The National Alliance of Public Charter Schools just released a report on charter school growth.
Assuming their data is correct, there are some major issues that need to be solved for across the country.
For example, according to their data, the state of New York only produced 12 new charter schools last year.
WTF?
After all that protesting, getting legislation changed, marching across bridges – one of the largest states in the country only opens up 12 new schools?
When I worked in New Orleans, we were often opening 6 schools a year.
There are 45,000 students in NOLA.
In NYC alone there are over a million students.
How is NY only producing 12 schools a year?
More data below. I’ll keep blogging on this data set before, during, after Super Bowl.
I will get myself in trouble by being too honest (edited down my original already)- but there are 3 real authorizers in NY- NYC DoE lost its power to authorize (which might be fine given its current state), State Education Department has a vacancy at the head of charter office and isnt trying to fill it–plus they pay uncompetitively– so that office is basically paralyzed, and SUNY (the only other active authorizer) whose head came out publicly last year saying they would not authorize more schools until they got more funding (which actually was not unreasonable in some ways–they are a good authorizer and need more money to oversee more schools). SUNY did approve a few schools, including one that was turned down by SED previously (which is probably a first). And given the frozen nature of SED, SUNY will have to do more. We have 19 schools approved in NY, and there were schools this last year that would have definitely moved through the SED process in prior years, that went nowhere. this dearth is not about a dry pipeline, its about a overly narrowing pipe.
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