What’s Next for Charter School Authorizer Greg Richmond?

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published here, on November 19th, by The 74 and was written by Beth Hawkins, senior writer and national correspondent at The 74.


‘Testifying Before Congress … Not as Fun as Working With People to Talk About a New School’: Charter Authorizing Guru Greg Richmond on Past 20 Years & What’s Next

For an admittedly small pond, it was quite the ripple: Greg Richmond has resigned from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. Richmond had been with the organization for 20 years, first as its founding board chair and for the past 15 years as its president and CEO.

Vice President of Research and Evaluation Karega Rausch will serve as acting president and CEO while a search for a new leader takes place.

If you’re unsure why Richmond is a big fish, know that he is credited with pushing — no matter how much it meant swimming against the tide — to make sure the accountability part of public charter schools’ autonomy-for-accountability bargain is meaningful. As the entities that grant or deny the schools permission to open and then stay open, charter school authorizers need to set and — much more difficult — stand behind high standards, he insisted.

It will not surprise anyone, then, to hear that it’s a role that meant years of friendly — and not-so-friendly — fire. Three years ago, for example, the association was given the “rotten apple” award by Expose Liberal Charter School Turncoats, a group with ties to for-profit online charter schools, presumably for Richmond’s vocal role in insisting that states clamp down on the schools’ poor performance and questionable business practices.

Richmond “always believed that charter school authorizing, when practiced well, can improve the education and life outcomes of millions of children,” said Scott Pearson, association board chair and executive director of the DC Public Charter School Board. “We are enormously grateful for his service.”


RELATED: Building Better Relationships with Your Charter School Authorizer


In a recent exit interview with The 74, Richmond said he simply felt it was time for him to do something different and for the association to have new blood. “I don’t think it’s good for an organization to be led by the same person for too long,” he said. “It’s a good time for me, personally, to make changes.”

Specifically, Richmond said, he’s interested in spending more time talking to educators who have promising ideas for new schools. Which is exactly what he did in the early years of the charter school movement, as head of Chicago Public Schools’ New Schools Office.

At that time, there was tremendous excitement, particularly among teachers, about the idea of opening new schools. But not much attention was paid to the role of charter school authorizers, he recalled.

“It was viewed as a power, like a political power,” he said — but Richmond wanted policymakers to look beyond that control over who got to open a school and where, to the role authorizers could play in ensuring the new schools met high standards.

“There’s nothing automatically good about being a charter school. The school opens and then the work starts,” said Richmond. “A few years down the road, a decision has to be made whether the school is good enough to stay open.”

People were less eager to engage in this discussion, he recalled, even though for many of them, not tolerating poor performance indefinitely was a key ingredient of the charter school concept.

“Closing a school is incredibly difficult, and yet that’s one of the cornerstones of the charter school model,” Richmond said. “If it doesn’t work, we close it.”

Thus the association was born, with Richmond serving as founding board chair. The organization has pushed states to tighten charter school accountability laws and urged professionalization of the authorizing sector.


RELATED: What Sets Apart Charter School Authorizers?


Partly as a result, he said, for each of the past few years, some 200 underperforming charter schools have closed. In the process, it’s become clearer how to minimize harm to students when a school shuts down. Criteria for closure must be clear and understood well in advance.

“We’ve learned that if the school and the authorizer reach that decision mutually, that’s the best place to be,” said Richmond. “Then the school and the authorizer can work together to figure out what best to do for kids.”


 

Charter School Authorizer

Top Ten Insights into the National Charter School Authorizer Pipeline

Editor’s Note: This information was originally published here, by NACSA. For those interested in getting a charter school up-and-running, these charter school authorizer insights might just mean the difference in getting a charter approved … or not.
NACSA’s first-ever analysis of the national charter school pipeline reveals a sector with a tremendous variety of applicants and educational models—a more diverse sector than the common narrative would suggest. It also reveals the significant impact authorizers have in shaping the public education landscape across the country. Ultimately, communities get the schools that authorizers approve.

Top 10 Charter School Authorizer Insights

School Models

1. A wide variety of educational models are being proposed and approved.
2. Authorizers are more likely to approve some types of educational models than others:

3. The “No Excuses” model is becoming much less prevalent, with the approval rate of 40% in the last five years.

Operator Types

4. The proportion of proposals from freestanding operators is at a five-year high.

5. Historically, authorizers are much more likely to approve schools affiliated with CMO or EMO networks.

6. Proposals from for-profit operators have declined sharply, dropping 50% since 2013.

7. Operator types vary between states, with EMO-affiliated schools representing a significant number of approved schools in only four of the states studied. Only 4 states with EMO approval rate higher than 30%.

External Support

8. The vast majority of proposals did not identify support from an incubator, philanthropy or community partnership.

9. Applicants with more than one form of external support are much more likely to be approved.

Local Context Matters

10. Widespread variation exists from state to state, and as a result, there is not a “typical” charter school proposal or state.

For the full infographic, click here.


Charter School Capital logoSince the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We provide growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide. Our depth of experience working with charter school leaders and our knowledge of how to address charter school financial and operational needs have allowed us to provide over $1.8 billion in support of 600 charter schools that have educated over 1,027,000 students across the country. For more information on how we can support your charter school, contact us. We’d love to work with you!

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charter school authorizing

Charter School Authorizing 101

Editor’s Note: This video was produced by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) on November 12, 2018. NACSA is an independent voice for effective charter school policy and thoughtful charter authorizing practices that lead to more great public schools.
This short video does a clear and thorough job at explaining how charter school authorizers function and the role authorizers play in maintaining quality charter schools across our country by holding schools accountable for their performance.
We think it’s vital to keep tabs on the pulse of all things related to charter schools, including informational resources, and how to support charter school growth and the advancement of the charter school movement as a whole. We hope you find this—and any other article we curate—both interesting and valuable.
Watch the video and/or read the transcript below to learn more.


What Are Charter Schools?

Hi there. I’d like you to meet Gina. Today, she becomes one of tens of thousands of kids who will graduate from a public charter school this year. What are charter schools? Well, charter schools are independently run public schools that have greater flexibility in their operations and are accountable for great performance. Simply put, charter schools receive more freedom for meeting higher expectations. Charter schools don’t just pop up in a community. There’s an important process to create a new charter school, and it begins with a vision and authorizers.

What Are Authorizers?

Now, let’s take a look at how authorizing works. Although their work happens in the background, they’re pretty important to producing great schools. Authorizers are entities that decide who can start a charter school, set the academic expectations, and monitor school performance. They also decide whether a charter school should remain open or close. Authorizers are all around the country. Some states have many, while others have only a few. In some states, authorizers are universities or non-profits. They might be state education agencies, independent boards, or municipalities, but almost 90% of authorizers are local school districts.

How do Schools Get Authorized?

That’s the case for Gina’s school. The process that brought Gina here started many years ago when a group of teachers came up with the idea to create a bilingual charter school based on the need they identified in the community. These teachers did their homework. They submitted their application to the local charter school authorizer. The authorizer reviewed the mission, the academic plans, the fiscal and operational details, and their overall strategy to run the school successfully. The authorizer met with the teachers and school leaders. Together, they agreed on specific academic and financial goals, as well as general school operations. And the charter school was approved!

Getting a Charter Renewed

Gina’s school has been successful for 10 years. The authorizer kept a close eye on their progress and their contract was renewed! Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Two schools in Gina’s city didn’t do so well, and because they are required to meet these high expectations, it’s up to the authorizer to decide what’s best for these students—keep the charter school open or shut it down? One school was put on probation and the other was closed. Authorizers ensure that no child attends a failing school.

Not all families around the country have Gina’s experience. Terry lives in a district with a school board whose application process is so hostile to charters that no one even bothers to apply. In Tamika’s case, there are several charter schools in her community, but all are among the lowest performing in the state.

Ensuring that Charter Schools Thrive

There’s Avery, and Daniel, and Kai, and so many more children who are on a waiting list to attend only two other charter schools in the city because their authorizers are under political pressure and won’t open any new charters.
It’s not supposed to be this way. 

Make sure your community has a great charter school authorizer by visiting www.AuthorizingMatters.org.
Together we can open the door to a better future for millions more students like Gina.


Charter School Capital logoSince the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We provide growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide. Our depth of experience working with charter school leaders and our knowledge of how to address charter school financial and operational needs have allowed us to provide over $1.8 billion in support of 600 charter schools that have educated over 1,027,000 students across the country. For more information on how we can support your charter school, contact us. We’d love to work with you!

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charter school authorizingCharter School Authorizing: A Change In The Landscape

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published here, by The 74, and written by Greg Richmond, the president and CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. In it, we learn about some trends showing that fewer new charter schools are being authorized under school districts. You’ll learn more about a change in the charter school authorizer landscape, why we’re seeing a shift from district authorizers to non-district authorizers, and what impact that may have on producing better outcomes for students. Read this article in its entirety to learn why these shifts can be seen as both bad and good for the charter school movement.
We think it’s vital to keep tabs on the pulse of all things related to charter schools, including informational resources, and how to support charter school growth and the advancement of the charter school movement as a whole. We hope you find this—and any other article we curate—both interesting and valuable.


Richmond: Why School Districts Are Walking Away From Authorizing New Charter Schools — and Why That’s Both a Bad and a Good Thing

In recent years, more school districts have walked away from the opportunity to authorize new charter schools. New research from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers has found a shift in the national charter school landscape: For the first time, most new charter schools are opening under authorizers other than local school districts, with state education agencies and independent chartering boards leading the way.
In 2016, school district authorizers opened 222 fewer schools than they did in 2013. While fewer new schools opened overall during this period, the drop among school districts is striking: It’s nearly 2.5 times as large as the decrease in new charter school openings under all other types of authorizers combined.
Many districts did not slow down their authorizing activity; they simply stopped. Nearly two-thirds of districts with charter schools did not authorize a single new charter school in the past four years. Conversely, 70 percent of state education agencies and independent chartering boards authorized a school in at least three of the four years examined.
This trend is a bad thing. Yet it is also a good thing.
It is bad because millions of children in the United States lack access to a good school that will prepare them for success in life. Rigorous research has found that quality charter schools are providing better education opportunities to students, especially students from disadvantaged backgrounds. No other public education activity of the past quarter-century has been as effective for disadvantaged children as charter schools. We need to be doing more to make these schools available, not less.
So when we see local school districts — a group of authorizers that at one point was helping 350 new charter schools open every year — walk away, we know they are shunning the opportunity to provide a better education and a better future for young people who need it.
This is especially troubling because school districts make up 90 percent of the authorizers around the country. In fact, in six states — Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Virginia, and Wyoming — districts are the only entities that can authorize charters. Giving more students access to great schools requires districts to embrace, not flee, the opportunities and responsibilities that come with authorizing charter schools.
But the trend is also a good thing.
Earlier this year, our research found that the authorizers with the strongest school portfolios have an institutional commitment to charter school authorizing and see it as their mission to provide more quality options to kids. Authorizing is visible and championed within their institutional framework, not buried in layers of bureaucracy. Their day-to-day authorizing staff has meaningful influence over decision making.
These qualities are more likely to be found in authorizers like state education agencies and independent chartering boards than within school districts. It is not impossible for districts to be good authorizers — and they exist — it simply is not their core mission.
We know that districts, by far, use fewer nationally recognized authorizing best practices than any other type of charter school authorizer. In some places, districts are openly hostile to charter schools and look for any reason to decline applications.
When viewed through this lens, the shift from district authorizing to non-district authorizing could be a net positive, as it will likely lead to better authorizing and better charter schools. That’s why public education advocates and policymakers should work to ensure that every city and state has a non-district authorizer.
Experience shows that independent, statewide charter boards hold the most promise, as a singular focus on authorizing can build substantial expertise and strong practices that lead to better outcomes for children. In some places, a state education agency may be the better route; in other places, it may be universities.
There is much to learn about what is driving this trend within school districts, and whether it is possible to reverse it — or whether we should even try. Are districts receiving fewer applications, or are they denying them at higher rates? Is this all just a result of increased political opposition and competition for scarce resources?
But given that all types of authorizers are opening fewer schools, we need more great authorizers that are willing to step up, identify obstacles to growth, and work to solve them. In places like Colorado, New York, Washington, D.C., South Carolina, and Massachusetts, we see authorizers that are looking for areas of need in their communities, recruiting new operators, and creating transparent and accessible application processes. They’re working with education leaders in their cities and states to create an ecosystem that fosters innovation and policy conditions that support quality growth.
Too many U.S. children lack access to a good school. One powerful way to provide more children with a better future is through better authorizing and more high-quality charter schools. Let’s keep working.
Greg Richmond is president and CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers.


Charter School Capital logoSince the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We provide growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide. Our depth of experience working with charter school leaders and our knowledge of how to address charter school financial and operational needs have allowed us to provide over $1.8 billion in support of 600 charter schools that have educated over 1,027,000 students across the country. For more information on how we can support your charter school, contact us. We’d love to work with you!

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charter school expansionStrengthening the Roots of the Charter-School Movement

Editor’s Note: This post about the feasibility of charter school expansion was originally published here by EdNext and written by Derrell Bradford.  It ponders the question as to whether the charter school movement has the access to the political and grassroots support, capital resources, experts, and critical mass to sustain its growth. It also looks at the challenges that single-site charter schools are facing in contrast to their charter management organization (CMO) or education management organization (EMO) member school counterparts.
Our mission is to see continued charter school expansion, the overall growth of the charter school movement, and more students better served by having educational choice. We think it’s vital to keep tabs on the pulse of all things related to charter schools, including informational resources, and how to support charter school growth and the advancement of the charter school movement as a whole. We hope you find this—and any other article we curate—both interesting and valuable. Please read on to learn more.


Over the past quarter century, charter schools have taken firm root in the American education landscape. What started with a few Minnesota schools in the early 1990s has burgeoned into a nationwide phenomenon, with nearly 7,000 charter schools serving more than three million students in 43 states and the nation’s capital.
Twenty-five years isn’t a long time relative to the history of public and private schooling in the United States, but it is long enough to merit a close look at the charter-school movement today and how it compares to the one initially envisaged by many of its pioneers: an enterprise that aspired toward diversity in the populations of children served, the kinds of schools offered, the size and scale of those schools, and the background, culture, and race of the folks who ran them.
Without question, the movement has given many of the country’s children schools that are now among the nation’s best of any type. This is an achievement in which all charter supporters can take pride.
It would be wrong, however, to assume that the developments that have given the movement its current shape have come without costs. Every road taken leaves a fork unexplored, and the road taken to date seems incomplete, littered with unanswered and important questions.
While the charter sector is still growing, the rate of its expansion has slowed dramatically over the years. In 2001, the number of charter schools in the country rose by 26 percent, and the following year, by 19 percent. But that rate steadily fell and now languishes at an estimated 2 percent annually (see Figure 1). Student enrollment in charter schools continues to climb, but the rate of growth has slowed from more than 30 percent in 2001 to just 7 percent in 2017.
And that brings us to those unanswered questions: Can the charter-school movement grow to sufficient scale for long-term political sustainability if we continue to use “quality”—as measured by such factors as test scores—as the sole indicator of a successful school? What is the future role of single-site schools in that growth, given that charter management organizations (CMOs) and for-profit education management organizations (EMOs) are increasingly crowding the field? And finally, can we commit ourselves to a more inclusive and flexible approach to charter authorizing in order to diversify the schools we create and the pool of prospective leaders who run them?
In this final query, especially, we may discover whether the movement’s roots will ever be deep enough to survive the political and social headwinds that have threatened the chartering tree since its first sprouting. 

One School, One Dream

Howard Fuller, the lifelong civil rights activist, former Black Panther, and now staunch champion of school choice, once offered in a speech: “CMOs, EMOs . . . I’m for all them O’s. But there still needs to be a space for the person who just wants to start a single school in their community.”
In Fuller’s view, one that is shared by many charter supporters, the standalone or single-site school, and an environment that supports its creation and maintenance, are essential if we are to achieve a successful and responsive mix of school options for families.
But increasingly, single-site schools appear to suffer a higher burden of proof, as it were, to justify their existence relative to the CMOs that largely set the political and expansion strategies for the broader movement. Independent schools, when taken as a whole, still represent the majority of the country’s charter schools—55 percent of them, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. But as CMOs continue to grow, that percentage is shrinking.
Examining the role that single-site schools play and how we can maintain them in the overall charter mix is not simple, but it uncovers a number of factors that contribute to the paucity—at least on the coasts—of standalone schools that are also led by people of color.

Access to Support

If there is a recurring theme that surfaces when exploring the health and growth of the “mom-and-pops”—as many charter advocates call them—it’s this: starting a school, any school, is hard work, but doing it alone comes with particularly thorny challenges.
“Starting HoLa was way harder than any of us expected,” said Barbara Martinez, a founder of the Hoboken Dual Language Charter School, or HoLa, an independent charter school in Hoboken, New Jersey. “We ran into problems very early on and had to learn a lot very, very quickly.” Martinez, who chairs HoLa’s board and also works for the Northeast’s largest charter network, Uncommon Schools, added: “When a CMO launches a new school, they bring along all of their lessons learned and they open with an already well-trained leader. At HoLa, there was no playbook.”
Michele Mason, executive director of the Newark Charter School Fund, which supports charter schools in the city and works extensively with its single-site charters, made a similar point, noting that many mom-and-pops lack the human capital used by CMOs to manage the problems that confront any education startup. “[Prior to my arrival we were] sending in consultants to help school leaders with finance, culture, personnel, boards,” Mason said. “We did a lot of early work on board development and board support. The CMOs don’t have to worry about that so much.”
Mason added that the depth of the talent pool for hiring staff is another advantage that CMOs enjoy over the standalones. “Every personnel problem—turnover, et cetera—is easier when you have a pipeline.”

Access to Experts

Many large charter-school networks can also count on regular technical support and expertise from various powerhouse consultants and consulting firms that serve the education-reform sector. So, if knowledge and professional support are money, some observers believe that access to such wired-in “help” means the rich are indeed getting richer in the charter-school world.
Leslie Talbot of Talbot Consulting, an education management consulting practice in New York City, said, “About 90 percent of our charter work is with single-site schools or leaders of color at single sites looking to grow to multiple campuses. We purposely decided to focus on this universe of schools and leaders because they need unique help, and because they don’t have a large CMO behind them.” Talbot is also a member of the National Charter Collaborative, an organization that “supports single-site charter-school leaders of color who invest in the hopes and dreams of students through the cultural fabric of their communities.”
What are the kinds of support that might bolster a mom-and-pop’s chances of success? “There are lots of growth-related strategic-planning and thought-partnering service providers in [our area of consulting],” offered Talbot. “Single-site charter leaders, especially those of color, often are isolated from these professional development opportunities, in need of help typically provided by consulting practices, and unable to access funding sources that can provide opportunities” to tap into either of those resources.

Connections and Capital

charter school approvalThe old bromide “It’s who you know” certainly holds true in the entrepreneurial environment of charter startups. As with any risky and costly enterprise, the power of personal and professional relationships can open doors for school leaders. Yet these are precisely the relationships many mom-and-pop, community-focused charter founders lack. And that creates significant obstacles for prospective single-site operators.
A 2017 Thomas B. Fordham Institute report analyzed 639 charter applications that were submitted to 30 authorizers across four states, providing a glimpse of the tea leaves that charter authorizers read to determine whether or not a school should open. Authorizing is most certainly a process of risk mitigation, as no one wants to open a “bad” school. But some of the study’s findings point to distinct disadvantages for operators who aren’t on the funder circuit or don’t have the high-level connections commanded by the country’s largest CMOs.
For instance, among applicants who identified an external funding source from which they had secured or requested a grant to support their proposed school, 28 percent of charters were approved, compared to 21 percent of those who did not identify such a source (see Figure 2).
“You see single-site schools, in particular with leaders of color, who don’t have access to capital to grow,” said Talbot. “It mirrors small business.” Neophyte entrepreneurs, including some women of color, “just don’t have access to the same financial resources to start up and expand.”
Michele Mason added that the funding problem is not resolved even if the school gets authorized. “Mom-and-pops don’t spend time focusing on [fundraising and networking] and they don’t go out there and get the money. They’re not on that circuit at all.”
“Money is an issue,” agreed Karega Rausch, vice president of research and evaluation at the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA). “If you look at folks who have received funding from the federal Charter Schools Program, for instance . . . those are the people getting schools off the ground. And this whole process is easier for a charter network that does not require the same level of investment as new startups.”

Authorizing and the Politics of Scale

Charter-school authorizing policies differ from state to state and are perhaps the greatest determinant of when, where, and what kind of new charter schools can open—and how long they stay in business. Such policies therefore have a major impact on the number and variety of schools available and the diversity of leaders who run them.
For example, on one end of the policy spectrum lies the strict regulatory approach embodied by the NACSA authorizing frameworks; on the other end, the open and pluralistic Arizona charter law. Each approach presents very different conditions for solo charter founders, for the growth of the sector as a whole, and, by extension, for the cultivation of political constituencies that might advocate for chartering now and in the future.
Arizona’s more open approach to authorizing has led to explosive growth: in 2015–16, nearly 16 percent of the state’s public-school students—the highest share among all the states—attended charter schools. The approach also earned Arizona the “Wild West” moniker among charter insiders. But as Matthew Ladner of the Charles Koch Institute argues, the state’s sector has found balance—in part because of an aggressive period of school closures between 2012 and 2016—and now boasts rapidly increasing scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, particularly among Hispanic students (see “In Defense of Education’s ‘Wild West,’” features, Spring 2018). It has also produced such stellar college-preparatory schools as Great Hearts Academies and BASIS Independent Schools, whose success has helped the Arizona charter movement gain political support outside of its urban centers.
“When you have Scottsdale’s soccer moms on your side, your charters aren’t going away,” said Ladner.
NACSA’s approach, conversely, is methodical and therefore tends to be slow. Its tight controls on entry into the charter space have come to typify the authorizing process in many states—and have given rise to a number of the country’s best-performing schools and networks of any type, including Success Academy in New York City, Achievement First in Connecticut, Brooke Charter Schools in Boston, and the independent Capital City Public Charter School in D.C. However, some of NACSA’s policy positions could be considered unfriendly to sector growth. For instance, the association recommends that the initial term of charters be for no more than five years, and that every state develop a provision requiring automatic closure of schools whose test scores fall below a minimum level. Such provisions may have the most impact on single-site, community-focused charters, which might be concentrating on priorities other than standardized test scores and whose test results might therefore lag, at least in the first few years of operation.
Certainly, responsible oversight of charter schools is essential, and that includes the ability to close bad schools. “Despite a welcome, increasing trend of closing failing schools [over] the last five years, closing a school is still very hard,” Rausch said. “Authorizers should open lots of innovative and new kinds of schools, but they also have to be able to close them if they fail kids. We can’t just open, open, open. We need to make sure that when a family chooses a school there’s some expectation that the school is OK.”
charter management organizationsThe issue of quality is anchored in the pact between charter schools and their authorizers (and by extension, the public). Charter schools are exempt from certain rules and regulations, and in exchange for this freedom and flexibility, they are expected to meet accountability guidelines and get results. Over time, authorizers have increasingly defined those results by state test scores.
By this measure, the large CMOs have come out ahead. Overall, schools run by them have produced greater gains in student learning on state assessments, in both math and reading, than their district-school counterparts, while the mom-and-pops have fared less well, achieving just a small edge over district schools in reading and virtually none in math (see Figure 3).
But some charter advocates are calling for a more nuanced definition of quality, particularly in light of the population that most standalone charters—especially those with leaders of color—plan to serve. This is a fault-line issue in the movement.
“In my experience, leaders of color who are opening single sites are delivering a model that is born out of the local community,” said Talbot. “We’ve witnessed single-site charters headed by leaders of color serve large numbers of students who have high needs. Not at-risk . . . but seriously high needs—those ongoing emergent life and family conditions that come with extreme poverty,” such as homelessness. “When you compound this with [a school’s] lack of access to capital and support . . . you have this conundrum where you have leaders of color, with one to two schools, serving the highest-needs population, who also have the least monetary and human-capital support to deal with that challenge. And as a result, their data doesn’t look very good. An authorizer is going to say to a school like that, ‘You’re not ready to expand. You might not even be able to stay open.’”
When it comes to attempting a turnaround, standalone schools are again at a disadvantage relative to the CMOs. “What happens with the mom-and-pops is that if they don’t do well early—if their data doesn’t look good—there’s no one there to bail them out,” said Mason. “They don’t have anyone to come and help with the programming. The academic supports. And if they don’t have results early, then they’re immediately on probation and they’re climbing uphill trying to build a team, get culture and academics in place. CMOs have all the resources to come in and intervene if they see things going awry.”
Then, too, a charter school, especially an independent one, can often fill a specialized niche, focusing on the performing arts, or science, or world languages. “As an independent charter school, you have to be offering families something different, . . . and in our case it’s the opportunity for kids to become fully bilingual and bi-literate,” offered Barbara Martinez of HoLa. “It’s not about being better or beating the district. It’s about ensuring that you are not only offering a unique type of educational program, but that you also happen to be preparing kids for college and beyond. For us, [charter] autonomy and flexibility allow us to do that in a way that some districts can’t or won’t.”
charter school diversityIn short, the superior performance of CMO schools vis-à-vis test scores does not imply that we should only focus on growing CMO-run schools. Given the resource disadvantages that independent operators face, and the challenging populations that many serve, we would be better advised to provide these leaders with more support in several areas: building better networks of consultants who can straddle the worlds of philanthropy and community; recruiting from non-traditional sources to diversify the pool of potential leaders, in terms of both race and worldview; and allowing more time to produce tangible results. Such supports might help more mom-and-pops succeed and, in the process, help expand and diversify (in terms of charter type and leader) the movement as a whole while advancing its political credibility.
The numbers tell the story on the subject of leadership. Charter schools serve a higher percentage of black and Hispanic students than district schools do, and while charter schools boast greater percentages of black and Hispanic principals than district schools, these charter-school leaders overall are far less diverse than the students they serve (see Figure 4). Though many may view charter schools primarily through the lens of performance, it seems that many of the families who choose them value community—the ability to see themselves in their schools and leaders—substantially more than we originally believed. Diverse leadership, therefore, is a key element if we want to catalyze both authentic community and political engagement to support the movement’s future.

More Is Better

A schooling sector that does not grow to a critical mass will always struggle for political survival. So what issues are at play when we consider the future growth of charter schools, and what role will single sites and a greater variety of school offerings play in that strategy? There’s no consensus on the answer.
A more pluralistic approach to charter creation—one that embraces more-diverse types of schools, academic offerings, and leadership and helps more independent schools get off the ground—might entail risks in terms of quality control, but it could also help the movement expand more quickly. And steady growth could in turn help the movement mount a robust defense in the face of deepening opposition from teachers unions and other anti-charter actors such as the NAACP. (Last year the NAACP released a task force report on charter schools, calling for an outright moratorium on new schools for the present and significant rule changes that would effectively end future charter growth.)
Another viewpoint within the movement, though, points out that the sector is still growing, though at a slower pace and even if there is a coincident reduction in the diversity of school types.
“We know the movement is still growing because the number of kids enrolled in charter schools is still growing,” said NACSA’s Rausch. “It’s just not growing at the same clip it used to, despite the fact that authorizers are approving the same percentage of applications.” He also noted that certain types of growth might go untallied: the addition of seats at an existing school, for instance, or the opening of a new campus to serve more students.
Rausch notes that one factor hampering sector-wide growth is a shrinking supply of prospective operators, single-site or otherwise. “We’ve seen a decline overall in the number of applications that authorizers receive,” he said. “What we need are more applications and more people that are interested in starting new single sites, or more single sites that want to grow into networks. But I’m also not sure there is the same level of intentional cultivation to get people to do this work [anymore]. I wonder if there is the same kind of intensity around [starting charters] as there used to be.”
Many charter supporters, however, don’t believe that an anemic startup supply is the only barrier to sector expansion in general, or to the growth of independent schools. Indeed, many believe there are “preferences” baked into the authorizing process that actually hinder both of these goals, inhibiting the movement’s progress and its creativity. That is, chartering is a movement that began with the aspiration of starting many kinds of schools, but it may have morphed into one that is only adept at starting one type of school: a highly structured school that is run by a CMO or an EMO and whose goal is to close achievement gaps for low-income kids of color while producing exceptional test scores. This “type” of charter is becoming synonymous with the term “charter school” across most of America. Among many charter leaders and supporters, these are schools that “we know work.”
In many regions of the country, these charters dominate the landscape and have had considerable success. However, given the pluralistic spirit of chartering overall, the issue of why they dominate is a salient one. Is it chance or is it engineered? Fordham’s report revealed that only 21 percent of applicants who did not plan to hire a CMO or an EMO to run their school had their charters approved, compared to 31 percent for applicants who did have such plans, which could indicate a bias toward CMO or EMO applicants over those who wish to start stand-alone schools. As Fordham’s Michael Petrilli and Amber Northern put it in the report’s foreword: “The factors that led charter applicants to be rejected may very well predict low performance, had the schools been allowed to open. But since the applications with the factors were less likely to be approved, we have no way of knowing.”
The institutional strength implied by a “brand name” such as Uncommon Schools or IDEA might give CMO schools more traction with authorizers and the public. “The truth is that telling a community that a school with a track record is going to open is significantly easier than a new idea,” offered Rausch. “But it’s important to remember that every network started as a single school. We need to continue to support that. I don’t think it’s either CMO or single site. It’s a ‘both/and.’”
If there is a bias toward CMO charters as the “school of choice” among authorizers, why might that be, and what would it mean for single sites? Some believe the problem is one where the goal of these schools is simply lost in the listening—or lack of it—and that the mom-and-pops could benefit from the assistance of professionals who know how to communicate a good idea to authorizers and philanthropists.
The language of “education people in general, and people of color in education specifically . . . doesn’t match up with the corporate language [that pervades the field and] that underpins authorizing and charter growth decisions,” said Talbot. “I think more [charter growth] funds, philanthropists, foundations, need . . . let’s call it translation . . . so there is common ground between leaders of color, single-site startups, foundations, and other participants in the space. I think this is imperative for growth, for recognition, and for competitiveness.”

What Now?

The future of chartering poses many questions. Admittedly, state authorizing laws frame the way the “what” and “who” of charters is addressed. Yet it is difficult to ignore some of the issues that have grown out of the “deliberate” approach to authorizing that has typified much of recent charter creation.
Some places, such as Colorado, have significant populations of single-site schools, but overall, the movement doesn’t seem to be trending that way. Rausch noted that certain localities, such as Indianapolis, have had many charter-school leaders of color, but the movement, particularly on the coasts, is mainly the province of white school leaders and organizational heads who tend to hold homogeneous views on test scores, school structure, and “what works.” And while some Mountain States boast charter populations that are diverse in ethnicity, income, and location, in the states with the greatest number of charters, the schools are densely concentrated in urban areas and largely serve low-income students of color. Neither of these scenarios is “right,” but perhaps a clever mix of both represents a more open, diverse, inclusive, and sustainable future for the charter movement. In the end, the answers we seek may not lie in the leaves that have grown on the chartering tree, but in the chaotic and diverse roots that started the whole movement in the first place.
Derrell Bradford is executive vice president of 50CAN, a national nonprofit that advocates for equal opportunity in K–12 education, and senior visiting fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.


Since the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We provide growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide. Our depth of experience working with charter school leaders and our knowledge of how to address charter school financial and operational needs have allowed us to provide over $1.6 billion in support of 600 charter schools that educate 800,000 students across the country. For more information on how we can support your charter school, contact us. We’d love to work with you!

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Charter School Expansion
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published here by the Fordham Institute on May 3, 2018. It was written by Amy Ruck Kagan, National Association of Charter School Authorizers’ (NACSA) Vice President of Authorizer Engagement and Advancement. The article addresses the need for charter school expansion in areas where high-need students don’t have access to elementary charter schools. Kagan challenges authorizers to review the data showing where elementary charter schools are – and are not – in relationship to high-poverty areas.  She asserts that if authorizers use this data to rethink their state policy, authorizing environment, and community needs, more underserved children would have the opportunity for equal access to great public school options.
Read the complete article below.


Charter school deserts or opportunities for access?

At NACSA, I lead a team that works directly with hundreds of charter school authorizers across the country. I interact with many of them on a day-to-day basis, and they’re all driven by a commitment to ensure that every child has access to quality schools, regardless of zip codes. They know that great charter schools can transform children’s lives and that too many neighborhoods are void of quality educational opportunities.
Doing the work thoughtfully and meeting this critical demand requires the right tools and supporting data. Our research finds that the best authorizers are obsessed with data: They actively and intentionally seek out new information about their schools and communities, and they incorporate it into their decisionmaking when it’s appropriate. When this information is accessible, authorizers have the power to do something about the charter deserts within their communities.
One piece of this data puzzle might be a new report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Charter School Deserts: High-Poverty Neighborhoods with Limited Educational Options. It seeks to help authorizers and those in the charter sector answer the question: What high-need areas in my city or state lack elementary charter schools?

Even if we added just one charter school in each desert, we’re talking about opening up great schools for up to 150,000 more kids.

The report maps the location of elementary charter schools against high-poverty areas using data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Alarmingly, it found that almost all states with a charter school law have at least one desert. More specifically, it found that there are roughly 500 neighborhoods across the country with a high concentration of families in need and no charter schools. The potential impact is huge: Even if we added just one charter school in each desert, we’re talking about opening up great schools for up to 150,000 more kids.
That’s why authorizers should take a moment to review this report and reflect upon their own state policy, authorizing environment, and community needs. Then ask: “What can I do to make sure that every child served within the boundaries of my portfolio have equal access to a great public school option?”
This isn’t an easy question. There are many factors that hinder growth within a portfolio—and many are out of an authorizer’s control, such as a lack of facilities, law and regulations, and other political obstacles. But I am a firm believer that there is a solution to every problem, and that authorizers are the solution-oriented and passionate professionals that can indeed create much-needed change.
Here are some ideas for how authorizers can start using these data to create access for kids:

  • Share this report with decisionmakers within your organization and determine the right strategy for using the data to help communities in need.
  • Use this report in conjunction with expansion and renewal decisions with high-performing schools to create seats where they are most needed.
  • Evaluate how the data included in this report and other information can be used as part of the application decisionmaking process.
  • Truly examine and address the geographic discrepancies within your own portfolio of schools.
  • Opening more great schools that serve the students who need them most is one of the greatest challenges—and greatest opportunities—facing authorizers today. Authorizers have the power and the responsibility to help change lives. Using this report as a tool in their toolbox will only help provide more great schools for kids.

The views expressed herein represent the opinions of the author and not necessarily the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.


Since the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We provide growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide. Our depth of experience working with charter school leaders and our knowledge of how to address charter school financial and operational needs have allowed us to provide over $1.6 billion in support of 600 charter schools that educate 800,000 students across the country. For more information on how we can support your charter school, contact us. We’d love to work with you!

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Elements of Successful Charter School Authorizing

Editor’s note: This post on charter school authorizing was originally published on February 27, 2108, by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and written by Kevin Hesla, the Director of Research and Evaluation at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. In an earlier CHARTER EDtalk with Darlene Chambers Sr. Vice President for Programs and Services, National Charter Schools Institute, we discussed the importance of balance as it pertains to the authorizer/charter school relationship. This is another interesting look at the role of authorizers as examined in the newest NACSA study, Elements of Successful Charter School Authorizing. It not only highlights the essential qualities of successful authorizing as shared in this post but also the essential practices – in four key areas – of successful charter school authorizing.
We think it’s vital to keep tabs on the pulse of all things related to charter schools, including informational resources,  and how to support charter school growth.  We hope you find this—and any other article we curate—both interesting and valuable.


Strong, thoughtful, and visionary authorizers and authorizing practices are absolutely essential to the continued growth and health of the charter school movement – a movement which aims to provide expanded opportunities to millions of students while also positively reshaping the larger public education landscape. Based on recent national surveys, 16 to 17 percent of parents would choose a charter school for their child if location and capacity were not an issue – indicating that the potential number of charter school students in the U.S. is between 8 and 8.5 million. While parent demand for charter schools remains strong, supply growth has increasing been constrained by several factors, including: facilities access, the talent pipeline (including founding groups, school leaders, and teachers), overall funding and funding equity, authorizer capacity, union and political opposition, and limitations in state laws (including caps on charter growth).
Amidst this environment, the National Alliance, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), and various stakeholders at the national, state, and local levels, are committed to working together to remove these barriers to growth. That is what makes NACSA’s new report on the successful elements of charter school authorizing so important and timely. The best authorizers view their role as supporting school success and not as that of “compliance cop.” As charter school demand continues to exceed supply – the role of strong and visionary authorizers in providing systemic leadership, setting expectations, supporting schools, and helping developing groups overcome obstacles – is more important than ever.
Over the past several years, NACSA convened a panel of researchers and advisors to collaboratively investigate the perspectives and practices of high-performing authorizers compared with a sample of authorizers achieving moderate outcomes. As a result of this research, NACSA identified a list of “practices and [qualities] that appear similar and different across these two groups of authorizers.” These qualities and practices are highly correlated with success; however, the report notes that “additional research is needed to establish casual relationships between authorizer practices and outcomes.”
NACSA found that “while successful authorizers are grounded [in] smart systems and tools, they are [also] empowered to make the best decisions for children through great leadership, institutional commitment, and strong professional judgment.”

Essential Qualities:

Great Leadership: “Great authorizers are dedicated to a mission of giving more children access to better schools through the proactive creation and replication of high-quality charter schools and the closure of academically low-performing ones.”
Institutional Commitment: “Great authorizers reflect their institution’s commitment to quality authorizing. Authorizing is visible, championed, and adequately resourced, rather than buried in a bureaucracy. The people responsible for day-to-day authorizing functions have influence over decision making.”
Professional Judgement: “Great authorizers make decisions based on what will drive student outcomes, not based on checking boxes or personal beliefs.”
Along with these three essential qualities, NACSA also looked at essential practices among four key areas: culture, staff development, and norms; the application and pre-opening process; monitoring and intervention; and charter school renewal, expansion, and closure. Among these four topic areas, NACSA found a number of practices that differentiate strong authorizers from average authorizers.

“our nation’s strongest authorizers create environments where charter schools thrive [and they] help charter schools live up to their fullest potential.”

Essential Practices:

Culture, Staff Development, and Norms.
High-performing authorizers developed a culture and staff competencies that were grounded in their mission of providing expanded educational opportunities to students and families. They used data as a tool to help drive decision making, but they also applied their professional judgement in interpreting the data and understanding its limitations. They created a culture where staff felt empowered to make decisions and were not “bound by protocols, templates, or other authorizing tools that limit decision making.” High-performing authorizers built strong and supportive relationships with their schools while also drawing a “very clear line between providing support and direction.” They frequently sought out new and best practices from other authorizers (and at times other sectors) and modified them to fit their organizational context. They created an environment with structured and regular opportunities for “staff reflection and self-critique on practices and systems.” They had a “history of long-tenured senior leadership, including multiple long-tenured executive directors.” And they spent a great deal of time developing their staff, including cross-training on other authorizing functions and developing “explicit strategies to ensure a shared understanding of, and expertise in, quality authorizing.”
Application and Pre-Opening Process.
High-performing authorizers were transparent in their decision-making process, they often encouraged denied applicants to reapply, and they supported schools in the pre-opening process. They provided applicants and the public with “detailed information about the application process including timelines, evaluation criteria, [and] previously submitted and reviewed applications.” They looked at the application holistically while also ensuring that “all parts of the application [were] internally coherent and reinforcing.” They assessed geographic and community need while being careful not to “specify a preference for specific types of schools.” They used the approved application as a detailed blueprint for the opening and operation of the school. Unlike in other areas of the authorizing practice, high-performing authorizers were “very hands on (sometimes quite intensively) in the pre-opening process” and they used the pre-opening process to “build relationships, set expectations, and provide technical assistance to schools.” In addition, they reviewed their application process after each cycle to improve its efficiency and validity.
Monitoring and Intervention.
High-performing authorizers conducted ongoing monitoring that was clearly aligned with the expectations laid out in the charter contract, they did not ask for data that they could easily obtain from public sources, and they used professional judgement in determining if interventions were necessary. High-performing authorizers provided formal and informal feedback to schools so that there was consistency and clarity about where schools stood relative to their expectations. They used “formal site visits to collect information about schools [and] facilitate difficult conversations with schools when needed.” They used a transparent, regular, and predictable system to collect data from schools and they did not ask schools for data that they could easily obtain from public sources. In addition, they used their professional judgement to determine if interventions were necessary and, if so, the specific nature of the intervention.
Renewal, Expansion, and Closure.
High-performing authorizers provided clear information about whether or not schools were meeting expectations, they provided incentives for replication and expansion, and they took an active role when a school was closed. High-performing authorizers regularly communicated with schools and alerted them to any potential underperformance or concerns long before formal decision were made about renewal, expansion, or closure. They did not approve replication and expansion plans automatically but they did provide incentives for replication and/or expansion by, for example, reducing per-student oversight fees, expediting the application process, and providing access to facilities. In addition, they took an active role when a school was closed by finding a replacement operator and/or ensuring that students had access to other schools.
The report notes that “authorizing is, ultimately, an intensely human endeavor. Like all bureaucratic functions, authorizing certainly must be grounded in good laws and policies, sound principles and standards, and—day-to-day—smart processes, rubrics, and benchmarks.” But NACSA points out that the best authorizers take a much more proactive approach to their work, specifically “our nation’s strongest authorizers create environments where charter schools thrive [and they] help charter schools live up to their fullest potential.”


We’d love to hear your thoughts and comments on this topic. Please leave them below.
Charter School Capital is committed to the success of charter schools and has solely focused on funding charter schools since the company’s inception in 2007. Our depth of experience working with charter school leaders and our knowledge of how to address charter school financial and operational needs have allowed us to provide over $1.6 billion in support of 600 charter schools that educate 800,000 students across the country. For more information on how we can help your charter school, contact us!

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Fulfilling the Charter School Promise: Accountability Matters; So Do Freedom, Fair Funding, and Strong Operators

Editor’s note: This post was originally published here by The74 and written by Andrew Lewis, an education and political consultant and the former longtime executive vice president of the Georgia Charter Schools Association. Charter schools operate within a framework of flexibility for accountability. At first glance, this may seem like a simple equation, but in fact, is quite a complex formula that involves the schools, the authorizers, the state, the boards of directors, the districts and communities in which charter schools operate, etc. This article is an enlightening look at the players involved in fulfilling the public charter school promise. It examines the need for more balance as it relates to regulation of charter schools—with too much regulation threatening the flexibility promise of those schools. We discussed the need for balance between the authorizers, governing board, and resources in this CHARTER EDtalk with Darlene Chambers. This post is similar but highlights the consequences of over-regulation by state policymakers, as well as the responsibilities of authorizers and school boards, and then touches on the accountability of the schools to live up to their end of the contract. We think it’s vital to keep tabs on the pulse of all things related to charter schools, including informational resources,  and how to support charter school growth.  We hope you find this—and any other article we curate—both interesting and valuable.


Public charter schools, at the concept’s simplest, can be thought of in mathematical terms: flexibility under state education law + autonomy of decision-making by the governing body of the school + the highest accountability in public K-12 education = increased student achievement.
The equation is simple, but the reality of the equation is brutally complicated. The difficulties for those attempting quality reforms through chartering are made more challenging by district leaders and state policymakers, as well as many charter schools that sign up for the charter promise and then want to look the other way when accountability comes into play.
Nationally, the above charter-sector equation too often comes up short. The inability to make this 1+1+1=3 formula work leaves charters mired in an unfulfilled promise with, in practically every state, inequitable student funding. This scenario creates an environment for academic and operational failure. For state policymakers and local boards of education, these sets of circumstances are either unintentional, and therefore irresponsible, or intentional, and therefore immoral.
The 2017 University of Arkansas study “Charter School Funding: Inequity in the City” compared charter school funding with that of traditional public schools in 14 major metropolitan areas across the United States. The study notes that “public charter schools receive an average of $5,721 less per-pupil than traditional public schools, which represents a funding gap of 29 percent.”
State policymakers are fortunate that they rarely have to explain to parents of charter school students that their child is worth, on average, 70 cents on the dollar.
The first part of the charter school promise is intended to free up charter schools from bureaucracies that often thwart innovation in the classroom or at the school level. The broad flexibility that is supposed to be afforded is far too often a mirage. State and local policies, rules, and guidance continue to undermine the flexibility to innovate, making many charter schools across the country nothing more than a charter school in name only. Providing “flexibility” under state law and then passing laws, rules, and guidance that strip away that very same flexibility goes counter to the charter promise and is bad policymaking.
Benjamin J. Lindquist, a venture philanthropist and grantmaker who spent 22 years as an Arkansas charter school operator, warns, “If overregulation isn’t fixed, it won’t just stifle the charter sector’s growth. It will erode the performance and sustainability of existing schools because they’ll gradually lose the capacity to perform in a flexible, responsive fashion.”
Lindquist highlights his state’s tendency to over-regulate by subjecting charter schools to monitoring from 13 different divisions of four separate state agencies, each with its own unique set of requirements. These burdens are on top of other layers of bureaucratic mandates.
Unfortunately, similar creep continues to spread across the nation, keeping charter schools from their promise — to ultimately be responsible for outcomes (student achievement) as opposed to unnecessary and overbearing inputs.

“America’s charter schools resemble an artist who is expected to paint masterpieces while forced to wear thick mittens.”

Chester Finn, president emeritus at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, noted in the 2010 study “Charter School Autonomy: A Half-Broken Promise,” “America’s charter schools resemble an artist who is expected to paint masterpieces while forced to wear thick mittens. Our policymakers and school authorizers, by and large, have not fulfilled their part of the grand ‘bargain’ that undergirds the charter school concept: that these new and independent schools will deliver solid academic results for needy kids in return for the freedom to do it their own way. There’s been plenty of attention in recent years to the results side of that bargain, but precious little to the freedom side.”
The role of a charter school authorizer, whether a local board of education or a dedicated state authorizer, is to provide quality oversight, ensuring the charter school is meeting the obligations set in its charter contract. It is then up to the governing board of the charter school to make decisions on mission, vision, and other determinations the board deems is in the school community’s best interest.
This is an area that requires far more out of local districts and state policymakers. Authorizers are often quick to meddle in the decision-making of a charter school board, influencing decisions through various means.
Georgia, where I have worked in the charter sector for 15 years, is an example of the broken promise to charters. In recent years, my state has:

  • mandated how charters are to assess their teachers and leaders
  • dictated goals in charter contracts that are not charter-specific
  • undermined state law allowing high-achieving charter schools to receive a 10-year renewal by adopting a State Board of Education rule capping all renewals to five years (who knew a rule is stronger than the law?)

Georgia, like so many other chartering states, continues down a path of adding layer upon layer of bureaucracy in charter contracts, in law and in rule, causing charter schools to resemble traditional public schools rather than the laboratories of innovation they are supposed to be.
And what is a charter school board to do if it finds such meddling erroneous? It is a rare occasion when a charter school board takes its authorizer or the state to task, fearing retribution down the line. Call it human nature or what you will, there is a reluctance to challenge the very entity that holds your life in its hands.
At the same time, boards of charter schools in too many cases have also failed their constituents on the charter promise. Too many charter school boards do not provide a level of quality governance and oversight necessary for the charter school to operate satisfactorily. Unwieldy, incestuous and unreliable charter school boards are too common across the country. Charter schools must do a better job of instilling strong governance through committed community members with varying backgrounds if the charter is to fulfill its promise. Where you find a strong charter school, I will show you good governance and committed leaders who understand their roles and responsibilities.
The last part of the charter equation we all must better understand is accountability. If a charter school is not living up to its obligations, it runs the risk of closure, the highest accountability in public K-12 education. But authorizer accountability needs to be consistent and fact-based, something that is lacking across the nation.
Authorizers must do their due diligence to make sure any closure or reprimand of a charter school is done as part of a transparent and thorough process. It is unfair to any charter school and the parents and students the charter serves to reprimand or close the school without providing the charter with opportunities to first understand and then remedy the issues at hand.
To increase standards across the United States, we must start holding charter authorizers accountable. Policies must hold charter authorizers accountable similar to how we hold an individual charter school accountable. If an authorizer, which is receiving funding from the very charter schools it oversees, is unable to perform its duties for its charters, shouldn’t the authorizer lose the ability to authorize altogether? States need to look at the example set by Minnesota, which has shut down 40 of its 70 charter school authorizers in recent years.
For charter schools not meeting their obligations academically and/or operationally to their various constituencies — do not complain about the very accountability you signed up for in your charter contract. Accountability matters. Failing to recognize appropriate accountability in the charter sector makes the sector hypocritical toward the standards we say we live by.
So the next time we read about a charter school closure, we must consider how policymakers, charter school authorizers, and charter schools themselves have all played a role in an unfulfilled promise to children and families. The promise is a good one.
Now everyone needs to uphold their end of the bargain.


We’d love to hear your thoughts on this complex issue. Please post them below.


Since the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We provide growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide. Our depth of experience working with charter school leaders and our knowledge of how to address charter school financial and operational needs have allowed us to provide over $1.6 billion in support of 600 charter schools that educate 800,000 students across the country. For more information on how we can support your charter school, contact us. We’d love to work with you!

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