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How many to a classroom? What is the student/ teacher ratio? Terra Nova is a national assessment. Your daugthers 99% means that on the day the test was administered, you daughter did as well as the 99% that took the test.
My point here is that it is NOT the school, the program, the conditions,the climate, etc. ALL research conducted in the last twenty years, including that of the Heritage Foundation and similar organizations, have all come to the same conclusion: It is the Teacher that matters. Nothing else. Conditions may affect scores. That is why ALL Terra Nova results come with the caveat of plus or minus 5 points.
I am not trying to put you down (anymore.) I had come from a meeting with politicians talking about the same topic. Their mindless rhetoric had me madder than Hell. I apologize for flying off as I did. Congratulations on your daughters score!
However, I can find nothing to recommend charter schools over any other form of public/private education in any urban area. Perhaps your school is suburban with an involved community of concerned parents and businesses. Sadly that is not the case here.

My point here is that it is NOT the school, the program, the conditions,the climate, etc. ALL research conducted in the last twenty years, including that of the Heritage Foundation and similar organizations, have all come to the same conclusion: It is the Teacher that matters. Nothing else.

While I grant that the teacher is an important factor, she is not the only factor -- otherwise every student in a given teacher's class would have the same score. But they don't.

Asian and Black kids sitting side-by-side in the same school will come out with wildly different scores -- because one group comes from a culture that values scholarship, and whose parents demand good grades, while the other doesn't

IQ, also, has a strong genetic component (if you don't think it does, go teach calculus to your cat) and will vary within any given group

Teacher certification required: Yes. An exception is made for college professors at a state college or university sponsoring a charter school, or community college faculty with five years experience teaching subject matter that they will be teaching.
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This is taken from this website..
http://www.aft.org/research/reports/charter/csweb/states/MI.HTM
Perhaps the problem is that charters are not the same in all states. In Michigan they are wonderful. We do have an exception also in teaching certificates when it comes to Canadians. They are given an amount of time to get a US cert if they are certified in Canada.
I don't know which state you are in but you must admit that competition makes for a good market place. This is what has happened in Grand Rapids. The district was failing before the charters moved in. Now the district has come up to standard and everyone wins. Maybe this wouldn't work where you are.
Thank you for the kudos for my baby. She is very bright and the little one is brighter. They would like to be the first sisters on Mars!

I'm sorry, I missed that you are in Maryland. I don't even see the Charter for Maryland on the AFT site I referred you to. Are you fighting against charters in Maryland?? Perhaps I can refer you to our charter website and you will see how Michigan handles them. We must have a sponsoring University and a Management company for each of our schools. Also because the charters are a district onto themselves, they are under all the regulations of the district schools. They can turn no one away.
BTW, my daughter's class had 19. The limit is 20 in our school.
Really, it's not the charters that are bad, it is the way the charter law is put together. If they are held to high standards, that's what you will get.