Indy Charter Schools Bring City Positive Change
by Jim Brown
September 28, 2004
(AgapePress) - An effort to open up new charter schools in Indianapolis has put education reform on the fast track in the city known for speed. A new report by the Progressive Policy Institute says charter elementary and middle school students in Indianapolis are making "impressive" progress in reading, math, and language. In light of these facts, one city official is looking for ways to provide even more educational choice for the city's children and their parents.
Mayor Bart Peterson has chartered 10 schools and plans to open three more in the next two years. He is convinced that providing optimal educational alternatives for young people and families is a matter of necessity.
"If urban America is going to survive," Peterson says, "and if our core cities are going to survive and thrive, we have to keep our population and grow our population. And to do that there have to be educational options, because we just live in an era where people demand choices."
Offering citizens high quality education choices, the mayor says, brings multiple benefits, since it "both strengthens the opportunities for the young people who attend the charter schools and also helps lift up our traditional district schools as well." Also, he notes that building charter schools in "challenged" areas of the city has had a positive effect on neighborhood economic development.
According to the Progressive Policy Institute's study, the charter school initiative led by Indianapolis' mayor has improved community leadership, parent satisfaction, and what is perhaps the most important measure of all -- student learning. An analysis of the city's five charter schools in existence before last August shows that, although many students entered those schools with low standardized test scores, they have made substantial improvement since.
Peterson points out that a high percentage of the grade and subject matter combinations, such as fifth grade math or third grade English, showed progress. For all these combinations, he says, "Seventy-seven percent of [the students] in all the charter schools that we checked were progressing faster than their peers nationwide on standardized tests -- so that's a positive thing."
Also, Peterson says students' progress towards academic proficiency by eighth-grade has been "almost universally successful" in Indianapolis charter schools. Analysis seems to indicate that the Indianapolis mayor's charter school initiative has been a healthy measure for the city.
Meanwhile, the Progressive Policy Institute's report certainly appears to debunk any notion that charter school students are lagging behind their regular public school counterparts.
