Posted on 02/11/2007 11:41:08 AM PST by Lorianne
Education chief pushes Bush plan to lift caps on conversions ___ Illinois law caps the number of public charter schools at 60, but if President Bush has his way, school districts here and in other states could override state law to convert as many failing schools into charters as they wanted. This would be a boon for Chicago, which has aggressively pursued charters and already has used 29 of its allowed 30 charters.
Margaret Spellings, Bush's education secretary, pushed the idea Thursday at a successful Chicago charter school, along with other proposed changes to Bush's signature No Child Left Behind law. The five-year-old law mandates annual testing, sanctions failing schools and aims to have all students performing at grade level by 2014. It's up for reauthorization this year.
Several of Bush's proposed changes are meant to force more dramatic change in low-performing schools, those that have failed to meet testing targets for five years. This covers 230 Illinois schools, including 185 in Chicago.
State cap among lowest At those schools, Bush wants major staff changes or a new governance structure, such as a charter conversion. He's also pushing private school vouchers, an idea largely opposed by Democrats. Now, schools can adopt more modest changes. "When schools are chronically failing for five or six years, more serious interventions have to occur,"Spellings said while visiting Noble Street Charter High School, one of the city's top-performing high schools.
Illinois has one of the lowest charter caps nationally, according to the Illinois Network of Charter Schools. Michigan's cap is 250. In New York, it's 150. Charters have more freedom over curriculum, budgeting and scheduling than traditional public schools.
"Schools like Noble have wait lists of over 1,000," schools CEO Arne Duncan said during a tour of Noble, which has three campuses and plans for two more. "They are doing something parents and students are looking for."
'That's a lot of nerve' Legislators involved with drafting the cap and the state's teachers unions are vehemently opposed. "That's a lot of nerve," said state Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago), vice chairwoman of a House education committee. "The legislators in the state of Illinois decided they wanted to limit the number of charters because they're still at an experimental stage."
But it may be out of the state's hands. If Congress pursues Bush's idea, the charter override will likely pass constitutional muster, said Martin Redish, a constitutional law professor at Northwestern University. That's because when the feds chip in money, as they do for education, they can impose certain requirements.
"According to the Supreme Court, Congress has broader constitutional power to regulate states when it is giving funds to them," Redish said.
kgrossman@suntimes.com
BUMP.
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