Q: Four teachers I respect started a charter school that's now struggling. I'm an accountant, and they've asked me to join their board. I love their mission -- to put low-income kids on a college track -- but wonder how I can help. What are the responsibilities of a school board?

A: School boards have key responsibilities, including hiring and managing the school leaders, ensuring financial best practices, promoting the mission and overseeing student progress. Board members are central to a charter's success.

Charters operate independently from public schools, are free from most government regulations and often form teacher-union contracts. They are approved by an outside authority that differs from state to state.

The authorizer holds schools accountable for student performance and financial viability, and can close schools if they don't produce satisfactory results. Some charters are run by CMOs: for-profit or nonprofit "charter management organizations" that manage several schools.

During the 2013-2014 school year, there were 6,440 charter schools in the U.S. serving 2.7 million students. During that time frame, 640 new schools opened and roughly 200 existing charters were closed. This 3-to-1 ratio has held steady for five years, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Low enrollment, financial problems and poor academic performance are the most common reasons charters get shut down.

In the early days of charters, board selection was often an afterthought. The thinking was, "Find a good principal and teachers, and we're good to go."

As the movement matured, charter leaders began to focus on school governance to avoid pitfalls such as schools abruptly closing due to financial instability, poor test scores and crony hiring.

The late Mary Mitchell, co-founder of Girls Prep in New York (now part of Public Prep Network), said of her experience, "You can't have a successful charter without a team of energetic, informed and honest-broker board members. The board chooses the principal, helps build staff capacity, sets standards for professional development, oversees budgets and raises money to supplement public funds. It 'owns' student performance. Schools don't fail; boards fail their schools. When that happens, we fail the kids."

To promote good governance, some authorizers require or strongly encourage charters to bring on objective board members with governing experience and required skill sets.

Do your due diligence before signing on. Read June Kronholz's piece, "Boot Camps for Charter Boards," in the summer 2015 edition of Education Next (educationnext.org). She describes how nonprofit Charter Board Partners recruits, trains and places professionals willing to serve on charter school boards.

Read The Top 10 Mistakes of Charter School Boards at boardontrack.com, a website that provides guidance for board members.

Go on YouTube and watch Carrie Irvin's TEDx Talk, "The Key to Great Schools is Great Boards."

Delve into data on charter school performance at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (publiccharters.org).

Know where you stand on controversial issues. For example, should your school "back fill" seats -- admit new students whenever current ones leave? How equitable is your application process?

Visit charter schools in your community, including the one whose board you may join. May 3-9 is National Charter Schools Week, and many schools plan special events for parents and visitors during this time.

(Do you have a question about your child's education? Email it to Leanna@aplusadvice.com. Leanna Landsmann is an education writer who began her career as a classroom teacher. She has served on education commissions, visited classrooms in 49 states to observe best practices, and founded Principal for a Day in New York City.)

Q: Parents are starting a testing "opt out" movement in our district. Some are against Common Core. Others feel their kids are test-stressed. Don't we need measures to know what kids are really learning? Why can't those who mandate the tests explain this better?

A: Several issues fuel the opt-out movement; too many tests is one of them. Others include contradictory policy decisions, political posturing, misinformation about the Common Core (no, it's not a federal mandate), parents' fears that kids are being pushed too far and teachers' worries that over-testing drains the joy from school.

One Florida educator told me recently, "Testing and the prep that goes with it will eat up 80 out of 180 school days this year. That's just crazy."

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has acknowledged these concerns. He favors limits on testing, but told Florida civic leaders that when parents refuse to let their kids take statewide exams, "it robs educators of a means to measure progress and understanding of what our children know and don't know."

If your district has too many tests, it could choose well-designed ones that provide good data and use that information to improve teaching. Some states and districts are even starting to cut back. Palm Beach County, Florida, for instance, eliminated 55 tests this year.

Parents should push lawmakers and districts to take a good look at which tests matter and drop those that don't, says Bill Jackson, founder and president of GreatSchools, an organization that helps parents get a solid education for their children.

"Parents are smart," he says. "They know that test scores can't capture many of the qualities of a good school. But scores from a well-designed standardized test do tell you if the school is focused on the basics of reading and math. They offer a very simple, objective way of comparing two schools that may not have much else in common. If a parent finds that their school has a high percentage of students who are meeting state standards, that gives them something very valuable: peace of mind."

States also need to prepare parents if the test scores based on new assessments are likely to be lower than previous years, notes Jackson. The new tests "are a more accurate reflection of what students know and can do than past exams, and the results are more useful to classroom teachers."

Jackson applauds Kentucky, an early adopter of higher standards and new tests, for doing a good job of getting these messages out.

It's worth noting, says Jackson, that a "new report from the American Institutes for Research shows that students in Kentucky are making faster progress than students in states that haven't adopted the Common Core."

He advises parents to do their own homework. Start with the online resources below and those created by your state.

-- Common Core State Standards Initiative: corestandards.org/what-parents-should-know

-- Student Achievement Partners: achievethecore.org

-- Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers: parcconline.org

-- Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium: smarterbalanced.org

(Do you have a question about your child's education? Email it to Leanna@aplusadvice.com. Leanna Landsmann is an education writer who began her career as a classroom teacher. She has served on education commissions, visited classrooms in 49 states to observe best practices, and founded Principal for a Day in New York City.)

Q: My daughter's fourth-grade teacher asked the class to bring in favorite poems to share. At the end of the month, parents are invited to help publish a poetry anthology for each kid to take home. I was like, really? With the big push on STEM subjects and Common Core math and nonfiction reading, they're doing poetry?

A: Please tell your son's teacher I'm a fan. Really! Kids love reading, reciting and writing poetry. It's good to hear that with all the test-prep stress, some teachers still pause to celebrate National Poetry Month in April.

And why not? Poetry lends itself to several English/language arts literacy standards for close reading and narrative writing. Research shows that poetry helps students develop an ear for the sounds and rhythms of words.

Teachers have long held that being exposed to poetry in the early years can foster a lasting appreciation of language. Literacy expert Mem Fox thinks that if children know eight nursery rhymes by heart by the time they're 4 years old, they're usually among the best readers by the time they're 8.

Fox says, "Rhymers will be readers; it's that simple."

The study of poems has been an enduring staple in American textbooks, says New York-based education editor Nancy Hereford.

"The earliest McGuffey Readers contained poems, as well as essays and speeches," she says. "For decades, students were required to study and memorize certain poems chosen to enrich a sense of history, or to hone memory and oral language skills."

In addition, poetry is fun for kids. Pop culture is packed with poetry in song lyrics. Poems promote word play and painlessly introduce new vocabulary. They can inspire reluctant students to read and write. Poems can also illuminate great moments in history and help students think about topics in new ways.

Creative teachers are designing Common Core standards-aligned reading and writing lessons around poems from such a wide range of authors as Odgen Nash, Shel Silverstein, Walt Whitman and Maya Angelou. To find standards that invite the study of poetry, go to corestandards.org or achievethecore.org and search "poetry."

So find time for rhyme with your daughter. Libraries have great poetry collections for kids that are readily available this month. Two well-known authors of poetry for children, Lee Bennett Hopkins and Jack Prelutsky, have edited dozens of rich anthologies on a range of topics -- from pets and farm animals to American history, math, baseball, space travel, seasons and city streets. The series "Poetry for Young People" (Sterling Publishers) introduces kids to poets including Robert Frost, Langston Hughes and Emily Dickinson.

Want to polish your math and reading skills? "Edgar Allan Poe's Pie" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), a collection of brainteaser poems by J. Patrick Lewis, reimagines classic poems with math puzzler twists.

Pore over these poetry collections with your daughter and you'll both be ready for "Poem in Your Pocket Day" on April 30. (For more information, go to poets.org/national-poetry-month.)

(Do you have a question about your child's education? Email it to Leanna@aplusadvice.com. Leanna Landsmann is an education writer who began her career as a classroom teacher. She has served on education commissions, visited classrooms in 49 states to observe best practices, and founded Principal for a Day in New York City.)