This post by charter school expert Alex Medler on what is missing from a recent report on charter school accountability was originally published on the blog of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers.
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 and begin to engage in a five-year self-improvement process.”
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The deal is simpler.
“If you perform and attract students, you get flexibility and you stay open. If you do not perform or families won’t show up, you are closed.”
If only people could stick to the plan.
A recent study commissioned by Colorado’s Get Smart Schools explored Colorado’s failing schools and the state’s obligations to engage in “turnaround” efforts. The study provides excellent information and a long list of recommendations for the state as it faces the serious challenge of what to do to make good on its commitment to “turn around” almost 200 public schools serving more than 80,000 students. Sadly, the study does not see the obvious answer for the 21 failing charter schools on that list. Close them! The report didn’t say that.
I predict many states will commission similar studies in the next year and ponder the same challenge. These studies and those to come will all ask the same question: what should we do about all the schools we have identified as failing? The reluctance of studies like this to state the obvious implication of charter failure is vexing.
The Colorado study was conducted by Robin Baker, Paul Teske and Kelly Hupfeld at CU-Denver, along with Paul Hill from the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE). It presents a lot of data on kids, schools and districts affected by this policy. At the heart of this issue rests Colorado’s system of accrediting schools and districts, which is also the state’s latest iteration of a federally-approved accountability regime. In it, the state identifies the worst performing schools using a sophisticated growth measure. The state then oversees efforts conducted by schools and districts to make a dramatic change in these schools. Like other states, the range of turnaround options includes restructuring, changes in leadership and staff, working with outside contractors or providers, converting to charter status or closure.
For charter schools, the most obvious and compelling strategy is closure. However, the report barely mentions it. This report, and those that follow, should add a targeted intervention for charters that persistently fail – policy should lead the state or their authorizer to close almost all of them.
It is almost as if people are afraid that if we insist on closing failing charters, we would have to make similar steps for traditional public schools. But traditional public schools don’t operate under the charter premise, so a longer list of possible interventions is fair for them. This is a situation where treating everything the same is not the same as doing what is right or fair.
This awkward unwillingness of the report’s authors to recommend the obvious for failing charters reflects the same challenge that reluctant authorizers also face when they know they should close a school, but decline. To address this natural reluctance, state policy should establish a default system that closes charter schools if the state declares those schools to be failures.
Colorado, and indeed most states with a significant number of failing charter schools, should consider mandating the closure of charters that are identified as failing on state accountability systems. Of course, we need exceptions for schools that are making dramatic impacts on the lives of students that we can see, or that are clearly alternative schools serving extremely at-risk populations. However, with those things in place, which is the case in Colorado, being brave about closure should be something that makes it onto our “to do” list.
About the author
Alex Medler is vice president, Policy and Advocacy, for the National Association of Charter Schools. Medler has been a national expert on charter school policy since the opening days of the movement in the early 1990s. Medler was a founding board member and board chair of the Colorado Charter School Institute, a statewide charter authorizing entity.
IN the same vein it is worth reading the recent CREDO report on charter schools (http://credo.stanford.edu/pdfs/CGAR%20Growth%20Executive%20Summary.pdf) which makes a clear point that charter schools tend to stay in the same quality lane in which they start.
However I would posit that this finding is true regardless of school type: new district schools are likely to suffer the same fate (which seems to be true in DPS: http://www.dkfoundation.org/reports/great-expectations-mixed-results-dk-releases-report-dps-new-school-performance).
Thanks Alex M. for reminding us of the importance in closing low-performing charters. The last thing we should do is invest valuable resources in fixing failing charters. It was a bit puzzling that this was not made more clear in the report.
Alex O, I do think that you have to be careful about applying the same brush to district managed schools. It is true that district managed high schools rarely get out of their performance lane but it should be noted that it is hard but possible to do it for district managed elementary schools. Too often we apply broad brush strokes when we need to be much more precise when talking about school turnarounds.
Another interesting point for Colorado is that some of our currently failing charters have been around for awhile. Several of the failures are not new schools getting up and running with some early challenges; they’ve been struggling over time, and their authorizers have been pursuing temporary renewals or outright renewals. It seems like some spine strengthening could be inserted by state policy to help authorizers do what is right.
Actually, the report does identify closing charter schools as an option, and we can’t even claim to have thought of it first — it’s one of the statutory options for intervening in persistently failing schools. See page 29, which lists “revocation of charter” as one of the options available to the state with respect to failing charter schools.
I am not suggesting it be an option among 5 for failing charters. That is already the law. I’m suggesting it should be the default option for charter schools. I also realize you did mention that closure is one of the current optoins, but the report didn’t recommend that it be done, or done more often.
The odd thing is that for me, the other alternatives besides closure really don’t make much sense for a charter school. That’s why closure seems the best option for charters. With that in mind, I’d suggest it was an obvious recommendation to include in the report and one I hope policymakers will consider going forward.
A good question to explore is, why are parents still sending their kids to these schools? They are exercising choice, but why are they choosing so poorly?
I get the impulse to say we need more bureaucratic control of who stays open and who gets closed, but a part of the theory behind school choice is that the choice mechanism will create a market-based situation where good schools thrive and replicate, while bad schools die on the vine – based on parent demand.
Why isn’t this happening? I’m an ardent supporter of choice and options, but it appears we aren’t doing enough to help parents make informed decisions. I’d rather see a school close due to lack of demand than due to lack of a rubber “approved” stamp.
Gauging demand is tough and the amount of it or its representativeness is also easily manipulated.
Many struggling schools are churning through a regular flow of disgruntled parents seeking an option. There is no question that many thousands of parents are desparate for something, and a failing school sometimes attracts them (temporarily). Schools (charter and traditional) are also very good at motivating a subset of parents to show up and make a compelling spectacle. Further, failing schools are generally working well for a few students, and so schools can regularly present anecdotal evidence of a few kids and families with very powerful narratives — but these are entirely unrepresentative of most families’ experience in the school.
I would also argue that taxpayers are entitled to fund public education, not an entitlement to school operators to run something substandard. Would we argue that the concrete contractors who build a substandard road deserve to keep making money building more roads, as long as people attempted to drive on them? If we are paying for a service, and people take that service because they are desparate, but the quality of the service is unacceptable on its face, those paying for it have as much right to complain.
Does the report address performance of the school the child would be going to if not the charter? Sometimes the choice is bad or worse. I would like to see that data.
“Gauging demand is tough..” People are either enrolling their kids or they aren’t, right?
I think a better approach would be, if we decide we need more government involvement for parent’s making choices for their kids, is to require more information to be put out there by the school.
The same way cereal boxes have nutrition labels, require every school to put their stats right on the front door, or on their application. Like a surgeon general’s warning on cigarette packs, every piece of advertisement the school puts out has to say – We are an A school, or we are an F school. And it can be more than just test scores that factor in.
I like the market based approach. Businesses thrive or shut down, not because a government board says so, but because customers do. And education is the second most important product that parents purchase, behind food.
The concrete road example only holds water if there were 100 roads available and people were still choosing the crappy one. Usually there is only one or two roads taking you where you need to go and choice is limited, so not a good comparison to schools (maybe in rural areas). If there were 100 roads in pure competition, demand would close certain roads down, no need for govt.
I like Alex’s point.
Parents choose charters for different reasons. Some of the choice has to do with an improved quality issue, but some also choose based on the type of school, the curriculum taught, or the philosophy of the school. Does a parent’s belief in the philosophy of the school out weigh test scores results?
In a perfect competition model, all of the products are identical. Definitely not the case with charters. We need to be careful of the market-based application.
“Does a parent’s belief in the philosophy of the school out weigh test scores results?”
This is an excellent point. There are many more factors that go into school choice than test scores, philosophy/curriculum being one of the biggest. I think we empower parents with information, and let them dictate who thrives or closes. But I think the information piece is currently lacking.
“In a perfect competition model, all of the products are identical.”
I am not sure what this phrase means. In fact, I can’t think of a single market based system with identical products. That’s the whole point; differences, preferences, and choice. If everything is identical, then choice is false.
Tim, I’m having a hard time understanding your understanding of markets and competition.
First you write, “a part of the theory behind school choice is that the choice mechanism will create a market-based situation where good schools thrive and replicate, while bad schools die on the vine – based on parent demand.” and in a later post, “Businesses thrive or shut down, not because a government board says so, but because customers do.”
This is great Econ 101 theory but it does not correspond to the behavior of any real market I am familiar with. Do you believe that such a free market mechanism can operate in reality and if so, how does it not fall prey to the myriad factors that distort real, existing markets, up to and including systemic fraud?
I am the first person who will engage in a theoretical conversation on just about anything (much to the annoyance of many people around me), but at the end of the day, I am pragmatic. Can you (or anyone reading) give me an example of a real market that normal people have access to that really functions as described above (where the best product survives and the lesser products do not)?
I guess where my real confusion comes in is your leaning toward a bureaucratic solution which moves you right out of the free market camp. Would you be willing to speak to any of this?
If this feels like an attack, I will apologize in advance. I’m really just trying to get my head around where you’re coming from.
Hey Jeff,
I think the greatest example is the telephone market. It used to be heavily regulated by the government, and the theory was always that it is a basic necessity and if we let the free market rule then companies would abuse customers – because it is a necessary service.
Some also argued that if there were phone companies competing, poorer people wouldn’t be sophisticated enough to make smart decisions. So, big brother government needed to make the decision for them and keep an eye on the phone company.
Within 20-30 years of deregulation, you can now use cell phones in some of the most destitute parts of the world, and even the poorest in our society can afford them.
I am not sure if this answers your question? It is probably the best recent example of something that went from heavy government regulation (like schools are currently) to more of a free market approach.