Non-Partisan Analysis of Arizona’s Charter School Plan.

clipped from www.ncspe.org Arizona’s charter school plan has been called the “gold standard” for charter school plans. The plan has been ranked 1st for its policy environment by researchers, and has received an “A+” for financial audits. It is highly deregulated and includes a huge number of charter schools, the most per capita in the nation. Arizona policymakers have stressed efficiency in intent and on paper, but there is little available evidence that levels of this dimension are high. Together with likely low levels of equity and debatably similar or lower levels of social cohesion, the conclusion is that on balance there is little basis upon which Arizona’s charter schools could claim any significant general advantage over their non-charter public counterparts.