Emerging Themes from 2012 Charter School Authorizing Conference

The National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) just wrapped up its annual leadership conference in Memphis, Tennessee. At the conference, NACSA announced a “One Million Lives” campaign that will focus on working with authorizers to close failing charters and open twice as many high quality schools to provide one million students higher quality school options over the next five years. So it is no surprise that the major areas of discussion at the conference were around the nuances of charter school closures and the strategies for identifying and supporting good, new charter schools.

School Closures: There is general consensus that closing failing charter schools is critical—no one is arguing to change the charter bargain of autonomy in exchange for accountability. But in reality, not enough under-performing charter schools have been shut down (NACSA reports that the closure rate for charters up for renewal in 2010-11 was 6.2 percent, down from 8.8 percent in 2009-10 and 12.6 percent in 2008-09). As one panelist put it, “If [the charter sector] doesn’t deal with the closure issue, we’ll become the same blob we’re trying to replace.” So, what ideas are percolating?

• Automatic or default closure mandates. Change state laws or authorizing practices to establish firm cutoffs (e.g.,priority schools as defined by ESEA) where a charter school is not granted additional time to attempt a turn-around. (Addressed in NAPCS’ Fulfilling the Compact report.)
• Develop and implement performance frameworks to monitor charter achievement. And even better, use the same performance framework to make tough decisions about both charters and traditional public schools (e.g., Denver Public Schools).
• Differentiated charter renewal contracts. Rather than giving charter schools 5, 10, or 15 year contracts, authorizers can develop short term contracts for schools that need to improve to fulfill the goals outlined in their charters.
• Find ways to get authorizers and charter support organizations to work together to ensure that necessary closures happen.

Of course, the closure conversation involves caveats. Closure decisions have to take into account context, such as schools with high percentages of alternative education students.

Opening and Replicating High Quality Charters: There has been a good amount of talk among authorizers about dealing with the quality issue by just approving good schools on the front end. Easier said than done, right? Here are some of the ideas discussed:

• Charter school incubators allow more time for structured and thoughtful new school development (for example, The Mind Trust, New Schools for New Orleans, and Tennessee Charter School Incubator).
• Authorizers are concerned about performing their due diligence when it comes to replicating networks or schools operated by management organizations. Moreover, there appears to be a realization that the authorizer becomes a partner of sorts when approving significant numbers of campuses from one network, because there is more to lose if the schools do not perform well.

Relevant to both of these themes, CREDO presented new data suggesting that charter school performance in the first two years of existence is a very good predictor of future performance. While the details of the analyses need to be ironed out, the study has practical implications for authorizers. Specifically, charter schools that do not show evidence that they can produce substantive levels of positive growth in student performance within two years are unlikely to make significant improvements in future years. Authorizers can use this body of evidence to support tough closure decisions.

The Instructional Strategies Charter Schools Use [Infographic]

This past spring, NAPCS conducted a survey of public charter schools across the country. (The national survey provided data for our estimate of 610,000 students on waiting lists to attend charter schools (see here, here, and here).) There were over 5,600 charter schools operating nationwide when we administered the survey in 2011-2012, and we know that charter schools are not a uniform category of schools. One of NAPCS’ goals through the school survey was to collect information that would help us better understand the wide range of instructional strategies charter schools use. We asked charter schools to select their instructional focus from a list of 44 categories (schools could select more than one area of focus). We started with a list from the 2006 Fordham Institute study, Playing to Type: Mapping the Charter School Landscape and revised the list (adding some categories, deleting others) based on work NAPCS has done work collecting information about charter schools nationwide.

Crunching through the survey data, we found that over 40 percent of charter schools responded that their instructional focus is “college-prep.” The term “college-prep” may generate images of a particular type of school: students in uniforms, college and university banners hanging in hallways, a “no excuses” mantra. But when we looked a little deeper at the survey data, we found wide variation in how charter schools go about implementing the focus of preparing students for college. Charter schools use service-learning, project-based instruction, community service, arts, technology, and STEM, among a variety of other instructional methods, to prepare students for college. The survey data reflects the reality that charter schools are not a homogenous set of schools.  The infographic below presents findings from the survey (we have a PDF version of the infographic, too).

This week and next NAPCS will use the Charter Blog to feature public charter schools that prepare students for college using a range of instructional strategies. We have asked school leaders to tell us in their own words how they use service-learning, project-based instruction, child-centered methods, etc. to create a “college-prep” focus. By combining data on instructional strategies from a national survey with on the ground stories of the work of charter schools, we hope to show the wide scope of possibilities in how charter schools can provide great learning environments for students.