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REBECCA CATALANELLOEducation officials say they'll make sure charters meet the same standards as traditional schools.
ORLANDO - Florida's charter schools will not escape the microscope of accountability already focused on traditional public schools, two of the state's top education leaders warned Thursday.
"Be disciplined," Florida State Board of Education Chairman Philip Handy told 600 charter school activists gathered for the eighth annual Florida Charter School Conference. "Understand that being a charter carries with it additional risks."
Since the Legislature authorized charter schools in 1996, the movement has fanned out to serve about 70,000 students in 240 schools statewide and more than 700,000 in 39 states nationally.
In Florida, 14 of the publicly funded, privately run schools received F grades in 2002-03 because of poor student performance on the FCAT. Thirty-nine got A's.
Another 149 of the 222 in operation that same year were not graded at all, according to state figures, because they were too small, were too new or served only grades K-2.
"It's not enough to have a willingness to start a charter school," Education Commissioner Jim Horne said. "You must perform. You need to begin to evaluate your game."
The state Board of Education is set to consider improvement plans for four of the 14 F schools during its Tuesday meeting. Hillsborough County's Tampa United Methodist Charter is one of the schools under consideration.
Florida law allows sponsoring districts to close charter schools if they fail to meet the requirements of student performance outlined in their charters, or if they fail to participate in the state's accountability system.
Robert Curry, principal of Spring Creek Elementary Charter in Lake County - an A school - agreed the state should keep a close eye on failing charter schools. "They hurt the cause," Curry said.
Handy is a self-described charter school advocate. Horne co-sponsored the bill establishing the publicly funded, privately run schools when he was a state senator.
Charter school boards are responsible for creating their own policies, salary plans, budgets and curriculum. While they do receive some oversight from their sponsoring districts and are beholden to the state's testing requirements, charters are attractive to some because they seem to operate similarly to private schools but are tuition-free.
Cecil McClellan, director of Polk county's Lake Gibson Academic Research Charter School, isn't convinced the state's grading system is the best measure of many charter schools.
Several charters, like McClellan's, opened to serve students at risk of dropping out. Almost all of the students in his school came from public schools where they scored in the bottom of their peer groups on the FCAT - scores of 1 or 2. McClellan said he was notified he received an F last year.
"If I wanted to recruit 3s and 4s and 5s, I would have an A school every year," he said.
But many of those in attendance said the warnings don't worry them.
"I can't say at this stage in the game it will mean more regulations," said Katrina Wilson-Davis, principal of Miami's Liberty Charter School, the first to open in the state. "As everybody grows, we have to grow with them. The bar is the bar."
Many charter school advocates attending the conference said they expect changes in the Florida charter law each year. In one workshop after another at the convention Thursday, charter school leaders raised questions about new laws and expressed worry that the way they are required to do things today may change tomorrow.
Still, Horne left them with one assurance: "Charter schools are here to stay. That debate is over, okay?"