Charter schools, as defined by the California Department of Education, are "public schools that may provide instructions in any of grades K-12 that are created or organized by a group of teachers, parents, community leaders or a community-based organization." Charter schools tend to extend learning time; have high expectations of students; be structured and disciplined; and have higher-paid, quality teachers. In 2009, 10 percent of the America's nearly 5,000 charter schools were conversion schools and in California, with the most conversion schools, it was 16 per cent.
Conversion charter schools are traditional public schools which have been converted to charter schools. Usually, the traditional schools are failing, inner city ones and the conversion is an attempt to turn it around to produce students achieving high scores in standardized tests and greater college admissions. A public school can convert to a charter when a majority of its tenured, full-time teachers and the district school board approve it. Coversions differ in many ways from start-up charters.
When charter schools were first established in California in the 1990s, half of them were conversions. Conversions usually operate in the same facility housing the former public school, often with the same faculty and students -- unlike start-ups which operate in various facility types and often with less-experienced, nonunion teachers. 61 percent of conversions are in urban areas; 50 percent of start-ups are in suburbia. More teachers are certified in elementary and bilingual education in conversions than in start-ups.
There are both excellent and really poor conversion charter schools, according to the Brookings Institute's 2009 Brown Center Report on American Education. However, a Rand study found that students in elementary school conversions performed better in math than start-ups or traditional public schools but that results in reading were similar. Although conversions are generally considered an effective way to reform failing schools, little is actually documented about their successes. More needs to be learned, concludes the Brookings Institute study, if conversions are to become a model for reform.