Part 2 of 4

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the term “charter school” as a “tax-supported school” that operates “without most local and state educational regulations so as to achieve set goals.”

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The last part of that definition is rapidly become outdated and inaccurate.

In the 1990s, when charter schools first started popping up, there was heated debate between school choice advocates, who promoted charters as alternatives to failing traditional schools, and the progressive defenders of the traditional K-12 system, who hated the idea of diverting state dollars away from public school districts.

But charter schools survived that debate, and have been on a steady pattern of growth throughout the nation. But do they operate “without most local and state educational regulations,” as originally intended, to promote innovation and maximum school choice for American families?

The answer is increasingly “no,” due largely to the growing influence of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), a non-profit organization based in Chicago.

NACSA sells itself as the guardian of quality within the charter school sector. Its leaders argue that the charter school community has been growing out of control, with too many poor-quality schools in operation, because too many charter school authorizers fail to properly monitor and demand results from the schools in their charge.

As NACSA’s 2014 State Policy Analysis said, “NACSA advocates for strong national and state charter school laws and policies. Smart laws and policies ensure good schools can open, failing schools get closed, and the interests of students and the public are protected.”

NACSA’s mission is to ensure that parents who choose charter schools have quality choices – but only within their narrow definition of quality, which seems to be based solely on student scores on standardized state tests.

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By pursuing that mission, NACSA limits the number and types of charter schools available to parents, and therefore limits school choice.

Pressuring states to regulate

NACSA encourages heavy state oversight and regulation of charter school authorizers, and by extension the schools themselves. It has developed a specific set of standards for charter school authorizers, to help guarantee that its definition of quality education is delivered.

The organization attempts to impose those standards by lobbying state governments to adopt its “eight recommended policies” for charter school authorizers.

Among other things, the policies recommend that “the state endorses national professional standards for quality charter school authorizing.” They say centralized state agencies should have the power to “evaluate authorizers on their practices—regularly or as needed” and authorizers should “face consequences if they have poor practices or a high proportion of persistently failing schools.”

NACSA recommends that authorizers “grant charter contracts for an initial term of five operating years or longer only with periodic high-stakes reviews every five years.”

Perhaps most telling, the last of NACSA’s “eight policies” recommends state policies that include “default closure: charter schools that perform below a certain minimum threshold are closed.”

NACSA’s strategy seems to be working.

The organization recently boasted that “since 2012, more than half of the 44 states with charter schools have strengthened their laws by adopting one or more of (the) eight recommended policies.”

Those states that haven’t caved in to NACSA’s regulatory approach are targeted. A good example is Michigan, which has consistently scored low in NACSA’s annual state policy reports.

The following piece, published in 2014 by blogger Rupa Sing, is a great illustration of NACSA’s determination to impose its will on state education officials.

“State Superintendent Mike Flanagan announced today that the Department of Education has placed nearly 28 percent of Michigan’s charter school authorizers in ‘At Risk of Suspension’ status.”

Why did Flanagan take such a drastic step?

“Flanagan received a series of letters last week from Greg Richmond, president and CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, where Richmond outlined the principles and practices that define quality charter school authorizing.”

Many states seem to be taking notice of NACSA’s demands, and are putting more focus on closing charter schools than opening them.

According to the Bellwether Education Partners, “between 2006 and 2014, 1,537 charters were closed. While closures occur for a variety of reasons, authorizers are increasingly closing schools for poor academic performance.”

That seems to be the case in Ohio, where lawmakers passed HB 2 in 2015, which brought the state far closer to NACSA regulation standards. The result? A new focus on closing charter schools.

“Ohio could see a record number of charter schools close this year,” the Columbus Dispatch reported in June, 2016. “In the wake of a new state law designed to shut down failing schools, several charter-school sponsors are severing ties with schools they agreed to oversee. Charter schools — privately run with public dollars — can’t operate without a sponsor.”

“Sponsors are feeling pressure,” said Ron Adler, president of the Ohio Coalition for Quality Education, told the Dispatch. “This is accelerating the closure process.”

NACSA clearly approved of HB 2. It gave Ohio a six-point bump in its 2015 State Policy Analysis, and ranked the state third in the nation in terms of strength of charter oversight.

Quick kills snuff out school potential

With such a focus on quick kills for academically struggling charter schools, some with potential will never get the chance to improve.

In 2013, Texas lawmakers adopted a law putting a strong emphasis on charter school closure, with little consideration for improvement.

“Specifically, the TEA can revoke a charter that failed to pass either an academic rating or a financial rating for the past three years,” the Dallas Observer explained. “In other words, a failing financial rating from 2010 counts the same as a failing academic rating from 2013.”

Six Texas charter schools were targeted for closure that year. One was Austin-based American Youthworks.

“Yet academically, American Youthworks has actually been doing okay, even as many other charter schools haven’t kept up,” the Observer wrote.

The Texas Education Agency sent American Youthworks a letter, blaming its pending closure on “the failing academic marks the school got during the 2010-2011 year,” the Observer reported.

“Though Youthworks has since corrected that, it still apparently counted against the charter,” the article said.

There is also evidence that some charter schools, given time to grow in the absence of “default closure,” can improve and flourish.

“A charter school in Chula Vista was performing so poorly on state assessments that it made the federal watch list for three years,” the San Diego Union Tribune reported in 2011. “Now it has staged a dramatic turnaround that is attracting international attention.

“Today, the 822-student school has test scores among the highest in the Chula Vista Elementary School District and has been recognized as a California Distinguished School. The dual-language immersion campus has become a type of laboratory where professors from San Diego State University as well as educators from Mexico, England and Switzerland visit, hoping to discover the secret to its success.

“Chula Vista Learning Community Charter, which was on the federal ‘program improvement’ list until 2008, has raised its Academic Performance Index scores from 680 in 2005 to 880 in 2011, exceeding the state goal of 800. Every March, hundreds of parents converge on its parking lot to submit applications, with some camping overnight. Last spring, 320 applicants were turned away.”

What if that school, which opened in 1998, had only been given five years to make the grade – or else?

NACSA also recommends that “charter authorizers to set a high bar for charter schools to open and quickly demonstrate academic proficiency.”

Such a high bar will “help ensure that only schools likely to improve educational outcomes for students are granted a charter.”

Richmond, the president and CEO of NACSA, popped up in the notes from a Texas state Senate hearing on various forms of school choice, discussing the need to snuff out charter school proposals before they get off the ground.

“Mr. Greg Richmond talked about the need for ramping up the front end of the charter establishment process,” the law firm Moak, Casey and Associates reported. “He said it is much easier to keep a bad charter from getting started than closing a school down.”

A good example of this focus on aborting charter school proposals comes from Maine, which was ranked a very respectable 16th out of 43 states in NACSA’s 2015 State Policy Analysis.

“Maine passed a new charter law in 2011 based on best practices in charter school policy,” NACSA crowed in its report.

Maine had only six charter schools at the time, with only 857 students enrolled. That didn’t seem to trouble NACSA at all.

The analysis gave Maine a perfect score in the category of “who authorizes,” noting that a centralized state commission was the only active charter authorizer in the state and “is limited to 10 charter schools until 2021.”

With those “best practices” in place, and a single authorizer reviewing all charter school applications, many applicants were quickly dismissed in Maine.

“Despite a flurry of early applications from many accomplished individuals and organizations, only two very small charter schools have opened since the law was created in 2011 and three more approved,” the Center for Education Reform wrote in 2013. “(State Charter) Commission members have been openly critical of the approaches and ideas offered by many applicants …”

‘This is about conformity’

When new charter schools are allowed to open, NACSA prefers that they be modeled on other charters that meet its standards.

One of NACSA’s eight recommended polices says that “high-performing charter schools are encouraged to replicate.”

But critics say too much replication limits real school choice, because parents are forced to choose between schools that regulators deem satisfactory – and in too many cases are too much like traditional public schools.

“When (charter schools) are not given the ability to put entrepreneurial practices into place, the only people they are going to attract are people from the (traditional school systems), or people who are willing to conform,” said Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform. “This is about conformity.”

“NACSA wants to create a better charter sector, with ‘better’ defined as better scores on standardized tests,” Max Eden, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told EAGnews. “It goes back to what we want from charters – a better version of public schools, or the more compelling vision, which is to open the gates, let parents be the ultimate judges, and have a more open and diverse sector.”

The heavy emphasis on quick closures for charter schools, combined with the heavy reliance on test scores to determine success, is likely to discourage many charter schools from opening in the first place, according to Eden.

“If you tell schools that if you have an F two years in a row, you have to shut down, like in Florida, why would you try to open in the first place?” Eden said. “That prevents (potential schools) from being able to serve at-risk kids in innovative ways.”

Schools that do open, under the pressure of producing positive test scores on a deadline, are likely to “teach to the test,” which also stifles innovation and creative instruction.

“If you’re talking about kids whose proficiency scores were the lowest of the low to start with, there are only so many ways to raise test results,” Eden said. “It’s not clear that the best way to serve those students is to boot-camp them toward higher test scores.

“There is not a great deal of evidence that links higher test scores to positive outcomes later in life.”

Tomorrow: NACSA trusts test scores, not parents, to determine quality of charter schools.