If anyone represents the state of St. Louis' charter school movement, it's Patrice Coffin, who walked the halls of a south St. Louis school building recently and surveyed the renovation work.

In 2008, she left the building as principal of Paideia Academy, a school rife with infighting, poor test scores and ordered by the state to close. Now, Coffin is returning to the building as principal of Carondelet Leadership Academy, one of four charter schools opening in the city this year.

As the St. Louis charter school experiment enters its second decade, people such as Coffin are trying to revitalize a movement that in many ways hasn't lived up to lofty expectations. They're starting new schools they hope will have a better chance of success.

At Carondelet, old walls have come down, new ones have gone up. The building, at 7604 Michigan Avenue, which will hold kindergarten through fifth grade this fall, is getting a $1 million overhaul.

"We're opening a brand new school with a clean slate," Coffin said.

If the past is any indication, hundreds will fill the classrooms of Carondelet and the other new charter schools, just like the thousands who have already flocked to the nontraditional public schools.

Almost 10,000 city children attend charter schools — more than a third of the number who attend St. Louis Public Schools.

And if the past is an indication, the charter schools won't be better academically than the city's struggling public school system. In most cases, students at charter schools have performed more poorly.

But this time is different, some say.

This time, there's increased expectation to improve student achievement.

This time, the state has started to clamp down on charter schools that are failing.

This time, the schools are opening with more scrutiny, with St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay's office involved.

"We need to replicate the good charters," said Coffin, above the sounds of power tools inside Carondelet. "The process of opening is more challenging. It has more criteria, and there's more scrutiny."

In 2007, advocates of quality charter schools and Slay's office joined to establish a new application process, run through the mayor's office, to attract better charter schools — public schools that operate independently of school districts.

Last year KIPP Inspire opened at Ohio and Gravois avenues with support from the mayor's office. The school is part of the national Knowledge Is Power Program, a network of 82 schools — most of them middle schools — that have so consistently outperformed urban districts they are now viewed as models for successful charter schools nationwide.

Northside Community School, at North Kingshighway and Natural Bridge, was another.

The four schools opening this year — Gateway Science Academy, Carondelet Leadership Academy, Grand Center Arts Academy and Shearwater High School — also carry Slay's stamp of approval.

The mayor's endorsement isn't essential to opening a charter school in St. Louis. But with it comes help with finding a building, a sponsor and other things critical to running a charter school.

As a result, "We think they're going to open stronger," said Robbyn Wahby, the mayor's education liaison.

The four new schools vary in focus.

Shearwater targets dropouts, homeless students and children at risk of leaving school altogether.

Grand Center Arts Academy, which serves sixth and seventh grades, focuses on arts training and will later expand to include eighth grade and high school.

Carondelet will begin as an elementary school with plans to add one grade a year up to eighth grade.

Gateway Science will emphasize math and science, with kindergarten through seventh grade this year. One grade will be added each year though 12th grade.

insufficient oversight

The schools are opening at a critical juncture for the city's 11-year-old charter school movement.

From the start, charters have had a rough time living up to their promise.

In 2000, the state of Missouri allowed charter schools to take root in St. Louis and Kansas City. They opened with the hope of providing students in the state's largest, urban districts with alternatives to failing schools.

In St. Louis, advocates hoped the schools would crop up in neighborhoods as a grass-roots response to the struggling school system. Critics say the movement has fallen short in several respects. The schools are larger and typically operated by large, for-profit management firms. And although charter school law calls for close supervision of sponsors — typically universities — critics say meaningful oversight has been rare.

Year after year, students at charter schools have generally done worse on standardized tests than their peers in the public school system. Last year, however, students at a handful of charters did better.

This also has also been a tumultuous year, with one school — potentially two — closed and hundreds of students displaced.

Ethel Hedgeman Lyle Academy closed its doors this past spring because of financial mismanagement. Paideia Academy is fighting to stay open. The state Board of Education rejected its charter application, citing poor academic performance. The schools' attorney sued, and the case is before the Missouri Court of Appeals.

Whether Paideia reopens on Linton Avenue next month hinges on the outcome of the appeal, its executive director, Brenda Johnson-Pruitt, said.

Closing these charter schools could be a good thing, say some charter school advocates who have applauded the state's heightened scrutiny of charter schools.

"We support anything anyone does to close bad schools," said Rob Wild, assistant to the chancellor and charter school liaison at Washington University. "If schools cannot perform, they should not stay open."

'not going to fail'

About 200 parents and children packed inside a gymnasium last month to hear more about Gateway Science, opening in the old Epiphany of Our Lord School building at 6576 Smiley Avenue.

Teachers from the academy stood along the side wall of the gymnasium in matching green polo shirts. One by one, they spoke into a microphone about extracurricular activities, school uniforms, their teaching philosophy and the school's focus on math and science.

David Naeger liked what he heard.

"The passion of the principal, the teachers, the board members," he said. "They weren't going through the motions. They want to be there."

Naeger enrolled his son, Luke, in kindergarten there.

Gateway and Carondelet both are neighborhood schools that give priority to students who live in surrounding ZIP codes. Parents at one open house said this was another draw. Their children's friends would live nearby, not across town.

Already, Gateway Science has met its 350-student enrollment goal and has a waiting list.

"My only challenge is to meet and satisfy expectations," said Cengiz Karatas, principal of the school. "There's a question, what if you fail? What if you're like other charter schools? Well, we're coming in and we're not going to fail."