School Choice & Charters

DC Ranks First on Charter School Law Scorecard

By Katie Ash — January 17, 2013 1 min read
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The Center for Education Reform has released its 14th annual scorecard on charter school laws.

The District of Columbia came in first as the strongest of the nation’s 43 charter laws, earning a grade of A. Other A-rated states were Minnesota, Indiana, and Michigan. Nine states earned Bs, 16 states earned a C grade, and 11 states earned D and F grades.

The F-rated states included Kansas, Iowa, Virginia, and Mississippi.

States were ranked based on whether or not they have independent authorizers for charters, if there is an appeal process for rejected charter applications, how much operational autonomy charters have, whether or not there is a cap on the number of charters allowed, the amount of student and facility funding provided to charters, and how well their charter laws have been implemented. Clicking on the name of the state within the scorecard pulls up more details about how each state’s rank is determined.

Jeanne Allen, the president of the Center for Education Reform, said this year’s scorecard represented only “satisfactory progress.”

“In the past two years, we’ve seen two new charter laws but both are average in their construction, unlikely to yield large numbers of successful charter schools, and only minimal state improvements. Many states failed to advance substantive reform in 2012, a fact we hope to see change this year,” she said in a press release.

On an unrelated note, I launched a Twitter account today! Follow me @EWKatieAsh.

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A version of this news article first appeared in the Charters & Choice blog.