SACRAMENTO -- Nelson Smith, the affable president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, worried about this possible slip-up for some time before he took the podium. Speaking this morning on the “State of the Charter School Movement,” Smith decided to keep with the Dr. Seuss theme that has marked this year’s charter schools conference.

“The state of our movement is nothing but strong. We’re not just a crowd, we’re a thundering thong… I mean throng.”

Nelson, a pro, recovered quickly, and delivered a message that emphasized quality throughout the movement. “We must earn our way to growth by offering something better than what is down the street,” Smith told the crowd.

He outlined five key goals for the national movement:

1.) The elimination of arbitrary caps on charter school growth, like New York’s present restrictions to 100 charter schools for the entire state. “Caps have nothing to do with quality, they are about protecting the status quo,” Smith said.
2.) Breaking up the monopoly of local school district chartering around the nation. (In states where the only entities that can authorize charters are the districts they are competing with, if those districts don’t want charter schools, they stop them from opening.)
3.) Stemming the tide of re-regulation. “Where if one school screws up, the state goes berserk," he said. Smith called it the “peanut butter syndrome,” where a kid has an allergic reaction to peanut butter, and the next week charter schools are required to submit regular paperwork on whether it is creamy or chunky, etc.
4.) Pushing for federal policies that nurture quality.
5.) Closing the gap between how charter schools and district schools are funded, by pursuing legislation (and even legal action) to make sure school money belongs to the children who are being educated rather than school systems. “When a child moves to a charter school, all 100 pennies of that dollar belong in that child’s backpack.”