A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

President Clinton's Call to Action for American Education in the 21st Century

Public School Choice and Accountability in Public Education

One size does not fit all in American education. All students and their families need to be able to choose a public school that meets their needs, and schools must be given more flexibility in return for greater accountability to parents and the public for high standards. Public school choice and public charter schools are especially promising strategies for expanding options and accountability in public education.

Public School Choice

States and school districts should provide public school choice plans that give every parent the ability to choose their child's public school. States and communities can provide parents with their choice of school within a district, state, or even of smaller schools-within-schools at their neighborhood public school. Local and state boards of education can encourage and support the development of charter schools, magnet schools and other choice strategies and undertake careful reviews of charter proposals to be sure they are of the highest quality. The President has challenged states to provide parents with more choice in their children's public education, and states and communities have been responding.
Provide report cards on every school. States and school districts can publish in print and on the Internet report cards on every school, providing parents the information they need to choose their child's school. This can help parents compare things such as reading scores, graduation rates, class size, courses offered, number of teachers with advanced certification, safety records, and other key measures, with those of schools across the school district, state, and country.

Public Charter Schools

Every state should pass a charter school law that enables parents and teachers to start new public charter schools that stay open only as long as they do a good job. These schools can be created by teachers, parents, community groups, businesses, universities, museums, and others. Done right, they can be tailored to meet the needs of their students and promote healthy competition within public education. State legislatures must enact solid charter school laws to support the creation of a sizable number of high-performing public charter schools, providing these schools with real flexibility while holding them accountable for reaching high standards for all children. Five years ago, there was only one charter school in America. Today, there are more than 400, and half the states have charter school laws.
To support these efforts, the Clinton Administration, together with Congress, is expanding start-up funding for charter schools. The Administration has proposed nearly doubling the charter school start-up grant program to $100 million in FY 1998. The President initiated this fund in 1994 to address the most commonly cited obstacle to creating these schools--lack of access to start-up funding. The President's budget plan sets aside enough funding to quickly bring more choices in public education to students and their families, helping to start 3,000 charter schools over the next several years. The funding requested for FY 1998 alone would support the development of about 1,000 charter schools by teachers, parents, community groups, and other responsible organizations.

The Nation's First Charter School: A Teacher's Vision Becomes Reality
City Academy, in St. Paul, Minnesota, was the first charter school in the nation to open its doors. Founded by two teachers with assistance from many of the first year students, the school focuses on youth who have dropped out of school. City Academy, placing a heavy emphasis on student responsibility and decision making, is a small school with a personalized learning environment and has had significant success. Most of the students, all former drop outs, have graduated and gone on to some kind of postsecondary education. Like most charter schools in Minnesota, this school was started "from scratch," rather than converted from an existing school. The school's director is also helping teachers in other states to create charter schools.

The Clinton Administration will assist local teams of parents, teachers, community leaders, and others to develop successful public charter schools. The Clinton Administration will support regional meetings, helpful guidebooks, summer institutes, and a World Wide Web site to help provide the information and assistance needed to start high-quality schools, including developing the rigorous performance benchmarks by which schools may be held accountable.

Accountability

Fix failing schools quickly and directly--even if it means closing them and then reopening them in a way that meets the needs of students, parents, and communities. Clear standards can be set to evaluate the success or failure of schools, and school districts and states can intervene when schools are not meeting these standards. These efforts should take advantage of the new approach to accountability in Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act--the largest federal program in K-12 education--which now requires states and school districts to intervene in low-performing schools with such strategies as intensive technical assistance, mentoring, reconstituting failing schools, or creating new charter schools.

School districts can support and reward principals and teachers who establish an atmosphere of learning, a system of accountability, and a spirit of adventure that help students learn. At the same time, school districts can find ways to improve or remove teachers or principals who are not making the grade. In return for greater accountability, principals and teachers, in turn, should be given the authority and support they need to do a good job.

Holding Schools Accountable for Results
Maryland has held its schools accountable for results by putting in place a system for taking over schools with low student attendance rates and achievement on state assessments. Low-performing schools are first given the opportunity to improve based on a state approved plan. Though no schools have yet been taken over yet, the focus on accountability is making a difference. After being identified as low-performing, Patterson High School in Baltimore hired a new principal who focused her team on increasing student achievement by reorganizing instruction and the school day. As a result, attendance has risen, more students passed the state's graduation test, and more seniors graduated than in prior years.

Greater flexibility

In return for accountability, the Clinton Administration has pressed for greater flexibility and local decision making in the use of federal program funds. Drawing on their experiences as former governors, both President Clinton and Secretary of Education Richard Riley came to Washington strongly committed to increasing flexibility for states and communities, cutting red tape, and supporting states and communities in their own education improvement efforts. Since 1993, the President and the Secretary have implemented the Goals 2000 program with no new regulations, cut nearly 80 percent of elementary and secondary education program regulations, approved over 140 waivers of requirements of major federal education programs, and cut the paperwork required to receive student loans. In addition, they have given nine states the authority to grant waivers of federal requirements for their own school districts and made over 20,000 schools eligible to combine most of their federal funds to support schoolwide reform, freeing them from most federal requirements.

-###-

[ Early Learning ] [ Safe, Disciplined and Drug-free Schools ]

Last Updated -- Feb. 13, 1997, (pjk)