New Charter Bills

The San Francisco Chronicle reports on two new charter school bills. One bill would give Mayors, Universities, and nonprofits a chance to authorize and supervise charter schools. States with the most robust charter school competition allow multiple charter school authorizers. In other words, these states do not require that a charter school's direct competition (the school district) be the only permissible authorizer.

The second bill would require charters to prove they are doing a better job than other similar schools -- or be shut down. This would include any charter that did not rank at least a 4 against schools with similar demographics on the Academic Performance Index, a state measure of performance in which 10 is best. I think we should level the playing field and shut down all public schools that do not rank at least a 4 against similar schools.