Charter Authorizers Eye Rules on Closings.

This article presents views of James N. Goenner about the hardest part of closing down a charter school. As the executive director of the charter school office of Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant Michigan most authorizers who take their responsibilities seriously agree that weeding out bad schools is a vital component of the autonomy-for-accountability bargain at the heart of the charter school concept. As they struggle to develop policies and protocols to shut weak charter schools, authorizers are grappling with issues that may increasingly apply to regular public schools as they fall under sanctions for sub-par performance imposed by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.