Do Charter Schools Pass The Test?

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For many parents, the quality of the charter is almost beside the point so long as their kids are out of public schools. Even parents who have been burned by charters continue to relish their right to choose. After Buzz and Samantha Koch, ages 11 and 8, spent a year in a cash-strapped charter with no playground or library, their mother Trish became a tougher customer. She shopped around, sifting through test-score data on the Internet and touring a dozen charter schools, including many that she says made her think, "I wouldn't put my dog here." Her children are now prospering at the Noah Webster Basic School, a charter that attracts students who work above their grade level. Samantha and her second-grade friends spout square roots for fun. Fifth-grader Buzz just wrote a paper on Abraham Lincoln's photographer.

Where does that leave charters' biggest boosters, poor and inner-city parents who can't always take time off from work to go school shopping? Two years ago, Josefina Galvan, a Mexican immigrant who works the graveyard shift as a nurse's aide, enrolled her four kids in Paramount Academy on word of mouth alone. They lasted one year and learned so little that all four repeated their grades at their new school--another charter that came highly recommended but is no award winner. "Even if the charter schools are terrible, I wouldn't put my kids back in public school," she says. "I just have this feeling they're safer in charters. At least here in America I get to make that choice."