Opposition for the New Education Bill

An article in today's Boston Globe by James Vaznis states the Massachusetts Association of Charter Public Schools could actually stifle the growth of charter schools. This is odd, considering the teacher's association is stating the opposite.

The Massachusetts Association of Charter Public Schools said today the bill could actually stifle the growth of charter schools because of changes made to the legislation last Friday in the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

Those changes would pull first-year funding for all new charter schools from the state's general education fund known as Chapter 70 and would create a new budget line for those costs, which the association fears could make it more vulnerable to line-item budget cutting.

Another change made by the committee would require that the first three new charter schools approved each year to be located in a district that ranks in the bottom 10 percent in MCAS scores. Given that the state only approves two or three applications a year, the association said the requirement would make it virtually impossible to open new charter schools in other parts of the state.

The association also expressed concern about imposing quotas on the enrollment of students from certain demographic groups and replacing students who leave a charter school. The association said the language in the bill is so restrictive that it would discourage organizers from wanting to open new charters schools.

"These provisions would inhibit future charter growth, and restrain the ability of successful charters to continue to provide the educational and economic opportunities they have been providing for 15 years -- a key tenet of the education reform agenda," Marc Kenen, the association's executive director, said in a statement.

Read the bill