Chicago: Charters Not Nearly As Successful As Once Thought

Charter fever, when will it break?  For the first time in a decade the state board of education in Illinois is releasing campus-specific data on charter schools in Chicago, revealing that the city's 87 charters vary widely in performance, generally serve lower percentages of special population students than district schools, and generally hire fewer fully certified teachers.  The only area in which the semi-autonomous schools outperform district schools is student mobility.  Chicago's charters are authorized by the local school district and its approval process is generally considered to be a good one. There are some concerns about one politically-connected charter network, but the scandals and outrages reported in other places haven't been as common in Chicago.  (Report finds charters struggling like other CPS schools Tribune, Chicago charter schools produce wildly uneven results on state tests Sun Times, Charter school campuses get state report cards Catalyst).