Standalone or single-site charter schools are required to achieving a responsive combined school alternatives for families. Increasingly, however, single-site schools apparently suffer a more significant burden of proof to justify their existence, relative to CMOs, for you might be “preferences” a part of the charter-authorizing process that keep standalone charter schools from getting approved. A recent Fordham report saw that only 21 percent of applicants who could not intend to hire a CMO or an EMO running their school had their charters approved, in comparison with 31 percent of applicants who had such plans. This finding would likely indicate a bias toward CMO or EMO applicants over people who wish to start standalone schools. Read “Strengthening the Roots of your Charter-School Movement” by Derrell Bradford, that may include our Summer 2018 issue, for additional details on the difficulties that single-site charter schools face-and how their independent operators might overcome them.
