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Action in the Statehouses

May 8th, 2013 by

This past week has been a whirlwind in statehouses across the country, as the pace of legislative proposals picked up in the face of end-of-session deadlines. Over a dozen states are considering policies that would improve authorizing policies and practices.

We are awaiting the final approval by the governors of Indiana and Florida to important changes to their charter laws.  In Texas—home to 10% of the nation’s charter schools—a bill making its way through the legislature has the opportunity for significant impact on the quality of the state’s portfolio of charters. Nevada and South Carolina are both considering bills that advance an approach to authorizing that reflects NACSA’s significant work in the area of performance management for charter schools. And in North Carolina, the Senate passed a bill (SB 337) that would create a new independent commission to oversee charter schools in the state.  Unfortunately it lacks some basic quality control provisions for the authorizer and the charter sector.

As we said at the top: a whirlwind. There is a growing appetite for good authorizing and NACSA is encouraged to see this level of thoughtful discourse in statehouses across the country. With proposals still expected to see action this year in New Jersey and Delaware, this is just the start.   Read more here.

Posted in Accountability, One Million Lives, Policy | No Comments »

Standing Up for Quality

May 7th, 2013 by

Speaking of creating an ecosystem for charter school accountability, here is Bill Phillips, president of the Northeast Charter School Network (NECSN) with a call for clear quality standards for charter school renewal and revocation that focus on academic results. Phillips also endorses the closure of a low performing charter, a school he says was “one of Buffalo’s worst-performing public schools – charter or district.” With this endorsement,

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NECSN joins other charter associations like the California Charter Schools Association that have made a commitment to quality and accountability even if it means calling for the closure of their own members. These leading associations recognize that failing charter schools are a threat to all those that are succeeding.

Phillips piece is also important because it demonstrates how components of the charter school accountability ecosystem other than authorizers–in this case, a regional charter school support organization–can help to hold authorizers accountable for how the quality of their own performance impacts the likelihood that a failing school faces consequences for its failure.

Phillips applauds the New York State Board of Regents for making “a painful but correct” decision to close a failing charter and for demonstrating that they “care more about

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academic results than regulatory compliance.” At the same time, though, he argues that the Regents could make accountability more likely by making it more fair and predictable. Phillips argues that clear renewal ground rules and consistent feedback could help keep closure fights out of the courts and minimize the ability of low-performing schools to defend themselves with attacks on the process. He encourages the regents to “consider copying the approach used with the State University and UFT Charter School in Brooklyn” where “as part of a multi-year renewal, SUNY told the school precisely how many academic measures it had to meet in order to apply for its next contract. If the school falls short, it automatically closes.” He says “this is fairer to both parties” and will result in a better process overall.

It is this kind of courageous call for quality and accountability that is at the heart of NACSA’s One Million Lives campaign.

 

Posted in Accountability, One Million Lives, Performance Standards, Quality Authorizing | No Comments »

Creating an Ecosystem for Accountability

May 6th, 2013 by

UCurve

The California U-Curve, California Charter Schools Association

Last month, the US Department of Education and the National Charter School Resource Center hosted an Accountability Summit to explore emerging accountability challenges across the charter school sector and to discuss a variety of strategy and policy options to support quality as the sector expands. NACSA helped organize the event and almost 100 SEA charter school program leaders, representatives from charter support organizations, authorizers, research, advocacy, and policy organizations participated in the event. NACSA president and CEO, Greg Richmond, gave the keynote. Richmond introduced the audience to NACSA’s One Million Lives Campaign and urged the audience to confront the reality that while there are many charter schools that are succeeding by creating new high-quality education opportunities for tens of thousands of students across the country, many of whom our traditional systems have failed to serve, there are also far too many charter schools that are failing to serve their students and need to be closed. Richmond encouraged participants, many if not most of whom were not authorizers but SEA administrators and charter support organization executives, to follow the lead of organizations like the California Charter Schools Association by finding ways to work together with and alongside authorizers to improve accountability for low-performing charters. As the summit proceeded, the need for the wide variety of charter quality stakeholders to create a broad ecosystem of accountability emerged as the clear theme.

 

Posted in Accountability, Charter School Growth, One Million Lives, Policy | No Comments »

Evidence to the Contrary

May 1st, 2013 by

Today the Center for Education Reform published a report labeling the move toward independent, statewide authorizing commissions as a “dangerous trend.”  Our conclusion based on research and experience couldn’t be more different.  NACSA supports the establishment of statewide charter school commissions because they offer the best opportunity to achieve not just more charter schools but more great charter schools.

We’re encouraged that lawmakers are agreeing, and creating chartering commissions in such relatively conservative states as Georgia and Mississippi and such relatively liberal states as Washington and Hawaii.

Despite years of evidence to the contrary, a small number of charter school advocates still support having dozens of different charter school authorizing organizations in a state.  They argue for quantity in hopes that it will lead to quality.

But the evidence is exactly the opposite. In Ohio and Minnesota, we have seen that the existence of dozens of authorizers creates a race to the bottom.  Weak charter school applicants shop around for the authorizer with the lowest standards and easiest review processes.  Failing schools that are closed by an authorizer with high standards can simply go to another, less-discriminating authorizer that allows them to re-open.

After years of frustration with too many authorizers and too many failing charter schools, charter school advocates in both Minnesota and Ohio passed strong new laws to reduce the number of authorizers in each state.

NACSA supports the creation of statewide charter school commissions because they can develop expertise and capacity to establish appropriate standards for approval and renewal, while maintaining their independence from traditional school district and state education department politics and regulations.

 

Posted in Policy, Quality Authorizing, Research | Comments Off

Stronger Still

Apr 29th, 2013 by

Last week in New Orleans, NACSA wrestled with issues of standardization and differentiation in the charter school sector.

"New Orleans Carriage" Harry A. Nolan, 1923

“New Orleans Carriage” Harry A. Nolan, 1923

We held our annual joint meeting of our Board of Directors and National Advisory Board in the French Quarter and, despite the festive surroundings, had a number of serious and enlightening discussions.  In a dinner discussion that included a number of New Orleans education leaders, people were passionate both about the tremendous education successes in New Orleans, spurred in part by strong accountability, and the fact that the new and improved system is still not succeeding with all students.  The charter school idea is powerful because it supports both accountability and differentiation.  But some felt that standardization was causing us to lose some kids.  Others pointed out that New Orleans is succeeding with more kids than ever before.  Can we develop greater differentiation in this new system while maintaining high standards?  Or is our drive toward higher standards producing homogeneity that leaves some kids behind? Do we reach those kids by holding firm or by differentiating?  Is there a third way?

This tension between homogeneity and differentiation also appeared in discussions about admissions, discipline and expulsion.  Participants in the suspension/expulsion discussion group feared that some charter schools are violating students’ rights.  But other participants in the same group warned that the potential solutions to this problem would lead to “miasmic sameness” among schools.  They argued that we need to protect charter schools’ ability to be maintain their own culture, including discipline.  In fact, some observed that the common enrollment systems being discussed by another group, while potentially solving problems in admissions, might lead to even more students being enrolled in schools in which the student or his family is not familiar with or supportive of the culture of the school.

Differentiation was again a theme in conversations about authorizers.  Many people identified a variety of types of strong authorizing practices, including authorizers that have:

  • the ability to evaluate, not just proposals for individual schools, but to evaluate network growth plans;
  • access to data about student admissions, suspensions and expulsions; and
  • the expertise to evaluate innovative models (e.g. blended learning, alternative schools) and the capacity to develop performance measures that can assess how well those schools are working.

While we would all prefer to have all authorizers be good at everything, this is not likely in a world of 1000 authorizers, most of whom have one charter school.  One way NACSA is dealing with this challenge is the promotion of statewide independent charter boards that develop scale and expertise.  Another idea that was discussed at our meeting is the potential for authorizers to voluntarily develop networks and expertise around certain topics (such as replication, blended learning, and alternative education).

The charter idea is powerful because it incorporates both high standards and differentiation.  We have been working to find the right balance between these forces for twenty years.  If we continue to recognize, respect and build upon the virtues of each, the charter school community will continue to get stronger.

 

Posted in Charter School Growth, One Million Lives, Quality Authorizing | Comments Off

Redefining the School District, Tennessee-style

Apr 25th, 2013 by

American public education has overcome all sorts of roadblocks in its illustrious history — but in facing the problem of persistently failing schools, our traditional systems have hit a wall. Even when given some powerful turnaround tools under NCLB — including chartering — districts typically have opted for the most cosmetic and non-disruptive options. States have generally acquiesced.

Redefining-the-School-District-in-Tennessee-FINALA breakthrough happened in 2004, when Louisiana created its Recovery School District (PDF), able to take over schools (not districts) and either run them directly or charter them. The RSD’s success (which I’m happy to debate with the chronic skeptics) has so far inspired three other states to create full-scale recovery districts with similar intervention powers (Tennessee and Michigan, both underway, and Virginia, due to start next year). Texas has a strong recovery-district bill now moving through its legislature; and a half-dozen states have created “RSD-Lite” knockoffs that provide new resources but no change in district governance.

The good folks at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute asked me to look at these innovations, and this week published  Redefining the School District in Tennessee, my take on the Volunteer State’s Achievement School District. It’s partly an attempt to describe the nuts and bolts — how they do finance and services and teacher recruitment — but also to convey the flavor of this enterprise under the galvanic leadership of Chris Barbic, who took on the ASD after a decade spent founding and running Houston’s Broad-Prize-winning Yes Prep.  He and his team are not only setting serious stretch goals — moving bottom-5% schools into the top 25% of proficiency statewide — but getting there by attending to “hearts and minds” as well as classroom practice.

Read some coverage and reactions to report here, here and here.

Lots of lessons to learn, lots to argue about… have at it!

 

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Key Findings from “The State of Charter School Authorizing 2012″

Apr 18th, 2013 by

Today we released our 5th annual report on NACSA’s authorizer survey results: The State of Charter School Authorizing 2012. Its release each year leads me to reflect on how the authorizing sector is changing, how much it has improved and what challenges still lie ahead.

Certain findings deserve particular attention:

  • More of the nation’s authorizers are implementing NACSA’s “essential practices” for authorizing.  This is a great sign of a maturing sector.
  • Among authorizer types, newly-established Independent Chartering Boards (ICBs)—a small but growing group—are most likely to have essential practices in place.  This finding reinforces our desire to have more states establish ICBs.
  • Small authorizers with portfolios of fewer than 10 schools have the least desirable practices across the board.  This is not a new finding and doesn’t change year-to-year.  With growth comes the infrastructure to do the work.
  • The charter school closure rate in renewal, after two years of decline, increased from 6.2 percent in 2010–11 to 12.9 percent in 2011–12. Yet as authorizers close failing schools, they must work to replace those schools with many more excellent schools.  Two-thirds of large authorizers have policies in place to promote replication while still too few (23%) of small authorizers are engaged in this practice.

These are crucial data points. We know charter schools provide outstanding educational options to tens of thousands of children. We launched our One Million Lives campaign to give one million more children the chance to attend great schools.

This data suggests a positive trend, but we have a long way to go.  We hope our report provides some insight into what we are doing well and what we could do better.  We welcome your contributions to this effort. We hope the information compiled in this report is one resource to guide us all on this path.

 

Posted in One Million Lives, Quality Authorizing, Research | Comments Off

Mississippi Adopts New Charter School Law

Apr 17th, 2013 by

Governor Phil Bryant today signed Mississippi’s new charter school law, making the state the 42nd in the country to welcome charter schools. Its adoption paves the way for the state’s children to have access to more educational opportunities.

NACSA President and CEO Greg Richmond issued the following statement:

“Today, the future of Mississippi’s children got a little brighter with Governor Bryant’s signing of the state’s new charter school law. Now, children and parents will have the same opportunities as others around the country to select a school that best fits their needs. I commend the Mississippi Legislature and Governor Bryant for a law that not only expands choice, but also adopts nationally-recognized standards for charter school authorizing. Through their efforts, Mississippi has taken tremendous steps to ensure that schools approved in their state will have the greatest chance to fulfill the charter promise of an outstanding education for all students.”

NACSA recognizes and thanks its partners, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the Black Alliance for Educational Options, Mississippi First, and the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, for their tireless work to bring high-quality charter schools to the state’s children.

 

Posted in One Million Lives, Policy, Quality Authorizing | Comments Off

Active Authorizing

Apr 17th, 2013 by

Via the Washington Post‘s Emma Brown, comes the news that Monday night, the DC Public Charter Schools Board (DC PCSB) unanimously denied a request from  BASIS DC, one of the charter schools it authorizes, to increase its enrollment ceiling. This sort of denial is probably quite common for schools with authorizers who are not invested in seeing their charter schools grow and prosper, but this is the DC PCSB we’re talking about, an organization dedicated to being a quality authorizer and to promoting charter school success. Even more odd is the fact that nine other requests for enrollment increases from other schools were all unanimously approved on the same night that the request from BASIS was denied. So what explains the difference in treatment for BASIS?

The PCSB staff recommended that the board deny the school’s request because, according to the staff recommendation, 1) the school has been open less than a year and so has no performance data 2) there are “high levels of midyear withdrawals from the school” and low levels of special education students” and 3) the school was “non-compliant in responding to certain PCSB data requests, including a City Council request for salary information.”

I don’t know whether or not the PCSB’s decision was the correct one, and without more information it’s impossible to decipher how serious the problems raised by the board’s staff might be.* But the merits of this particular decision aside, this is what active authorizing looks like, attentive, engaged, performance-focused, data-driven, and decisive.

Last night’s vote–combined with the announcement last month that it would start scrutinizing special education enrollment and mobility more closely–indicate that the DC Public Charter Schools Board is an active authorizer, an authorizer that actively manages its portfolio to maximize academic achievement and protect student and public interests. Rather than just rubber stamping its schools’ requests to expand, the PCSB takes its authorizing responsibilities seriously by examining each request on its merits and considering whether the performance  (academic, financial, and organizational) of the requesting school warrants approval.

 

*Brown reports, and the PCSB noted Monday night, that “43 students — nearly 10 percent — have left the school” since October 5, the day used to count students for funding purposes. “Seven of them were students with disabilities.”  In response to these numbers, Brown notes that “Paul Morrissey, head of school for BASIS, said attrition is often high in the first year of operation of a BASIS school, but tends to drop as students and families learn what BASIS demands. Nearly one-quarter of students withdrew from a BASIS school in Peoria, Ariz., during its first year of operations, he said.” It would be useful to know what mid-year attrition at BASIS’s other schools looks like after the first year.

 

Posted in Accountability, Enrollment, Quality Authorizing, Special Education | Comments Off

A Step Forward for Charter School Quality in Texas

Apr 12th, 2013 by

Yesterday the Texas Senate passed SB 2 with a resounding 30-1 vote.  The Senate should be applauded for passing a strong bill that will expand opportunity and improve the quality of charter schools in Texas. NACSA has been following this bill closely as it worked its way through the Senate Education Committee — where the going was rough at times. Eventually, the Committee and the Senate persevered.

The Senate has sent a strong bill to the House. This is a comprehensive overhaul of charter school authorizing in Texas. The bill doesn’t contain everything in NACSA’s policy agenda, but it has several provisions that align with NACSA’s One Million Lives Campaign and would be a tremendous step forward for charter schools and charter school authorizing in the state. For the first time, if S.B. 2 passed, Texas authorizing will include:

  • A performance based contract that includes explicit goals for academic performance, with clear consequences – including nonrenewal and revocation – if the charter does not meet those goals
  • Default closure of schools that don’t meet academic and financial standards.  If a school receives the lowest ranking for three year it closes, end of story.
  • Clear language to end the seemingly endless appeal process currently undertaken by charter schools the TEA tries to close.  This means charters that are revoked will be transferred or shut down quickly, protecting kids from a poor quality education.
  • Smart growth policies that lift caps and encourage the replication of high performing charter schools; while preventing the growth of poor charters.  Charter operators will have to show exceptional results before they can expand with new campuses. But those that succeed will be able to do so at scale.

A battle now looms in the House, where we hope the bill gets the full consideration it deserves.  This is a chance to balance charter school growth with the accountability needed to help ensure charter school quality. Passage can’t come soon enough.

 

Posted in Accountability, Education Politics, Policy, Quality Authorizing | Comments Off

Private Schools Masquerading as a Charter School

Apr 12th, 2013 by

The interesting case of a district creating a shell charter school in order to operate a private school voucher program that includes about 25 schools is working its way through Colorado courts.  The Douglas County School District approved the Choice Scholarship Program, using the state’s charter law.

The program has been on hold since it was initially declared unconstitutional, but in February an appeals court overturned that decision 2-1.   This week, the opponents are bringing an appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court.

Most of the legal battle has been about Colorado’s constitutional prohibitions on state support for religion, which continues with this challenge.  Not much attention has been focused the host of issues that the program raises about core requirements and norms in the charter school space.  The district’s voucher program uses the state charter law to create a charter school in name only-no teachers, no classrooms, no building-a fictional shell into which students would be “enrolled” even though they in fact would be attending a private school, using the public funds that would flow through the shell charter entity. The program includes mostly religious private schools and allows the schools to base admission on a student’s religious beliefs or academic achievement or any other criteria. Private schools in the program are also not required to provide special education services and may refuse admission to students they don’t wish to serve.

For years, I’ve heard critics of the charter school movement make the following outrageous allegations:

False Statement #1: Charter schools can be religious schools and teach religion and choose students and teachers on the basis of religion;

False Statement #2: Charter schools are really private schools just trying to get public money;

False Statement #3: Charter schools don’t have to provide special education services or serve special education students;

False Statement #4: Charter schools are just a strategy to get a voucher program in under a different name.

I have always taken the time to educate people about each of these mythical falsehoods, explaining how none of these allegations are true. The problem is, for this particular program, they are all true.

 

Posted in Civil Rights, Policy, School Choice, Special Education, Uncategorized | Comments Off

Real Parent Empowerment without a War

Apr 11th, 2013 by

There has been a lot of heated rhetoric over the spread of so-called “parent trigger” or “parent petition” laws which allow parents and in some cases teachers to vote to restructure the school’s management in whole or in part. Seven states now have some form of parent petition legislation on the books and at least 20 others are considering it.

"On Tuesday, 190 parents from 24th Street Elementary showed up at a public park to choose from one of four operators to take over their children’s school." (Photo courtesy Parent Revolution)

“On Tuesday, 190 parents from 24th Street Elementary showed up at a public park to choose from one of four operators to take over their children’s school.” (Photo courtesy Parent Revolution via The Hechinger Report)

Until only recently, opponents and critics of these laws focused on how no parents had successfully “pulled the trigger.” The first effort under the Parent Empowerment Act of 2010 came in Compton, CA  but was eventually dropped after a bitter battle. Then, after two years of district opposition and wrangling in court, parents from Desert Trails Elementary School in the isolated desert community of Adelanto, CA were successful in their efforts to bring in a proven charter school operator to take over their struggling school. No longer able to paint them as an “imaginary gimmick,” opponents of parent empowerment laws focused instead on how bitter and divisive the process was in both Compton and Adelanto. Last summer, in response to the movie “Won’t Back Down,” a fictional depiction of a parent revolution, AFT President Randi Weingarten argued that parent empowerment laws “deny both parents and teachers a voice in improving schools and helping children” and noted that ” in real life, there have been only two attempts to pull the parent trigger: One never made it to the approval process, but both were incredibly divisive and disruptive to the communities and schools involved.”

“These laws deny both parents and teachers a voice in improving schools and helping children, by using parents to give control of our schools over to for-profit corporations.”
Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers

This week, though, comes the news that parents at another school in California, 21st Street Elementary in Los Angeles, have successfully used the Parent Empowerment Act to select a new operator for their school, and this time, instead of fighting with the school district, they are partnering with it. In January, LAUSD made news when instead of opposing the parents’ demand for a restart of the school under a new model, the district embraced the request, quickly approved the petition and then submitted its own plan to the parents for consideration. The result is the plan that was approved this week by 80 percent of the parents who voted. It calls for a partnership between the district and a local (nonprofit) charter school, Crown Prep. The district will introduce a new preschool program and operate grades K-4, while Crown Prep will operate grades 5-8.

While future efforts at parent empowerment aren’t likely to go as smoothly as they have at 21st Street Elementary, the collaborative efforts of the district and its willingness to work with instead of against parents is a hopeful sign that parent empowerment doesn’t have to be nasty and divisive and instead can be an opportunity for renewed trust and new beginnings.

 

Posted in Civil Rights, Education Politics, Education Reform, Governance, Policy, School Choice | Comments Off

Playing Political Football with Kids’ Lives

Apr 11th, 2013 by

NACSA’s president and CEO, Greg Richmond, has a op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times arguing that charter schools are being used in Chicago’s “school wars” in ways that only serve adult interests and harm kids.

While the schools themselves focus on their students, the rhetoric of charter schools has become a political football, used by politicians of every stripe for self-serving purposes.

Check out the whole piece here.

 

Posted in Education Politics, Education Reform, School Choice | Comments Off

Protecting Student and Public Interests

Apr 9th, 2013 by

In a recent article from Renee Schoof at McClatchy, NACSA’s Alex Medler weighed in on a provision in a charter school bill in North Carolina that would allow charter schools discretion over “whether and under what circumstances” to conduct background checks of prospective employees.

Alex makes the case that even if background checks are not required by state law for district schools, loosening this requirement for charters is a step in the wrong direction.

“You can have flexibility about how you do it,” he said, “but the idea that you wouldn’t do it is not sound. Part of the authorizer’s responsibility is protecting the interest of the students.”

Todd Ziebarth, vice president for state advocacy at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools agreed that this was a basic requirement. “In most if not all other states, charter schools are required to do same background checks as employees as traditional system,” he said.

As hard as it is to believe, though, there is wide variation in regulation and quality between and within states in how this is handled by all schools (charter, district-managed, and private). Some states require background checks in state law and others do not. Some state laws list the offenses that trigger disqualification and others are silent.

Apparently, North Carolina law delegates policy making on background checks in its traditional public schools to the school districts that operate them, including the decision as to whether to conduct background checks at all. Supporters of the change for charter schools argue that it simply gives the same discretion to charters that district schools already have. Supporters also argue that “most” charter schools will still decide to do background checks even without the requirement.

These are both weak arguments for bad policy.

Continue Reading »

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Governance Matters

Apr 5th, 2013 by

Adam Emerson at the Fordham Institute has crafted a thoughtful analysis of governance in the modern charter school sector. I recommend it.

Authorizers will probably be particularly interested in the report’s discussion of the various models of network governance that have emerged in the two decades since charters were first created and which  have become more and more common in recent years; the recommendations regarding statewide virtual schools; and Fordham’s firm position–which NACSA has long shared–regarding the independence that is needed between the charter school’s governing board and any third party management provider.

20130327-Governance-in-the-charter-school-sector-time-for-a-reboot-FINAL_Page_1Authorizers need a strong board as their primary partner.  If an authorizer operates on the assumption that the board to whom they grant a charter is able and willing to oversee its operator, but that board actually will not  or cannot do what their job, there are likely to be serious problems.  This is one reason that one of the key responsibilities of authorizers in the charter application process is to evaluate the capacity of a governing board to govern the school responsibly and effectively.

When I was on board of the Colorado Charter School Institute, and a founding board of a proposed school would come for an interview, we took pains to ask the board members themselves several key questions about their schools. We asked some of the hardest questions of board members, not the intended operator.  If prospective board members don’t know their application, their budget, or their own bylaws, it is unlikely they will be able to hold their chosen operator accountable for providing what they have promised in that application.  Many boards were seriously flummoxed by the question, “how will you know if your operator is delivering what they have promised?”

If things go south, the authorizer ends up with a difficult process of delivering the bad news through groups without the ability to remedy a later problem.  Unfortunately, weak governing boards can authorizers to micro-manage the school.  If someone needs to tell an operator that they need to fire a principal, for example, that kind of intervention should come from a governing board, not the authorizer.

Issues like this take careful consideration, and Adam’s latest piece is an excellent addition to this topic.

 

 

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Helping Charter Schools Better Serve English Language Learners

Apr 4th, 2013 by

This week the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools released Serving English Language Learners:  A Toolkit for Public Charter Schools. This timely resource is designed to provide charter school leaders with clear guidance and concrete examples to assist them in designing, implementing, and improving their services to ELL students. The Alliance’s Renita Thukal who spearheaded the development of the toolkit, notes that the number of ELL students in the U.S. increased by 27 percent over the past decade and will become an even larger percentage of the school-age population in the years to come. A new report from the Council of the Great City Schools ELLtoolkitexplores the growth of this population in more depth and found that large achievement gaps persist for ELLs in its member cities.

We know that some charter schools are doing amazing work with ELL students and are demonstrating that these students are capable of the same greatness as their non-ELL peers. At Rocketship’s seven charter schools in Santa Clara County, CA, for example, 69 percent of students speak English as a second language, compared to 24 percent countywide. Yet Rocketship’s English language learners had a state performance score of 843 while the statewide average was 762. Strive Prep in Denver (formerly West Denver Prep) has also shown outstanding results with its high ELL population and has been recognized for its strong program.

We also know, however, that many charter schools struggle with serving ELL students, both in terms of compliance with federal and state legal requirements and program design and delivery. Hopefully, Serving English Language Learners:  A Toolkit for Public Charter Schools can help all charter schools better meet the challenge of providing ELL students the same high quality educational opportunities that all children need and deserve.

 

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Can We Work Together on Special Education?

Apr 3rd, 2013 by

Robin Lake and I wrote a commentary about special education in charter schools for Ed Week that was released yesterday.  Earlier this year, Robin Lake and her colleagues at CRPE examined enrollment of students with disabilities in New York’s charter schools and traditional public schools in a study commissioned by NACSA. Robin and I discussed the study and its implications in an Ed Week Commentary released today.

This isn’t a simple problem. Consequently, people shouldn’t expect simple solutions. We need to understand all the nuances to this issue.  If we can better diagnose the good and bad that is happening out there, we will be better able to address the — very real – challenges.

There are challenges that discourage or prevent kids with disabilities from enrolling in charter schools, as well as district practices that make it less likely that families will exercise choices and other obstacles that make it difficult for charter schools to serve all kids well.

Unfortunately, every time I have tried to pursue this line of reasoning in the past, people jump to the conclusion that what I am really trying to do is minimize the problem.  That couldn’t be further from the truth.

Acknowledging that this is complicated, and that simplistic solutions are ill-advised, and more important unlikely to succeed, seems to tragically and regularly translate into an argument from charter critics that allege I am secretly trying to prove that, “special education under-enrollment is not a problem or that policies should not (or should) address the problem.”

It is a problem. It is tricky. We should work together to understand it better. Armed with a better understanding of what is happening, I hope we can work together fix it.

Fingers crossed for substantive responses.

 

Posted in Enrollment, Policy, Research, School Choice, Special Education | 1 Comment »

School Choice for All

Mar 26th, 2013 by

cropped-oneapp-pic1While most of the education-related news coming out of Philadelphia lately has been about school closures similar to those just announced in Chicago, there is other work going on that has the potential to dramatically expand access to school choice for the city’s families, particularly the city’s most disadvantaged families who might otherwise be left out. The Inquirer reported last week on a nascent effort to create a single, unified school choice process for all of the city’s public school’s, both district and charter. The work is part of the Great Schools Compact for the Philadelphia Schools Partnership, an ongoing effort to increase collaboration between the city’s school district and its 80+ charter schools, and is modeled on similar efforts in Denver and New Orleans. The goal is to simplify the school choice process for parents and students by joining together dozens of different application processes and enrollment lotteries that they must now navigate, into one, coordinated system of choice with one, common application and a single enrollment lottery. In Denver, where there were previously more than sixty unique applications and multiple overlapping processes  there is now a one page form for choosing one of more than 160 public school in the city. Ideally, a unified system in Philadelphia will not just be easier for families already taking advantage of choice, but also for the city’s most disadvantaged and disenfranchised who might otherwise be left out, making school choice in the city more equitable and transparent for all.

 

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First Things First

Mar 21st, 2013 by

Last week, Chris Korsmo, of Washington state’s League of Education Voters crafted a powerful and personal commentary for the Seattle Times confronting the argument that people ought to “finish” the effort to eliminate poverty before they insist on dramatic improvements in the schools we give our poor children.

You see it all the time.  Last month, even the traditionally astute Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, repeated the line of argument with Michelle Rhee, asking how we can demand so much education reform, when we know that poverty is really the real problem.  As Stewart offered, “It seems like education can only be put in place once the soil is fertile.”

Can you imagine any other problem faced by the poor, for which otherwise intelligent liberals would say it is wrong to try to fix it before we eliminate poverty?  According to this line of reasoning, we shouldn’t work to alleviate or end homelessness, hunger, violence, obesity, or substance abuse until poverty is gone — ridiculous.  Like education, poverty is correlated with, and exacerbates, each of these problems. Yet we work to reduce them in the face of continuing income inequality.

No one says, “Stop! You are just helping people ignore the real problem of poverty by criticizing our health, housing, or criminal justice systems.”  For some reason, reasonable people repeat the absurd argument when it comes to education.

What do you suppose makes so many people leave their brain behind when it comes to arguing against efforts to give more poor kids a good education?

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Scaling Quality, Closing Failure

Mar 19th, 2013 by

A new report, Searching for Excellence: A Five-City, Cross-State Comparison of Charter School Quality, by researchers at Public Impact and published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute examines charter school performance in five cities, Albany, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, and Indianapolis and finds that overall the charter sector in these cities outperformed their local district schools. They also found, though, that charter performance varied widely among schools. They found that while some charters are performing terribly, others are significantly outperforming their district peers and with similar numbers of students in poverty.

One_Million_Lives_Logo_WebAs Bryan Hassel, co-director of Public Impact, notes in response to his colleagues’ findings, the good news in the report is its finding that charter authorizers can do something to make quality rather than variability the norm. The study found that authorizers in the five cities studied could dramatically improve access to quality schools within just five years by closing their lowest performing schools and significantly expanding or replicating their most successful ones. The study found that in Cleveland, for example, “the policy of closure and aggressive replication of high-performing schools would, Public Impact estimates, result in charter schools vastly outperforming the district schools in five years. Moreover, this policy would put Cleveland’s charters on track to perform on par with the state average by year five.

In Cleveland, the policy of closure and aggressive replication of high-performing schools would, Public Impact estimates, result in charter schools vastly outperforming the district schools in five years. Moreover, this policy would put Cleveland’s charters on track to perform on par with the state average by year five.

This report’s findings provide yet more support for NACSA’s One Million Lives campaign, a multi-pronged effort to provide better schools to one million children by closing failing charter schools and opening many more great ones. While we know that many charter schools perform at the highest levels, we also know that many others perform at the lowest levels.  As Searching for Excellence reaffirms, charter school authorizers can dramatically improve quality by aggressively encouraging their highest performing schools to expand and replicate and by just as aggressively closing their lowest performers.

 

Posted in Accountability, Charter School Growth, One Million Lives, Quality Authorizing, Research | Comments Off

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