Posted in Accountability, One Million Lives, Policy on May 8th, 2013
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 [...]
Posted in Accountability, One Million Lives, Performance Standards, Quality Authorizing on May 7th, 2013
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 [...]
Posted in Accountability, Charter School Growth, One Million Lives, Policy on May 6th, 2013
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, [...]
Posted in Accountability, Education Reform, Governance, Policy on Apr 25th, 2013
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. A breakthrough happened [...]
Posted in Accountability, Enrollment, Quality Authorizing, Special Education on Apr 17th, 2013
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 [...]
Posted in Accountability, Education Politics, Policy, Quality Authorizing on Apr 12th, 2013
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 [...]
Posted in Accountability, Policy, Quality Authorizing on Apr 9th, 2013
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 [...]
Posted in Accountability, Governance, Policy, Quality Authorizing, Research on Apr 5th, 2013
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 [...]
Posted in Accountability, Charter School Growth, One Million Lives, Quality Authorizing, Research on Mar 19th, 2013
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, [...]
Posted in Accountability, Policy on Mar 12th, 2013
How can we improve our ability to judge the quality of charter schools that serve high proportions of extremely at-risk kids? This article from the MinnPost does a good job of describing this complicated and difficult issue. I’m in Minnesota to talk with policymakers about accountability for schools that do badly on state tests. Part [...]
Posted in Accountability, One Million Lives, Policy on Mar 8th, 2013
Check out the new op-ed from Al Fan of Charter School Partners and NACSA’s Alex Medler on the need for greater accountability for the state’s charter schools. “A bi-partisan bill is making its way through the Minnesota legislature to close the state’s persistently lowest performing charter schools. The effort is not led by charter school [...]
Posted in Accountability, One Million Lives, Policy, Quality Authorizing on Mar 5th, 2013
An op-ed in the Sunday Fort Wayne’s Journal Gazette, by NACSA’s President and CEO, Greg Richmond, warns people to beware of charter schools that engage in authorizer shopping. This is a serious problem for those trying to close down failing charter schools in Indiana, and nationally. “Authorizer shopping” occurs when failing charter schools try to [...]
Posted in Accountability, Policy, Quality Authorizing on Mar 4th, 2013
The Fort Wayne, IN Journal Gazette, published an op-ed over the weekend by NACSA president and CEO, Greg Richmond. Richmond warns against the dangers of charter school forum shopping whereby a charter school seeks out a new authorizer to avoid accountability. In Indiana, several charter schools that have been slated for closure by Ball State [...]
Posted in Accountability, One Million Lives, Quality Authorizing on Mar 1st, 2013
Although Ball State University’s Office of Charter Schools has faced some tough criticism in the past, it is working to set an example of how an authorizer can drastically improve its policies and practices—and consequently the strength of the schools in its portfolio. The largest authorizer in Indiana for over a decade, Ball State has [...]
Posted in Accountability on Feb 26th, 2013
This morning, the Charter School Committee of the Board of Trustees of The State University of New York (SUNY), the governing body of the SUNY Charter Schools Institute decided to renew the charter of U.F.T. Charter School for a two-year probationary period during which the school must meet performance standards or automatically lose their contract to operate the [...]
Posted in Accountability, Policy, Quality Authorizing on Feb 25th, 2013
Eastern Michigan University’s Charter Schools Office Director Malverne Winborne weighs in on the recent report commissioned by the Michigan State Board of Education comparing the performance of authorizer portfolios across the state. Winborne claims that the report is flawed because it doesn’t account for the fact that even low-performing schools may be outperforming their local districts [...]
Posted in Accountability, Policy, Quality Authorizing on Feb 21st, 2013
Imagine if you were in a contractual relationship with a service provider, and the provider told you that you couldn’t end the contract. A recent case in Florida illustrates why NACSA recommends that the contractual relationships between charter school boards and their service providers clearly address important issues like how and when either party might act to [...]
Posted in Accountability, Enrollment, Policy, Quality Authorizing, Uncategorized on Feb 20th, 2013
By design, charter schools are supposed to be open to all students. The idea is that rather than gaining admission based on their zip code or test scores, charter school students are selected at random from all who are interested. A recent story by Reuters’ Stephanie Simon described a variety of practices some charter schools [...]
Posted in Accountability, One Million Lives on Feb 19th, 2013
It is always disappointing when charter schools that are not meeting their performance expectations fight efforts to hold them accountable. We shouldn’t forget, though, that some charter schools will live up to their promises and accept accountability for their performance. The Washington Examiner reports: “The District’s only all-boys public school plans to close at the end of [...]
Posted in Accountability, One Million Lives, Quality Authorizing, Research on Feb 15th, 2013
The charter promise is not, “We will give you a charter to run a public school and flexibility from many of the rules and regulations constraining traditional schools. But if you fail to achieve what you promise to achieve we will insist that you submit a plan that outlines what you might do about it [...]
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