October 6, 2008
Education entrepreneurs rise to charter challenge

The past six years have not been easy. But these schools (49 in the state) are led by the state's leading education entrepreneurs and they are changing public education like no other reform effort has in Indiana's history.

Today, in Center Township, 42,000 students attend public schools with 7,200, or 17 percent, attending public charter schools and the rest attending Indianapolis Public Schools. In May 2009, six public charter high schools in Indianapolis will graduate 160 high school seniors with nearly all headed to college.

These schools demonstrate the state's best entrepreneurial efforts at improving public education. Some schools have negotiated with IPS for space, benefiting the charter school and IPS as well as the students and taxpayers. Others have hooked up with a nonprofit to receive free space. Others have used the tax code to broker lower cost mortgages they pay out of their general operating funds.

These education entrepreneurs work with parents to form car pools, or use IndyGo student passes, or buy used buses or join forces with one another to share buses so that students can get to and from school with less expense. These schools have joined forces to form an Indianapolis Charter School Honor Choir directed by Henry Leck of the Indianapolis Children's Choir. They work with Learning Well for full-time nursing care. They have formed consortia to save costs in health and liability insurance, too. They share costs in professional development. GEO's Charter School Service Center has assisted in many arrangements.

Public charter schools receive about half the amount a traditional public school receives per pupil.

Yet, these education entrepreneurs are making it work. In the next five years, it is quite possible that the number of high school graduates from public charter schools will exceed the number graduating from IPS. These students will graduate ready and able to work as well as be college experienced and college bound.

The charter schools are making college a reality by going beyond the talk and actually enrolling students into area colleges and universities while they are still high school students. We are helping them see they can succeed in college. And we are helping their parents understand that they, too, can go to college.

GEO Foundation's Charter School Service Center stands ready to help grow Indiana's charter school movement and invites all interested education reformers to join our efforts. Together, we can find solutions that support the growth of these schools and the development of new schools.