What was the first charter school?
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Charter schools are independent public schools which are exempt from many of the state and local regulations which govern most public schools. These exemptions grant charter schools some autonomy and flexibility with decision-making, such as teacher union contracts, hiring, and curriculum. In return, charter schools are subject to stricter accountability on spending and academic performance. The majority of states (and the District of Columbia) have charter school laws, though they vary in how charter schools are approved. Minnesota was the first state to have a charter school law and the first charter school in the United States, City Academy High School, opened in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1992. The prevalence of charter schools has increased with the support of the Obama Administration. Under the Administration, the Department of Education has provided funding incentives to states and school districts that increase the number of charter schools.
School choice
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According to the Education Commission of the States, "charter schools are semi-autonomous public schools that receive public funds. They operate under a written contract with a state, district or other entity (referred to as an authorizer or sponsor). This contract - or charter - details how the school will be organized and managed, what students will be expected to achieve, and how success will be measured. Many charters are exempt from a variety of laws and regulations affecting other public schools if they continue to meet the terms of their charters."
Minnesota wrote the first charter school law in the United States in 1991. , Minnesota had 165 registered charter schools, with over 41,000 students attending. The first of these to be approved, Bluffview Montessori School in Winona, Minnesota, opened in 1992. The first charter to operate was City Academy in St. Paul. Some specialized Minnesota charter-schools include the Metro Deaf School (1993), Community of Peace Academy (1995), and the Mainstreet School of Performing Arts (2004).
Charter school
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Penn Charter is among the first schools in the United States to offer education to all religions (1689), financial aid (1701), matriculation to girls (1754), and education to all races (1770). The "Charter" in the school's name does not, as might be assumed, mean that it is a modern "charter school". Rather, it is a reference to the historic document that was signed by William Penn to establish the first Quaker school in America. Originally located on the east side of Fourth Street below Chestnut, the school officially consolidated in 1874 as an all-boys college preparatory school at 12th and Market Streets. Penn Charter moved to its current forty-seven acre East Falls campus in 1925. In 1980 the school became fully co-educational by allowing girls to continue past the second grade, thus graduating the first co-ed senior class in 1992.
William Penn Charter School
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In 1991, Minnesota opened the first charter school. California followed suit in 1992. As of January 2007, over 3,600 charter schools, with more than 1 million students, were operating. As of the 2013-2014 school year, 42 states and the District of Columbia have successfully passed charter school legislation; the eight remaining states that have not yet passed charter school legislation are Montana, Kentucky, Alabama, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Virginia. Over half a million students are enrolled in charter schools in California, giving the state the highest rate of charter school enrollment in the nation; however, given the size of the California population, this amount corresponds to only eight percent of all students enrolled in California public schools. In comparison, the District of Columbia has 42 percent of its public school students enrolled in charter schools, with Arizona following behind at 18 percent; these are the two highest rates of charter school enrollment among public school students in the nation.
Federal Charter School Program
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In 2003 however, the school community began discussing the possibility of opening a high school and later began discussing applying to become a charter school. In early August 2005, the school applied to the Orleans Parish School Board to become a charter school. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the school’s charter application was granted and the school added grades 9 through 12. Lusher Charter High School opened its doors for the first time on January 17, 2006 with 48 students and only 9th and 10th grades and six high school only teachers (one for each subject: math, science, social studies, English, French and Spanish). The high school was housed at the Carrollton Courthouse with the middle school for its first semester. Due to space limitations at the Carrollton campus, both the middle school and high school had to find a new home. In August 2006, both schools moved to their new campus, the defunct Alcee Fortier High School, on Freret Street.
Lusher Charter School
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In the fall 1993 the school opened as Jingletown Charter School. It was the first charter school in Oakland and one of the first in California. Originally it had the test scores amongst the lowest in the state. In 2004, Jorge Lopez took control of the school. At the time, its Academic Performance Index (API) was 650. Lopez received guidance from Ben Chavis, head of the American Indian Model Schools, and established a system similar to the system of American Indian Public Charter School. In late September 2007 Oakland Charter Academy became the second public school in Oakland to win the National Blue Ribbon award. In spring 2008, the Oakland Charter Academy received an API of 902. Its student body was mostly Hispanic, and the API was over 200 points higher than the average API of Hispanic/Latino middle school students in California. The Oakland Charter Academy API was also over 200 points above the overall scores of all of the middle schools in Oakland.
Oakland Charter Academy
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In 1747 the first Irish Charter School was opened in Ardbraccan. Irish charter schools were operated by "The Incorporated Society in Dublin for Promoting English Protestant Schools in Ireland". The Charter Schools admitted only Catholics, under the condition that they be educated as Protestants. These schools were intended, in the words of their programme, "to rescue the souls of thousands of poor children from the dangers of Popish superstition and idolatry, and their bodies from the miseries of idleness and beggary." The Ardbraccan school, like the others, focused on training girls for domestic service in the houses of the gentry and aristocracy, while training boys in agriculture and gardening. As with the other schools, the charter school in Ardbraccan failed and eventually closed down.
Ardbraccan
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Bush co-founded the first charter school in the State of Florida: Liberty City Charter School, a grades K-6 elementary school. in a Miami neighborhood that, in 1980, was the site of the first major race riot since the Civil Rights era. The school's co-founder, working alongside Bush, was T. Willard Fair, a local black activist and head of the Greater Miami Urban League. The Liberty City Charter School was closed in 2008 after falling more than 1 million in debt.
Jeb Bush
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Frustrated by the perpetual failure of the traditional public schools in Harlem and other underserved neighborhoods, Walker helped organize the passage of New York State's charter school law in 1998.
In 1999, he joined with businessman-philanthropist Steve Klinsky to found the first ever charter school in New York State, now named the Sisulu-Walker Charter School of Harlem in honor of Walter Sisulu (Nelson Mandela's ally) and Dr. Walker. This school was one of just three New York charter schools to open in the law's first year of 1999, and is the only one from that year to survive. The school is community-run and has substantially outperformed the traditional public schools in Harlem's District 5, where most of the school's students live. The founding and history of Sisulu-Walker was described in the book "A Light Shines In Harlem" by Mary Bounds, which won the Phillis Wheatly Prize for best non-fiction work in 2015. Walker wrote the forward for that book.
Walker continues to support charter school reform from his home in Virginia. In 2016, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Charter School Alliance. This award had only been given once before: to President Bill Clinton.
In September 2016, Walker gave an exclusive interview to RealClearLife.com where he stressed his support for charter schools as a key civil rights issue of our time, and where he stated his strong belief that Dr. King would have supported charter schools as well.
Wyatt Tee Walker
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Originally the school operated under a four-year charter from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). It began with 80 students; Mitchell Landsberg of the "Los Angeles Times" said that the figure is what "most charter experts would say is too few to be financially sustainable." The school began in the basement of an American Legion hall. The school was denied usage of that site, and at the last minute, it had to move into a site in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley for its second year. This led to a lot of students leaving the school, and the school's bus transportation costs became very high. The original LAUSD charter would later be renewed for one year.
Los Angeles International Charter High School