{"id":2212,"date":"2008-03-10T06:01:47","date_gmt":"2008-03-10T11:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2212"},"modified":"2011-09-01T07:53:06","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T12:53:06","slug":"charters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2212","title":{"rendered":"There&#8217;s Good News&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I caught <a xhref=\"http:\/\/www.looktruenorth.com\/family\/education\/68-education\/2098-minnesota-is-best-state-for-charter-schools.html\">this item<\/a> last week:\u00a0 Minnesota gets high marks for its laws on charter schools:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>According to an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edreform.com\/index.cfm?fuseAction=document&#038;documentID=2804&#038;sectionID=5&#038;NEWSYEAR=2008\">annual report card<\/a> published by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edreform.com\/\">Center for Education Reform<\/a>, Minnesota has the strongest charter school laws of any state.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>Minnesota gets credit for, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edreform.com\/index.cfm?fuseAction=cLaw&#038;stateID=42&#038;altCol=2\">among other things<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Giving charters legal and fiscal independence;<\/li>\n<li>Not imposing a cap on the number of charters;<\/li>\n<li>Allowing a variety of organizations to approve and oversee charters (in addition, of course, to the state department of education).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course, that &#8220;lack of a cap&#8221; is over the DFL&#8217;s dead body; last session, they tried to cap the number of charter schools; the GOP (and six brave DFLers) voted against the cap, <em>barely <\/em>beating it back.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Despite the fact that the national charter school movement started in Minnesota, charter schools still face opposition from vested interests. In the Winter 2008 edition of Education Next, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hoover.org\/publications\/ednext\/11131541.html\">Ember Reichgott Junge<\/a> describes how her support of charter schools was one factor in her loss to Keith Ellison in the Fifth District primary.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m not quite sure how to read that; Junge was an incredibly weak candidate &#8211; and while Ellison represents a party that <em>hates <\/em>charter schools (they are an affront to the teachers&#8217; union and institutional education), inner city parents sick of the diluted, agenda-driven education they&#8217;re getting from the public system are running like mad for the charters; Minneapolis&#8217; district has lost an immense share of its students; one in eight of Saint Paul&#8217;s students have left for charter schools.<\/p>\n<p>Hence the cap, that failed last year &#8211; and, we can be sure, other attempts to kill off this experiment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I caught this item last week:\u00a0 Minnesota gets high marks for its laws on charter schools: According to an annual report card published by the Center for Education Reform, Minnesota has the strongest charter school laws of any state. Minnesota gets credit for, among other things: Giving charters legal and fiscal independence; Not imposing a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22409,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212\/revisions\/22409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}