Education is going through some major changes as we speak and charter schools are an important component of those changes that are currently taking place. In the past few years charters have become more and more visible in communities and are becoming a poplar choice for parents to send their children.

Today I was presented with some information that really made me curious. I have been aware of charters for quite some time but the idea of a conversion charter school was presented to me for the first time today. Conversion charters operate in the same way normal charters do in the fact that they still use the same process to identify an end goal in mind and create a detailed plan of how their school will accomplish said goal. The school creates a plan and a set time line to accomplish the plan. If they do it’s a success and the school continues, if not the project/charter is done. However, the difference is that a conversion school would be a regular public school district taking on this task rather than a third party proposing the charter school and plan.

I was not quite sure what to make of this entire process, but I do have to admit that the idea of incorporating components of a charter school into the public school system sounds very cool. I like the fact that in this format of a conversion charter, the school has the ability to identify the goal (assessment) and create their own plan or frameworks…meaning that they are not held to the normal requirements of teaching all the state mandated standards. For me I see this as a possibility for my teachers to free up their focus on the tedious standards they normally teach and try to create a more creative manner to accomplish the same thing as the state standards.

I am still very new to this idea and am still doing my homework, but if you have any information or input on what conversion charters look like, please feel free to leave us a comment. Thanks.

Mr. McClung