Charter schools, which are public schools authorized by state laws, differ from traditional public schools, primarily because they enjoy exemptions from most of the state’s educational bureaucracy and regulations in exchange for accountability to parents and authorizers.
The authorizers negotiate the charter contract, under which the school promises to operate in certain ways, and those authorizers can withdraw the contract under certain circumstances.
Authorizers also can help charter schools innovate and learn from one another.
But what if the national association of authorizers, as it develops “best practices,” encourages members to replace one bureaucracy with another? Or issues ideological pressure? Or uses its assessment of the regulatory regime as its test of quality, rather than innovation or the number of charter schools in a state or actual student outcomes?
That’s the situation we are in today under the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA). Authorizers need a new association, one focused on innovation and student outcomes.
As Heritage Foundation research fellow Jason Bedrick has demonstrated, NACSA has pushed “diversity, equity and inclusion,” substituting its own ideological judgment for that of state and local authorizers and parents themselves. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
Meanwhile, NACSA’s push for a laundry list of authorization requirements has, perversely, made it harder for minority identity groups to succeed.
Bedrick notes academic research supporting that conclusion:
NACSA’s policy recommendations disproportionately prevent black aspiring school leaders from receiving authorization to operate charter schools. The recommendations also disproportionately result in the closure of charter schools that serve a higher proportion of black students.
Furthermore, NACSA ranks states’ regulatory regimes more in terms of bureaucratic hurdles than in terms of quality or quantity of outcomes.
As another Heritage Foundation research fellow, Jay P. Greene, noted in 2021:
NACSA rankings seem to prefer approaches that lead to few or no charter schools actually opening. And those NACSA rankings bear no relationship to test-score measures of school performance or later life outcomes. This approach to ranking simply does not make sense.
Rankings can inspire states to compete and do better, so some good news is that the Education Freedom Institute has offered an outcomes-oriented approach to replace NACSA’s.
But that still leaves NACSA as an authorizer association focused on the wrong things. Instead, this being National School Choice Week 2024, we propose a new association of charter school authorizers that focuses on best practices for innovation and student-centered outcomes.
Here are some principles and ideas that the new association would promote:
The new association also should provide guidance on evaluating applications; on how to help struggling schools; on which policies and provisions of law can increase innovation and student service, and on which provisions unduly interfere; on where to find government funding; on how to help schools find and engage private donors; on how to promote funding equity between charter schools and non-charter public schools; and on how to assess whether it’s time to withdraw a charter.
NACSA’s analysis shows there are about 20 states with independent authorizing boards, whether governmental or nonprofit. These are the authorizers most likely to want to join the new association. (Where a state department of education is the authorizer, we are not optimistic that most departments can see the value of a minimalist regulatory approach.)
Stay tuned as this idea gets closer to reality.
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.
Charter School Authorizers Need a New Association Focused More on Students, Innovation
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25.01.2024
Charter schools, which are public schools authorized by state laws, differ from traditional public schools, primarily because they enjoy exemptions from most of the state’s educational bureaucracy and regulations in exchange for accountability to parents and authorizers.
The authorizers negotiate the charter contract, under which the school promises to operate in certain ways, and those authorizers can withdraw the contract under certain circumstances.
Authorizers also can help charter schools innovate and learn from one another.
But what if the national association of authorizers, as it develops “best practices,” encourages members to replace one bureaucracy with another? Or issues ideological pressure? Or uses its assessment of the regulatory regime as its test of quality, rather than innovation or the number of charter schools in a state or actual student outcomes?
That’s the situation we are in today under the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA). Authorizers need a new........
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