The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools’ Todd Ziebarth has a new briefing paper analyzing the types of caps on charter school growth across the country. He writes that placing caps on the number of charter schools in a given state doesn’t ensure quality (or prevent poor quality charter schools popping up all over the place, as opponents claim they claim.) Ziebarth notes that the caps usually resulted out of political trade-offs when charter laws were originally passed. Writes Ziebarth:

If state leaders are sincerely concerned about charter quality, they should look for “direct impact” and address problems that clearly affect quality. Rather than imposing artificial limits on growth, for example, state leaders will get more bang for their quality buck by working with authorizers to establish rigorous application processes, firm but supportive oversight mechanisms, and reliable, transparent processes for funding and renewal.

The report can be found here. A press release here.

Meanwhile, lots of commentary all over the papers on Gov. Pataki's budget. The New York Sun offers a sound reason for supporting the lifting of the cap on new charter schools: it will ensure that innovative school leaders won’t be pulled elsewhere, where there are more outlets for them to help children. Wrote the editors: “Now is precisely the time to lift it, before continued unavailability of charter slots encourages educational entrepreneurs to look elsewhere for more amenable locales in which to open charter schools. The governor has recognized this, and if New Yorkers are lucky the Legislature will, too.”

The New York Times worries that lifting the cap would lead to the creation of too many charter schools too soon, which the Old Gray Lady believes could be bad for quality. They also suggest that the proposed $500 tuition tax credit “has a micro chance of passing.” Meanwhile, in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Jeffrey Crane, superintendent of the West Irondequoit district, says he not only isn’t getting the warm fuzzie’s over Pataki’s charter school proposal, he thinks it is a bad idea to let parents have an education tax credit when that money could be spent better by bureaucrats. “I think it would better serve the children (and) the families if that money went directly to the school district to be used as determined by the local district,” he told the newspaper.

Local control... but not too local...