The Virginia General Assembly plans to seek a constitutional amendment to divest local school boards of the sole authority to approve charter schools, vesting authority with a gubernatorial appointed board. Please vote NO on the charter school constitutional amendment and help our schools keep local education resources within local control. 

• Local school boards are best equipped to assess the needs of their students and the locality.
• Local school boards are responsible for the outcomes of all schools within the school system, including charter schools, so they should be solely responsible for the authorization of any new school. 
• Research has shown that charter school outcomes are mixed and depend upon ensuring quality and accountability.
• A rigorous study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) found “a significant negative impact on student academic growth” for charters in states that allow multiple agencies to authorize these schools. In effect, CREDO said, the presence of multiple authorizers allows charter organizers to “shop” for the most advantageous route to approval.
• CREDO also examined the overall performance of charter schools across multiple subject areas. They found that while some charter schools do better than the traditional public schools that fed them; the majority of schools do the same or worse. A large group of charters (37 percent) performed significantly worse than the traditional public schools in terms of reading and math. 46 percent did not do significantly better or worse. Only one-fifth of charters (17 percent) performed significantly better (at the 95 percent confidence level) than the traditional public school.

Help our schools keep local education resources within local control by voting NO on the charter school constitutional amendment.