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BRANSON NEWS:
At its first business meeting this year, the Missouri Board of Education renewed three St. Louis charter schools for five more years on Thursday, while questioning whether the state is evaluating charter schools appropriately.Charter schools are independently run public schools. In Missouri, charter schools exist only in St. Louis and Kansas City. They are designed to be innovative alternatives to the school districts in which they operate. Missouri law requires charter schools to be renewed, in most cases, every five years by the state board.Thursday’s renewals drew frustration from state board members who were dissatisfied with charter schools’ test scores. The state board’s comments in turn frustrated charter school leaders, who don’t think it’s fair to compare charter schools to entire school districts. The state board has long evaluated charter schools’ effectiveness primarily by comparing them to public districts.
“That may not particularly be a good measure,” said state board President Charlie Shields.The debate led state board members to conclude that Missouri needs to revisit its charter school laws, particularly in the area of evaluation.“I think there’s an opportunity to revisit the entire charter issue,” said Shields. “The politics about this have really been about expansion or nonexpansion. What we have not had, in my mind, is a significant discussion around our charter school laws.”Shields was critical of the performance of the St. Louis charter schools renewed Thursday, arguing that they do not convincingly outperform St. Louis Public Schools. He said the state Legislature allowed charter schools to operate in Missouri on the premise that charter schools would be easy to open, but poor-performing charter schools should be easy to close.Charter school leaders often argue that it’s difficult and unfair to compare charter schools to St. Louis Public …
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