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During its first year and a half of existence, the law permitting the creation of charter schools did not exactly change the face of education in Illinois. In fact, only eight charter schools were established during that time, seven in Chicago and one in Peoria.

That fact so perturbed some lawmakers that in December, they changed the law, tacking the changes onto the school funding bill passed in the special session called by the Governor. The amendments retain the role of the local school board in approving charter schools, but add language intended to make it easier for charters to be approved.

The amendments add the following provisions:

ù Charter school applicants do not have to "demonstrate unequivocally" that the school will meet the requirements of the act to be approved. The purposes outlined in the law are "goals that charter schools must aspire to attain."

ù If the State Board reverses a local school board's decision regarding a charter school proposal, the State Board will take over the functions that would otherwise be performed by the local school board. The State Board would, in such a case, withhold funds from the school district and pay them directly to the charter school.

ù The State Board can make loans to charter schools that are approved for start-up costs.

Charter schools are one form of school choice, which some critics believe is the way to improve the quality of public schools. The theory is that, unhampered by the complex tangle of mandates and bureaucratic regulations that govern schools, charters will allow creativity and flexibility to take wing.

Minnesota passed the nation's first charter schools law in 1991. As of November 1, 1996, the Education Commission of the States counted 481 charter schools open in 16 states and Washington, D.C., with a total enrollment of 105,149. By August 1997, 29 states had legislation authorizing charter schools, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Illinois passed its own charter schools law a year and a half ago.

Here, in theory, is how charter schools work. Organizers -- who may be parents, teachers, universities or even private businesses -- are free to create their own curriculum, hire their own teachers, and set their own policy. In exchange for a contract -- or charter -- that promises certain academic results, the schools are freed from most of the regulations and mandates faced by other public schools. Duration of a typical charter is three to five years. If a school fails to produce the results promised in the contract, its charter can be revoked.

Charter school supporters believe that freeing selected public schools from rigid mandates will encourage academic innovation by giving educators more leeway in planning their programs, and that being allowed to choose the school one's child attends will increase parental involvement. Proponents also argue that competition from charter schools will force existing public schools to improve the quality of education for everyone, or risk losing students and the funding that goes with them.

The charter schools movement is not without controversy, however. Opponents fear the new schools will siphon money away from already financially-strapped school districts. They question the equity of giving some students a "superior" education while leaving others behind in "standard" schools, and worry about what will happen to the students if the schools fail. Furthermore, they argue, the schools have yet to prove their effectiveness.

According to a survey by the Education Commission of the States, the biggest barriers in starting a charter school have been the lack of start-up funds and problems related to finding appropriate facilities. Organizers also claim resistance to their ideas from an "education establishment" -- including local school boards and administrators -- alleged to have little interest in changing the status quo.

So far, only eight charter schools are operating in Illinois -- seven of them in Chicago. Some frustrated lawmakers say few more are likely to open until the power to approve the schools is taken away from local school boards, who they believe will resist giving up control. State Senator Peter Fitzgerald, of Inverness, called Illinois' charter schools law "a joke" and "a hoax."

Other observers disagree, blaming the complexities of the law itself. (See "On the Stump," page 6)

The Charter Schools Law of Illinois, enacted in April 1996, authorizes the creation of 45 charter schools: 15 in Chicago, 15 in suburban Cook and the collar counties, and 15 downstate. The General Assembly's intent is "to create a legitimate avenue for parents, teachers and community members to take responsible risks and create new, innovative and more flexible ways of educating children within the public school system."

Ideally, according to the legislation, the charter schools will encourage parental and community involvement by providing parents and pupils with expanded choices within the public school system. The schools will be expected to set rigorous standards for performance and will be held accountable for meeting agreed on standards. The schools are also expected to "increase learning opportunities for all pupils, with special emphasis on at-risk pupils."

Under the law, charter schools must be public, nonprofit and nonsectarian. (Current private or parochial schools may not become charter schools.) The schools must also meet certain safety regulations, and are subject to laws prohibiting discrimination. Participation is to be strictly voluntary -- students and teachers in the existing school district cannot be required to attend or teach at the charter school. Other than these restrictions, however, charter schools are virtually exempt from the Illinois School Code.

The charter schools are publicly financed through existing state and federal funding and property taxes. For every student who leaves the regular public school to attend the charter school, the district must pay the charter school an amount equal to 95-105 percent of its average per-pupil spending.

Organizers wishing to create a charter school must first submit a proposal to the school board of the district or districts from which they will be drawing students. If the local school board approves it, the proposal is then sent to the State Board of Education for final approval. If the local school board rejects the proposal, organizers can appeal the decision to the State Board.

Do school boards really resist the idea of charter schools?

The Illinois Association of School Boards favors charter schools as a way of providing choice to parents. Executive director Wayne Sampson urges local boards to "examine any serious proposal with an open mind." The Association, however, believes the decision to approve or reject a charter school proposal must remain with the local school board.

"IASB favors choice within the public school system," Sampson said. "But the state can not support two separate systems of public schooling. Local school boards are elected by their communities to oversee the education of their children and the spending of their tax dollars. Those responsibilities can not be turned over to parties who are not responsible to the local electorate."

Some school board members and superintendents have been supportive of charter schools, while others are adamantly opposed. Still others support charter schools in theory, but have been less enthusiastic about the proposals in front of them. Here is a capsule of what has happened around the state so far.

Chicago school officials have been largely supportive, as have Peoria school officials. The Chicago Board of School Reform Trustees considered 38 charter school proposals last November, and seven charter schools are currently operating. The board is now considering an additional batch of applications, according to the Illinois State Board of Education. Charter schools operating in Chicago include college prep schools, a dual-language school, a school for youngsters recovering from substance abuse, a school for students at risk of failure because they are older than their peers, and a school for students interested in communications careers. They are part of an intensive school reform project in the city. Downstate, the Peoria Alternative Learning Center serves students with severe discipline problems. (See article on page 17.)

Outside Chicago, six charter school proposals have been rejected, some by several school districts, according to the State Board.

The Arlington Heights-based Thomas Jefferson Charter School foundation sought approval last year from 11 northwest suburban school districts to create a charter school for children in kindergarten through eighth grade. Their proposal centered on a curriculum known as Core Knowledge, based on a philosophy developed by E.D. Hirsch Jr., professor of education and humanities at the University of Virginia and author of the book Cultural Literacy. All 11 school boards rejected the proposal, citing reasons that ranged from "a naive budget" to failure to adequately address how it would meet the needs of special education and English as a Second Language students. The group presented its proposal a second time to three districts, and was turned down by all three.

Also citing financial concerns and unanswered questions about special education provisions, the Woodland District 50 and Fremont District 79 school boards rejected the proposed Prairie Commons Charter School, which would have accepted 35 kindergarten through sixth grade students from each school in its first year. In rejecting its charter school proposal, the Edwardsville District 7 school board worried that the school wouldn't accommodate students with disabilities or those at risk of failure. The New Hope Charter School proposal was rejected by 18 suburban school districts, with several school board members citing a lack of organization by the school's sponsors.

The East St. Louis school board has rejected two applications in the past year. A proposal by Southern Illinois University would have taken the ideas and concepts embodied in Head Start and extended them into elementary school. A Fairmont City charter school proposal sponsored by the not-for-profit corporation Americans Teaching Americans would have customized a curriculum for the community's mostly Hispanic schoolchildren.

So far, all appeals by groups rejected by local school boards have been denied by the State Board of Education.

Newspaper editorials around the state have been generally supportive of the charter schools movement -- and sharply critical of school boards which have rejected proposals. East St. Louis school board members "threw out" their proposals "as quickly and as easily as they might discard a piece of trash," complained an editorial in the Belleville News Democrat. "As people who have followed this school board well know, control is much more important to some members than the quality of education in the district."

School officials themselves, however, would argue that their reasons for rejecting proposals are not that simplistic. All along the political spectrum, locally and nationally, the charter schools movement has stirred up heated debate.

Both President Clinton and a Republican Congress are supporters. In his 1997 State of the Union address, Clinton called for the creation of 3,000 charter schools by the year 2000. The 1997 federal budget calls for $51 million in funding to cover start-up costs for charters, and the administration has requested $100 million in charter school funding for FY 1998. In addition, the U.S. Department of Education has contracted for a $2.1 million study to evaluate the effectiveness of charters and identify the characteristics of successful charter schools.

"Nothing could be better for a school district than a dose of spirited competition among schools," says Minnesota Gov. Arne H. Carlson, who signed the country's first charter school legislation in 1991. But Alex Molnar, author of Giving Kids the Business: The Commercialization of America's Schools, is appalled by "the onslaught of a market mentality that threatens to turn every human relationship, inside and outside the classroom, into a commercial transaction."

Even worse, the combination of little oversight and a deregulated environment could be a recipe for disaster in the wrong hands. The Edutrain Charter School in Los Angeles was the nation's first charter school to be shut down. According to the Los Angeles Times, outside audits of the school showed that teachers lacked books and supplies, students often ran out of toilet paper and the telephones were disconnected once because of unpaid bills. Meanwhile, administrators had treated themselves to expensive retreats and $39,000 was spent for a sports car leased by the school's president. Closure created its own problems, not the least of which involved relocating about 140 students.

When Edutrain failed because of fiscal mismanagement, "free-market fans cited it as a case of the market imposing its discipline," noted Gerald W. Bracey in his "Sixth Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education" for the Phi Delta Kappan (October 1996). "But in a true free-market setting, those punished are those who invested in the enterprise. Those punished by Edutrain's failure were the children who attended the school and had their lives and education disrupted, along with the taxpayers of Los Angeles who funded the enterprise."

Some would argue that the "competition" is unfair, to boot. School officials, constantly hampered by unfunded state mandates, say the freedom enjoyed by charter schools is a luxury they would like to see other public schools have. "We also could become more innovative without state mandates," Wheeling District 21 Superintendent Lloyd "Bud" DesCarpentrie told the Wheeling Countryside.

East St. Louis school board members questioned the equity of giving some children in their district a superior education while leaving others behind in standard schools. "We have 13,000 kids at risk," board member Marlene Smoot told the St. Louis Post Dispatch. While the Chicago school district was considering charter proposals last year, Democratic U.S. Rep. Danny Davis told the Chicago Defender he was opposed to charter schools and challenged school officials to provide a "good, solid" system of public education for all of the city's more than 400,000 students.

Perhaps the biggest sticking point among local school officials is that charter schools would take money away from already financially-strapped public schools, and wouldn't necessarily lower their costs. In supporting a charter school, districts in Illinois are consenting to give up property tax dollars as well as state and federal funding for any of their students who attend the charter school.

For the 11 school boards asked to approve the Thomas Jefferson Charter School proposal, average tuition per school district would have been nearly $7,000 per student. "I'm not prepared to risk the financial future of this district," Wheeling District 21 Board President Arlen Gould told the Wheeling Countryside, when his district rejected that proposal.

"A loss of 35 students would begin a decrease in overall operating expenses," said Woodland District 50 school board member Betsy Awani, when rejecting the Prairie Commons Charter School proposal. "In 10 years, we could lose $3 million. I am absolutely opposed to charter schools. The experiment only benefits 35 students. That is the bottom line."

Critics also argue that the promise of charter schools has been just that: a promise. "Seldom have so many waxed so enthusiastic over an innovation yet to prove its effectiveness," Bracey argues.

"The truth is, nobody knows if the charter school movement is a success," says Joe Schneider, deputy director of the American Association of School Administrators. "They're all too new, too untested and too diverse for anybody -- scholar or pundit -- to truthfully say they're boosting their students' achievement." He adds, "What this country needs is an honest debate about charter schools."

While charter schools hold promise as one step in achieving public school reform, there remain unanswered questions. How does one create these schools without harming financially-strapped public school districts? How does one ensure that the interests of all students -- including those at risk of failure -- will be served, whether they attend charter schools or remain in the regular schools? How does one protect students from the consequences of a charter school's failure?

Finally, charter schools should not be seen as a magic bullet, or cure-all, for the problems faced by our public school system. In a position paper adopted by its board of directors in 1994, the Illinois Association of School Boards pointed out that charter schools "should not be viewed as a means of improving the overall quality of education in Illinois, nor as a means of solving the school funding issue. Charter schools are but a small option on a continuum of educational reform."