Targeting bad apples of charter schools

The Obama administration has made opening more charter schools a big part of its plans for improving the nation's education system, but Education Secretary Arne Duncan will warn advocates of the schools today that low-quality institutions are giving their movement a black eye.

"The charter movement is putting itself at risk by allowing too many second-rate and third-rate schools to exist," Duncan says in prepared remarks that he is scheduled to deliver in Washington, D.C., at the annual gathering of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

In an interview, Duncan said he would use the address to praise innovations made by high-quality charter schools, urge charter-school leaders to become more active in weeding out bad apples in their movement and invite the leaders to help out in the administration's broad effort to remake several thousand of the nation's worst public schools.

Since 1991, 4,600 charter schools have opened; they now educate some 1.4 million of the nation's 50 million public-school students, according to Education Department figures. The schools are financed with taxpayer money but operate free of many curricular requirements and other regulations that apply to traditional public schools.

The Obama administration has been working to persuade state legislatures to lift caps on the number of charter schools. At the same time, the movement is smarting from a recent report by Stanford University researchers that found that although some charter schools were doing an excellent job, many students in charter schools were not faring as well as students in traditional public schools.