Monday on Flypaper Terry examined charter school accountability and why the charter school bargain hasn't always worked out. ?The post sparked a lively debate in the comments, among them this thoughtful and worthwhile response from Alex Medler, NACSA's Vice President for Policy and Research:
Thanks Terry for a strong statement on the importance of accountability and for noting the growing support for closing struggling charter schools. You got it just right. We at NACSA are gratified to see information on the real actions of authorizers inform the charter school sector.
A couple of observations are worth noting. First, authorizers are closing schools when they come up for renewal. These actions come despite the technical, financial, and political pressure to let floundering schools stay open. According to our study, about 14 percent of the charter schools that came up for review were shuttered by their authorizers. Second, but not so positive, the chances that an authorizer will close a charter school outside the renewal process are similar to the odds that bookies are giving for the U.S. men's team to win the World Cup ? about 80 to 1. Given the frequent efforts by many in the charter sector to extend the length of charter contracts, these two observations must give us pause.
If charter schools are going to have contracts that are longer than five years, we need to figure out how to make sure these schools still face a serious review of their performance more frequently. Otherwise, excessively long charter terms may ease facilities financing difficulties, while undercutting efforts to promote quality in the movement. Ironically, winning the battle on improving the terms of facilities loans (with 10 and 20 year charters) could make us lose the war on quality control.
Authorizers are learning how to marshal the evidence required to close a bad public school; and that knowledge is combining with increased support for this necessary, if painful, action. One of the ways to act on that knowledge is to guarantee that all schools face a serious review of their progress once every five years. Otherwise we may well be celebrating a U.S. Men's World Cup Championship before we achieve the dream of quality control in the charter sector.
Alex Medler
VP, Policy and Research, NACSA