RALEIGH
Charter-school boosters said this week that North Carolina may fall short in reaching for $4 billion in federal "Race to the Top" education grants because the state hasn't shown enough of a commitment to help the alternative schools succeed.
President Obama has highlighted charter schools as a way to solve problems in public schools. His administration made creating an environment for charter schools to succeed a significant element of how it will score grant applications filed by more than 30 states.
North Carolina has limited its number of charter schools to no more than 100 since they began in 1996. The state was given poor marks by a national charter-school advocacy group evaluating state laws that are supposed to help the schools thrive.
Charter schools receive public money but are run by private boards and open to all students. Administrators don't have to follow all the regulations imposed on traditional public schools.
Legislators and governors in other states worked to try to expand the use of charter schools. North Carolina chose to do nothing, said Darrell Allison with Parents for Educational Freedom, which advocates for education options for North Carolina students.
"We as leaders are very, very concerned," Allison said. "In a state that has a cap on public charter schools approaching 15 years, we are concerned that we have not done enough."
But Gov. Bev Perdue is confident that the state will be very competitive with the grant proposal that it sent to Washington, spokeswoman Chrissy Pearson said.
The plan, which asks for $469.5 million over four years, focuses on developing innovative methods to measure how students succeed and train teachers and administrators, Perdue wrote to Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Grant winners will be announced in April. Not all states will win.
"I believe North Carolina has developed an aggressive plan that holds every school accountable for every child's success," Perdue wrote.
In North Carolina, the 100-charter cap was approved to give legislators and policymakers time to determine whether the charter schools improved student performance. New charter schools can open only if old ones are shut down.
Legislators and some educators have been cool toward raising the cap, pointing to studies showing that charter-school students don't necessarily perform markedly better than those in traditional classrooms. Charter advocates have argued that the studies are deficient. They have also pointed out that charter schools often teach a disproportionate number of low-performing and at-risk students.
Perdue and others successfully petitioned Duncan's office to change the grant rules to allow states to promote other innovative schools in their application in addition to charters.
The Obama administration remains very interested in charter schools in its scoring system, which will grade applications on a 500-point scale, said Todd Ziebarth, a vice president of policy at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
The alliance ranked North Carolina 32nd among the 40 states with charter-school laws, saying that the state's rules lack enough accountability and fail to ensure adequate financing for the schools.
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