As a cross between public and private schools, charter schools had the quirky newness of an agricultural department test-plot product when they first appeared, in Minnesota, two decades ago. Today, they number 5,000 and are a permanent and important part of the public education landscape. They’ve brought new talent and new ideas to public schooling, mostly to needy students in struggling communities with failing traditional public schools. Though it’s hard to measure, one senses they’ve put pressure on traditional school systems to improve. They've helped create a more vibrant education marketplace, giving families more educational options.

But the academic quality of charter schools is decidedly mixed and one can find stories of charter school financial malfeasance in the clip files of practically every metropolitan newspaper in the country. Talk to people who authorize charter schools (the 40-plus states with charter laws vary in who they appoint to approve charters—state education departments, school systems, universities, and independent boards are among the more common entities) and they’ll tell you that it’s becoming tougher and tougher to find the talented education entrepreneurs needed to open high-quality charter schools.

Charter advocates argue, rightly, that the schools are hurt by the fact that in many places they get less funding than traditional public schools and have to find their own facilities. But charter schools educate only about 3 percent of the nation’s students and outside of urban centers with the quality of life able to attract the disproportionately young, enterprising teachers and principals drawn to charter schooling, the charter school footprint is likely to be small. The visions of some early charter school advocates of charter schools slowly but surely drawing the students out of and replacing the nation’s traditional public school systems are unlikely to be fulfilled.

Still, charter schools have an important role to play in public education—if, as Greg Richmond argues on the blog, the charter school movement makes the quality of charter schools rather than their quantity its highest priority. As Greg points out, the best charter schools are in states and localities requiring the most rigorous approval process and the toughest on-going oversight. He should know, he leads the national association of charter school authorizers.

Charter schools have already changed the education landscape and the bipartisan passage of the Empowering Parents through Quality Charter Schools Act in the U.S. House of Representatives, H.R. 2118, is proof. Across America parents are demanding public school options because charter schools are implementing: hiring and teacher-training practices that have proven to deliver results, special education models serving traditionally underserved or misunderstood student populations, technologically advanced learning models and non-traditional facilities arrangements to meet modern students’ needs. In states across the country, more autonomous district schools have been developed in response to the success of charter schools -- and while NAPCS would prefer to see districts support charter schools directly, it is important to recognize that Georgia, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Texas, South Carolina and others are experimenting with more autonomy for district schools.

Renewed focus on charter schools at the legislative level can support progress for the sector. Lifting arbitrary caps on charter schools is necessary simply to meet existing demand for independent public charter schools. And H.R. 2218 supports dissemination of best practices like these to allow more traditional district schools to adopt the innovations currently being developed in public charter schools. Equally important, the legislation demands stringent quality provisions be adopted at all levels of the movement: by charter operators, state education agencies and charter school authorizers. This focus on quality practices across the sector is an important move to ensure charter school models exhibit operational and academic success. There is also an opportunity for the reauthorization of ESEA to address some of the underlying inequities that currently act as barriers to student success—including issues of enrollment inequalities, funding inequity and facilities access.

However progress won’t come from legislative support alone. Just as Congress has to cross party lines to ensure all students have equal access to a high-quality, public education, we need to reach across the aisle at the school level. Even in times of economic hardship, our children deserve a high-quality, public education. Charter schools, generally operate with significantly less public funding than traditional district schools, yet many are achieving outstanding results. So, district and charter schools both need to recognize what is working to improve student learning and find a way do it. The resources available need to be devoted to the public school demonstrating the highest return on investment. We need more collaboration around facilities access for charter schools in public school buildings. All public schools need to hold themselves accountable for student achievement by whatever means necessary or face closure and new management. All schools should have the dexterity to implement extended learning hours, better technology integration, and targeted programs to excite life-long learning for children. Staffing policies shown to be successful in the charter environment should be considered for the traditional district too. And every school needs to work on serving every single child it enrolls, regardless of income level, test scores or the presence of an individualize education plan. It can be done, and it is what our kids deserve.

As I travel around Rhode Island to meet with educators, parents, students, and community members, people often ask me why I am such a big supporter of charter public schools. The answer is: I’m not. I am a big supporter of high-quality schools that advance student achievement – including charter public schools, magnet schools, virtual learning environments, innovative schools and programs, and traditional public schools that support teachers and focus on student success. I am a believer in the power of schools that have and provide space that allow innovation to occur.

As in many states, Rhode Island charter public schools, by statute, “are intended to be vanguards, laboratories, and an expression of the ongoing and vital state interest in the improvement of education.” (R.I.G.L. 16-77-3.1[b]) Many of our charters fulfill this mission, through a unique educational program (such as a focus on environmental literacy or on instruction through the performing arts) or through innovative instructional models, such as a longer school year, a longer school day, or intense, cross-disciplinary professional development.

When I arrived at the Rhode Island Department of Education, our role regarding charters was essentially to process applications. Over the past two years, we have redesigned the performance-review process for charters. We now see our role as ensuring that all of our charter schools, present and future, are excellent and lead to high achievement. To gather information and feedback, we have held a series of community forums, meetings with our charter-school leaders, and discussions with nationally recognized charter-school operators. We offer data, guidance, and technical support to each of our charters during the planning process and through their years of operation. Our Board of Regents has adopted new performance-based measures for charter review and renewal – to ensure that our charter public schools maintain high standards of instruction and meet their goals for student achievement.

I am confident that our charter public schools are committed to educational excellence, innovation, and student success. Setting the bar high for accountability for our charters will help ensure that our students achieve at the highest level. As Commissioner, I will continue to advocate for high-quality charter public schools, and we will be vigilant in ensuring that our charter public schools advance learning for all students and close achievement gaps.

We have 15 charter public schools in Rhode Island, with several applications pending. We are fortunate to be recipients of a federal Charter School Program grant, through which we plan to add another 15 charter schools. Even with these additions, however, our charter-school enrollments would make up no more than about 5 percent of our student population.

Charters represent an exciting and promising alternative for many families. As in other states, we have several thousand families on waiting lists for enrollment in a charter public school. I do not, however, foresee a day when charters will altogether replace our traditional public schools, nor is that their purpose.

I strongly believe that our charter public schools must be models for excellence, not islands of excellence. We want all of our schools to learn from other successful public schools, including charters – a process that we as education leaders must nurture and encourage. Our charters must be examples of excellence that others will emulate in profound ways – not just by adopting a successful instructional practice or revising a curriculum, but through transforming the whole process of instructional management and school governance.

I am pleased that one of our struggling school districts, Central Falls, is joining with five charter public schools in the area to apply for a school-improvement grant to advance learning for all students in the district, regardless of which school they happen to attend.

During my visits to schools and communities, I sometimes hear teachers and parents lament that charter schools have an advantage: They can schedule more hours of instruction, more common-planning time for teachers, more summer learning, more innovative programs. Why can’t we do that?, they ask – to which I say: What’s stopping you?

Nothing in our state laws or regulations prevents traditional public schools from emulating the practices of successful charter schools. All it takes is the will to change and the courage and commitment to making change happen. I am confident that charter public schools can play a vital role in transforming education for all students in our state.

Here’s the reality about charter schools in the Latino community—for many Latino students, charter schools often provide a better educational option than the nearby traditional public schools. Our experience in working with our affiliated network of charter schools demonstrates the success of these schools in developing innovative and effective strategies for teaching Latino and English language learner (ELL) students. Unlike schools in some large charter management organizations, the National Council of La Raza’s (NCLR) charter schools have opened in response to a specific and self-identified community need for a better schooling option. These “mom-and-pop” operations are spearheaded by community leaders who understand that for Latino students to succeed academically, schools must prioritize family engagement, support ELLs, and uphold high expectations. Schools that focus on these three elements have shown promising results, too. Take the Altavista Charter School in Kansas City, Mo., where standardized test scores in language arts assessments for ELLs are 20 percentage points higher than the state average, and where the high school graduation rate is 26 percentage points higher than that of the surrounding districts. Or consider the Tejano Center in Houston, which educators regard as one of the best high schools in the state of Texas. At the Tejano Center, dropout rates have averaged at the low figure of 1.6% over the last four years, thanks in part to the charter school’s nontraditional educational approach. Any push to improve educational outcomes for underperforming children must support innovative programs such as these.

Though we at NCLR laud the value of charter schools, we also agree with Rep. George Miller (D–Calif.) that the entire educational system must be fixed to demonstrably improve opportunities and achievement for all students. NCLR believes that charter schools alone cannot solve the education crisis in the United States. Not all children have access to charter schools, and not all charter schools are good. Therefore, educational experts, elected officials, and families must work together to develop a broadly based strategy that guarantees that all children, especially low-income minority students, are well-equipped for the future. Any reform agenda must adopt high standards, such as the Common Core State Standards, as well as incorporate meaningful assessments, family engagement, and support for early childhood learning as a foundation for academic success. A comprehensive education policy should promote innovation through charter schools, but ultimately Congress must ensure that its educational overhaul efforts have the widest reach and greatest impact on the students and families most in need.

Charter schools can be an important piece of the vast education reform puzzle. They provide an opportunity to vary approaches to staffing and instructional delivery that might not be as suitable for traditional school environments.

Many colleges of education around the U.S. are actively involved in actually managing or assisting charter schools in their communities in order to design and implement professional development for the schools’ teachers and principals. Colleges of education are also engaged in school turnaround efforts with charters, providing redesign and reorganization support to improve schools’ effectiveness.

Just a few of those partnerships include the Stanford University School of Education’s work with East Palo Alto Academy Schools; the Florida State University College of Education’s work with its Florida State University Schools; and the University of New Orleans’ work with multiple New Orleans charter schools. While there is commendable work being done in this area to enhance the quality of charter schools, it is still, by far, the minority of states that have authorized colleges and universities to sponsor or operate charters.

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s bill complements the positive efforts happening in the charter community, including the work of colleges of education to strengthen charter schools. Particularly, the bill rightly increases a focus on the quality of our nation’s charter schools – encouraging replication of high-performing models and increasing enrollment opportunities for children with disabilities and English-language learners.

That being said, state regulation of charters is an essential component of the formula. With innovative reforms happening in charter schools, traditional schools and elsewhere, all providers of educational services should be held to the same accountability standards and be required to report on performance in terms that produce valid and comparable data. This is especially important as states begin implementing the Common Core Standards. There is no virtue in the charter school designation if its performance is substandard.

Investments in boutique operations should result in moving the dial on student achievement throughout the education system. State regulation would help to determine if charter schools’ performance suggests promising practices that should be considered for broader benefit and application.

The House Committee bill and the synergistic efforts by colleges of education are important steps to ensuring charter schools are high-quality, accountable and will inform systemic change.

There are many good points raised here with regard to charters' impact, innovation, and access. One critical point not raised is the challenge of devising a funding system that is best for all children and taxpayers. Education leaders have the responsibility of creating a level playing field for all students. This means making sure we understand where true costs lie, what incentives are created, and how current funding systems and school systems must transition so students are not penalized by virtue of being in one type of school or another.

Creating funding systems that equitably allocate dollars to schools based on their students’ needs requires careful and deliberate consideration of three key issues. First, what cost elements must be accounted for in a funding system? Second, how do student characteristics (poverty, special education identification, ELL, etc.) change the funding level? And third, what pricing structures will create incentives for serving children in innovative, high quality settings, but not penalize students in traditional settings?

If different students’ learning needs are not adequately accounted for in the funding system, then entrepreneurs can find ways to profit by attracting students that cost less to serve, thus taking desperately needed resources from the most needy. Additionally, if existing facilities or accounting and payroll services are not leveraged, charters end up duplicating services already supported by taxpayers, the district ends up paying more per student to sustain them, and, again, scarce resources are drained from instruction.

The expansion of charter schools cannot be funded in ways that deplete traditional public systems of precious resources, and harm the students who remain. This will inevitably end up doing more harm than good. The best answer requires taking a holistic view both of funding and sharing innovative instructional practices that maximizes the opportunity for all students to achieve.

In the 10 years we’ve been investing in a wide variety of public education reform efforts, our internal evaluation data consistently show that high-performing charter management organizations are ahead of all other reform efforts in producing student results and reducing achievement gaps.

The reason for this is fairly simple. High-performing public charter school models work because their overall structure – autonomous principals, in exchange for accountability, top talent empowered to make decisions based on student needs, efficient operations, challenging curriculum, longer school days, best instructional practices and continuous student-teacher-school improvement models where data drives decision-making – enables them to create the conditions that are necessary for students and teachers to succeed. Any school district can, and should, similarly attempt to put these conditions in place. But in reality, political barriers surrounding many school districts mean that, unfortunately, many traditional public school students may have to wait many, many more years to get the learning opportunities they deserve.

So I’d take issue with the choice. The question shouldn’t be charters or no charters. The question should really be how do we help create or transform as many public schools as possible – whatever their origin-- as quickly as possible, so that they have all the institutional policies and practices in place that will allow for dramatically higher student achievement? Unless and until we find a way to break through the political, cultural and inertia barriers inherent in traditional school districts to put in place necessary institutional design elements all at once rather than piecemeal, charters will continue to be the best solution for many students who would not otherwise have access to a high quality education.

Yes, charters serve far fewer students than do traditional school districts. But because high-performing charters deliver results far faster and because it is far easier to replicate them than it is to transform entire school districts, they ironically may have already looped districts in being the better reform strategy.

Not all charters, however, produce better relative results. Thus, the policies that help charters expand must ensure that any new schools are held accountable for results and are, from the get-go, optimally designed so that they will succeed. We know what structural elements are common to high-performing charters. Let’s pave the way for the models that work and allow others that intend to adopt similar successful elements to expand. However, where innovative charter models are not educating students, they must be closed down.

In the end, it makes sense to continue to foster policy conditions that support high-performing charter management organizations as well as high-performing traditional school districts. Our goal should be to increase student achievement and reduce income and ethnic achievement gaps. More high-quality public charter schools are, without question, a critical part of making that goal a reality.

Below, David Sciarra offers a set of seven specific reform proposals ("Time for Charter School Reform"). I very much favor proposals like David's, which I think would strengthen the charter sector and schooling overall -- but I'm generally considered a charter skeptic. Most contributors here, on the other hand, appear to strong supporters of pro-charter policies. I'd love to see direct responses to his proposals from that perspective. Do you see David's proposals as I do -- as reforms likely to further the mission of charters and of public schooling -- or as a negative? Do you favor some but not others? Why?

The House Education and the Workforce Committee’s bipartisan support for public charter schools, in a Congress riven by partisan rancor, testifies to how much sense this powerful idea makes. For parents frustrated by the slow pace of improvement in big-city school systems, charter schools offer a chance for a better education for their children, not at some vague time in the future, but now. For teachers and administrators looking for tested approaches that will increase students’ progress, charters are a laboratory in which innovations can be road-tested and refined before being taken to scale. For communities that may have given up on good public education, charters are a beacon of hope. And for students whose interests are disserved by one-size-fits-all, assembly-line teaching and what President Bush accurately called the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” charters offer the potential of curricula designed to interest and educate.

The key word in the last sentence being “potential.” Not all charter schools work for their students. Those that don’t work lose their students, who attend by choice, and often their certification. If only our regular public schools were subject to that kind of administrative and parental accountability.

In a nutshell, that’s why we need charter schools. They offer educational options to students and parents and replicable models to school systems, models both of education and accountability.

Are charters disruptive to traditional public school systems? Those that are preparing their students for college and careers have little to fear. But for those that don’t—those whose graduates must take remedial courses in college to learn what they should have been taught in high school—charters may well disrupt their assumption that students, especially those from low-income and minority families, are a captive audience and a guaranteed share of the public school budget.

The question asks if the education system needs fundamental changes to make an impact on the education we give our students. Yes, it does. And charter schools are essential to bringing those changes about. Not because charters will multiply so prolifically that they come to supplant public schools. But because charters have the potential to bring about a revolution of rising expectations in education. As parents, educators, citizens and taxpayers see that we can educate our children—not just some of our children but all of our children—I believe they will demand that charter school successes be adapted and taken to scale by public schools. And that will be not just reform, but revolution.

The House bill, if enacted, would continue the national government's effort to help expand and improve the chartered sector of K-12. Within this expanded charter sector more new and new kinds of schools can be created.

That would be good. It makes sense to build up chartering. The country needs two sectors of public education, one traditional and one more innovative; operating with somewhat different forms of organization and with somewhat different approaches to learning. With choice providing dynamics useful to both.

Parents don't enroll their children in a sector, however; in a category. They enroll in some particular school. They look for a school that will work for their children. But research to date has been comparing charter and district using test-scores and the change in test-scores by category as the measure of 'performance'.

Mean proficiency scores, as the statisticians remind us, cannot be taken as a measure of school performance. Parents (and policymakers) need to know what schools are as schools; so they can tell which, chartered or district, are best for particular students. So research needs to start disaggregating the categories, describing schools in terms of what they have their students reading, seeing, hearing and doing.

We need to take stock of the growing evidence of significant problems with states' charter experiments. Data show most charter schools perform the same or worse than host district schools, and many charters rank among states' persistently lowest performing schools. Studies also show that charter schools are not serving students comparable to those enrolled in district schools, particularly very low income students, students with disabilities and those learning English.

Financial mismanagement and fiscal irregularities among charters is a recurring problem in many states. For example, in New Jersey since 1996, nearly one-third of all authorized charter schools have surrendered their charters or had their charters revoked, mostly due to mismanagement.

Also, because many states require authorizers to perform only perfunctory evaluations, little is known about what works -- and what doesn't -- in charter schools. Lessons learned about both how successful practices might help improve public schools and how to avoid or correct unsuccessful practices are lost. And, charters are not required, typically, to disclose contributions, grants, and other support from private and foundation sources, giving some select charters a distinct advantage over other charters and district schools.

Put simply, an overhaul of state charter laws is essential to make certain that these schools, first, do no harm and, second, operate effectively and with full accountability for performance. They should also make a solid contribution to the overall improvement of public education in their host districts -- for every student, not just those attending charters.

It is indeed unfortunate that Congress continues to ignore the need for state charter reform. We need federal policy that will encourage states to improve their charter programs by:

1) Encouraging Innovation: Charter schools were intended to establish innovative programs to serve challenging student populations and needs. To renew this focus, state laws should encourage charter schools that can help meet the needs of the most vulnerable students. Priorities could include multi-district charters that strive to serve a socioeconomically or racially diverse student body, charters that develop model programs for students at-risk of dropping out, charters that educate special education students in inclusive settings, and charters that pilot innovative programs for English learners.

2) Requiring a Local Say on Charters: Charter schools have a significant impact on the districts from which they draw students. Local communities must be empowered to decide whether a charter school is in their best interests. Some form of local involvement in the decision to create or expand charter schools should be included in each state's charter law.

3) Serving Comparable Student Populations: States should require charters to serve a cross-section of the district's student demographics, including low-income students, English language learners, and students with varying disability classifications. In addition, the law should include a requirement that charters failing to enroll students with demographics comparable to their host district(s) develop and implement a corrective action plan. This may include altering the lottery mechanism to recruit and attract underserved student populations.

4) Maintaining Waiting Lists and Documenting Transfers: Charter schools should be required to maintain and publish up-to-date waiting lists for admission, including the demographics of those on these lists. Charters should also be required to collect the data and report on all student transfers during the school year, including student demographics, reasons for transfer out, and information on subsequent educational placements and test scores after leaving the school.

5) Improving Charter Evaluations: Each state's charter law should require the state education department, or other objective organization, to perform thorough, annual evaluations of each charter school. The evaluation should address academic and fiscal performance, including the school's progress in meeting the goals and objectives in its specific charter. In addition, charter laws should mandate periodic, independent, and comprehensive evaluations, including recommendations for improving program implementation, every three to five years.

6) Closing Persistently Underperforming Charters Many charter laws contain no standards for closing charters that continually fail to meet state or federal performance benchmarks. The law should set clear criteria for shutting down failing charters. Charter revocation should also be authorized for a persistent failure to make reasonable and appropriate efforts to serve student populations comparable to the district.

7) Establishing Education Collaborations: Both charter and district schools, especially in "high need" or low-wealth districts, require high quality assistance to improve instruction, collect relevant data, evaluate programs, and identify effective practices. State laws should direct the establishment of "education collaborations" between districts and charters to support improvement of instructional programs, best practices, data collection and evaluation.

The number of charter schools is increasing significantly in many states, with growing debate about their proper place in public education systems. It is incumbent that Congress, at the very least, work to ensure these schools be fully accountable to the public, and operate effectively and equitably in the communities they serve. After all, the states have the responsibility to ensure students get the quality education they deserve and are entitled to receive, however their schools are locally governed.

Charter schools only serve about 4% of US kids but they are important models of:

1) small supportive gap-closing schools

2) mission-focused perpetual governance (rather than oscillating elected political leadership)

3) responsive and efficient management (in CMOs)

4) performance contracting as accountability. As noted in this NACSA paper on differentiated authorizing, the big potential of charters is to extend the benefits of performance contracting to turnarounds, conversions, innovative schools and programs.

5) blended learning innovation--in the next two years (necessitated by the typically lower operating budgets than traditional public schools) most CMOs will introduce well designed blended schools and pilots.

As charters adopt blended models and as virtual and blended networks expand, charter growth will accelerate. Charters will serve 5 million students by the end of the decade.

Where districts are open to collaboration, charter schools are an important part of a portfolio approach. But online learning is redefining portfolio theory. The new potential outlined by Digital Learning Now is to leap frog the school choice issue and create learning ecosystems with choice to the course with weighted and performance-based funding that follows the student to the best option. Here’s what that looks like:

·Students with more risk factors get more funding

·Statewide providers operate under a performance contract

·Students/families can assemble courses from multiple providers

·A portion of funding is based on successful course completion

·A local school helps make sense of choice, manages transcripts, extends learning, and connects to services and extracurriculars

Performance contracting, nonprofit school governance, and blended learning have the potential to deliver quality at scale.

I’m all in favor of creating more high-quality schools. But I think this legislation implies two interesting things: (1) That we have a research-defined model of a high-quality school; and (2) That there are no traditional public schools of high quality.

A program whose goal is to replicate high-quality schools needs a defined model of a high-quality school and a reliable method of replicating it. If we have these things, it would be valuable to know what they are. If we don’t have them, I wonder how this program will fulfill its purpose.

It also seems statistically improbable that there would be not a single high-quality traditional public school in the country. In fact, I’ll bet there are hundreds or perhaps even thousands of them. Why wouldn’t it makes sense to replicate the best of these schools, too?

It’s certainly a good idea to replicate high-quality schools. But it’s a better idea to define quality from the largest pool of possibilities and to have a reliable method of replication in place.

Maybe I’ve missed something over the last few years, but I don’t recall anyone publishing a definitive model of high-quality schooling or a model of reliable school replication. Nor do I recall any research concluding that there are no high-quality traditional public schools.

I think this legislation is, in general, a good idea. But I think it is couched in some very narrow, and potentially dangerous, politics.

Let’s imagine that the program is successful and, therefore, reauthorized on an annual basis. With each new round, new high-quality charter schools will be created. And each time this happens, we will move one step closer to a bifurcated system of education: one that is deemed “high-quality” and one that is deemed “unworthy of replication.”

This just further cements the notion that “charter = good” and “public = bad”. Since there is no research supporting the idea that a school’s legal mechanism of formation correlates with increased student achievement, I don’t think it helps our system as a whole to further perpetuate this idea.

Like most Americans, I want more high-quality schools, and I want them as quickly as possible. So I like this kind of “make more of what works” legislation.

But I think it would make more sense if it included three components: (1) Funding to produce a well-researched definition of a high-quality school; (2) Funding to produce well-researched methods of high-quality school replication; and (3) The inclusion of all public schools, not just charter schools, in the pool of those eligible to be high-quality and worthy of replication.

I certainly don’t see any downside in these provisions, do you?

There is surely no reason not to "start with charter schools" but it would be a pity if we ended there. It's obviously better for a fundamentally dysfunctional Congress to do a handful of worthwhile things that it can agree on than for it to do nothing at all. But anybody who has spent time in the charter space knows that, while these schools can do much good for kids and communities, they aren't all educational successes and they're surely no panacea. Doing charters right means focusing as directly on their freedom, resourcing, accountability and quality as on their numbers, but Washington's leverage here is limited. Done right, a "portfolio" of charters COULD begin to substitute for traditional bureaucratic school systems and that's worth trying to make happen. But Uncle Sam's leverage is again limited. What Washington can do--worth doing, but still on the margin--is encourage the expansion and replication of quality charters, and that can do some serious good for kids otherwise stuck in bad schools. States, however, are the major determinants of whether charters will remain on the margin or begin to be treated in ways that could make them a viable alternative system.

Charter schools are caught in the middle of the great education debate, along with vouchers and choice. These three options seem to be the darlings of non-educators pushing for reform. To public educators they represent simplistic solutions to complex problems that only pull away necessary resources from our public schools. We at AASA support charters operated by the public school system. Only about three percent of students currently attend charter schools. They are a viable option when existing rules and regulations need to be bypassed, when there needs to be an exception to the rule. For a dysfunctional school it may be the best solution. Charters, however, are not a panacea. They are not transformational nor can they bring about systemic reform. We keep forgetting that the vast majority of schools in America work, but our elected officials in Washington would have everyone swallow the same spoonful of medicine regardless of the illness or whether you are sick or not.

We don’t have a single charter school sector to learn from, we have several. Massachusetts’ charter sector bears little resemblance to neighboring Rhode Island’s; Wisconsin’s does not resemble Illinois’; and Texas’ does not resemble Louisiana’s Yet when we discuss charter schools at a national level, we often overlook these differences and imagine that the charter school sector is substantially similar from state to state. It’s not.

High Standards & Steady Growth. Several states have high-quality charter school sectors where schools were put through rigorous evaluation processes, enjoy real autonomy, are monitored by a capable authorizer and face a real risk of closure if they fail to produce results. The oft-cited 2009 CREDO study out of Stanford found that charter schools in these places were producing better results for students than school districts. Charter schools in these states have demonstrated the importance of more time on task and school-level control of budgets and staffing. Charter school advocates point to these places (including but not limited to New York, Chicago and New Orleans) when advocating for more charter school growth.

No Growth & No Autonomy. Then there are states where charter schools seem to exist in name only. In most of these states (such as Maryland or Iowa), very few charter schools exist because traditional school boards have unchallenged authority to approve and deny applicants. In other cases, like Wisconsin and Rhode Island, most charter schools don’t enjoy real autonomy from school district regulations. These states, representing almost half of the forty charter school laws in existence, are lost opportunities, neither teaching significant numbers of children nor implementing innovations that inform other schools.

Quantity over Quality. Several states have followed a model where charters had low standards for approval, have little oversight and little risk of closure. In these places, there are some high quality charter schools but much of the sector is comprised of mediocre or worse schools. The CREDO study found that charter schools in these states, including Minnesota, Ohio, Texas and Florida, were producing worse results for students. In some of these states, a handful of companies seem to put a priority on profit above education, producing poor academic results and headlines about financial abuse. Charter schools in these states have demonstrated that running a high-quality school is extremely hard and that we need to be very careful about who give public money to do so. Charter school opponents point to problems in these states in order to condemn all charter schools.

Over the past 15 years, the federal government has put $2 billion into charter schools with little recognition of these significant differences. A charter school in Ohio, with poor oversight, finances or academics, receives the same amount of federal financial support as a great charter school in New York. The reauthorization of the federal Charter School Program provides the opportunity for Congress to recognize the differences in charter school quality among states and to require that all charter schools that receive federal money be held to high standards of academic and financial performance.

There are charter schools that have markedly improved student performance, such as the acclaimed KIPP schools. But most charters are just variations on the status quo, tinkering with the structure of a traditional public school. Why haven’t we seen the waves of innovation we were promised when charters were first introduced? There are three primary reasons:

• The Authorization Process – In most states, charters are approved by the very people they’re designed to compete with – namely the districts or the state departments of education. These bodies have not warmed to truly alternate models; as a result applicants don’t go too far “outside the box” if they want to be approved.
• The Charter Cap – Most states have a limit on the number of charters they’ll issue – until a couple of weeks ago, for example, it was 100 here in North Carolina (out of more than 2200 public schools in total). In such markets, charter authorizers can be very selective in who they choose, again limiting diversity of models.
• The Teacher Pool – Even if these two challenges were fully addressed, charters cannot innovate in one of the greatest areas of impact: their teaching staff. They hire from the same universe of applicants as other schools and must meet the same requirements. It’s hard to deviate from the mean if you have no freedom to recalibrate your workforce.

I have great admiration for anyone who pursues charter authorization but, given how little wiggle room they truly have to innovate, my expectations for results are tempered.