Release: Smart Charter School Caps

Washington, D.C. —Today, 25 states and the District of Columbia limit the growth of charter schools in some fashion. Some states place restrictions on those who can authorize or oversee charter schools; others limit the number of charter schools allowed to open. Yet, by primarily focusing on quantity, charter school caps do not always address the greater concern of quality.

In this new Education Sector Idea at Work, Co-director Andrew J. Rotherham offers an innovative solution to managing both the growth and quality of charter schools: "Smart Charter School Caps." Smart charter caps allow for deliberate capacity-driven growth of charter schools, direct new resources to high-quality schools, and work within today's political reality, where charter schools remain a leading-edge reform.

Statutory caps as they exist now are too blunt a policy instrument to sufficiently ensure the quality of new charter schools, argues Rotherham. They fail to differentiate between strong schools and weak schools and between successful charter authorizers and those with poor track records. Fifteen years of charter schooling experience offers policymakers clear lessons and the opportunity to design more effective policies, including the reform of arbitrary charter caps.

Read "Smart Charter School Caps."

The Annie E. Casey Foundation provided funding for this report. The findings and conclusions are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the foundation.

Education Sector is an independent education policy think tank devoted to developing innovative solutions to the nation’s most pressing educational problems. We are nonprofit and nonpartisan, both a dependable source of sound thinking on policy and an honest broker of evidence in key education debates throughout the United States.

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