanted to open a new school there, great. If a high-performing charter school was in a position to open a new school there, great. Portfolio districts don't have a preference for charters or district-run schools; they prefer whatever arrangement gets good results for kids.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at September 6, 2013 12:36 AM
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