Allison Eisen and Helen F. Ladd studied the promises and performance of North Carolina’s first 100 charter schools and found that their record was spotty, at best. After the Legislature raised the cap, the number of charters in the state is now 147 and growing.
Most distressing are the findings related to the provision of transportation and lunch services, given that serving “at-risk” and low-income students was an initial goal of the state’s charter school enabling legislation.
Although charter schools are not legally required to provide transportation to their students, 64 of the initial 100 charter schools in North Carolina pledged to do so in their charter applications. Yet only 33 were doing so in 2011.
Likewise, 62 of the original charters promised to provide lunch to their students even though they had no legal obligation to do so. In fact, only 43 of them were doing so.
These services are essential for any school hoping to attract substantial numbers of minority and low-income students. Largely because so many charter schools do not offer transportation and lunch, as a group they have increased racial and socio-economic segregation in North Carolina’s schools.
Up until now, there has been little oversight of charter schools in the state. The authors offer four recommendations:
▪ Strengthen the application guidelines for charter schools. Charter applicants should be required to carefully consider their operating model with particular attention to the costs of providing lunch and transportation services and their recruitment strategies for disadvantaged students. More detailed applications should help the Advisory Board identify flaws before the school is approved and should help school administrators better adhere to their contracts once the school is open.
▪ Shorten the timeline for state review from the current 10-year period to five years. A shorter window would strike a balance between ensuring N.C. schools are successful and allowing charters to operate with a sense of autonomy.
▪ Expand the capacity of the various offices within the Department of Public Instruction, including but not limited to the Office for Charter Schools. DPI will clearly need more personnel to support and monitor the growing number of charter schools.
▪ Impose consequences when a charter school fails to meet its contractual obligations. These consequences might include financial penalties or school closure. Organizations applying for a charter need to understand that they will be held accountable for their commitments.
As more and more students enroll in charter schools across the state, it is high time for North Carolina to provide the tools and resources needed to ensure taxpayer money is being well spent and families are getting the services for which they signed up.
Given the current makeup of the Legislature, there seems to be a lack of will to hold charter schools accountable for their performance or their promises.
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article13130276.html#storylink=cpy
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I believe i have read that they didnt like busing at all. I am not surprised that this resegregation is occurring.
There’s no incentive for politicians to do anything, because there’s a public school system in place to take the kids who can’t arrange transportation/need lunch at school.
Politicians literally could not do this without the safety net public system. As long as the public system is in place to pick up all the risk, they’re insulated from any broad public blow-back. The parents who can’t manage to jump thru the hoops for the “choice” schools will just quietly default to public schools. Political problem solved.
Also, note that teachers and Principals in North Carolina are amoung the lowest paid in the nation. With a current budget boost from the Republican Governor, starting teachers now make 35,000 dollars!
People in SOUTH CAROLINA are now laughing at their northern neighbors and passing them in many, many areas. NORTH CAROLINA, because Mississippi needs some competition!
Wondering if Diane saw this.
NC legislators have filed a bill that “would scrap the position of Superintendent of Public Instruction and the State Board of Education, and replace them with a Secretary of Education appointed by the governor.”
https://www.ednc.org/2015/03/13/lawmaker-to-atkinson-out-you-go/
And in NC, this is VERY likely to pass and become law.
Thanks for paying attention to this Ms. Ravitch. There is another kind of segregation happening that deserves a closer look. As the spouse of a founder of the first charter in Asheville, I now find that my “retirement savings” and most of my home equity was quietly donated to the school or obligated toward school debts. I am told that it is too confidential to tell me how that happened. In what I am now told is a completely unrelated transaction, the founders arranged a “golden handcuff” contract as a way of informally paying my wife back for what we did to help “get the site up and running.” I have been encouraged to ‘look on the bright side’ because this transaction will dramatically maximize her state retirement calculation.
There are huge complicated ramifications in the funding plan that our school devised and I can’t find anyone who is much interested in helping me look at it. The bottom line is that my wife, after 35 yrs. together, would like to be single in retirement and I am being left basically homeless to live on the sidewalk beside the school that I unknowingly helped fund to such a degree. I am writing the story about what happened to me and I will keep you posted if you’re interested.