Warren Simmons, president of the Annenberg Institute, here releases a set of rules for the operation of charter schools intended to make them transparent and accountable. The question he raises is whether charters can become not only more transparent and accountable, but can they operate without damaging public schools.
The report recognizes that some charters have no interest in accountability or transparency. Indeed, there are so many well-documented cases of fraud and abuse that it is hard to be sure that this industry can be regulated, especially when it has often made sizable campaign contributions to legislators in a position to write regulations.
The Annenberg report begins:
In the last two decades, charter schools have grown into a national industry with 2.5 million students, more than 6,000 schools, and a burgeoning market of management services, vendors, policy shops, and advocacy organizations. State laws and charter authorizing standards have not kept up with this explosive growth.
Although most charter operators work hard to meet the needs of their students, the lack of effective oversight means no guarantee of academic innovation or excellence, too many cases of fraud and abuse, and too little attention to equity. The standards and policy recommendations in this report aim to ensure that there is a level playing field between traditional public schools and public charter schools and that charters are fully transparent and accountable to the communities they serve.
Frankly, we can’t even be sure that the majority of charter operators are in the business for themselves or for their students. Many of the small one-off charters have been replaced by charter chains that operate as chains usually do: with a commitment to the bottom line. I don’t think that White Hat in Ohio or Imagine or K12 Inc. or Academica in Florida will change their operations in response to this report.
Here is a summary of their recommendations: Read the full report for the detailed recommendations:
Traditional school districts and charter schools should collaborate to ensure a coordinated approach that serves all children
School governance should be representative and transparent
Charter schools should ensure equal access to interested students and prohibit practices that discourage enrollment or disproportionately push-out enrolled students
Charter school discipline policy should be fair and transparent
All students deserve equitable and adequate school facilities. Districts and charter schools should collaborate to ensure facility arrangements do not disadvantage students in either sector
Online charter schools should be better regulated for quality, transparency and the protection of student data
Monitoring and oversight of charter schools are critical to protect the public interest; they should be strong and fully state funded
Meanwhile, Peter Greene has a test to tell whether or not a charter school is a public school. It must meet four criteria.
It must be financially transparent.
It must be accountable to the voters.
It must “play by the rules,” for example, hiring accredited teachers.
It must serve the entire population, not just those it wants to serve.
How many charters would pass this test?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Kmareka.com and commented:
Interesting ideas and proposals for how to make charter schools more accountable…
I’m not crazy about the tone of the piece.
Basic financial reporting and disclosures on public money and complying with federal laws on civil rights are the rock-bottom requirements for any publicly-funded entity in my view.
Setting this up as charters would be doing all of us a big favor if they agree to negotiate on terms like “reveal funding and expenditures” or “follow federal law” is wrong-headed.
If the opening offer is this weak, I can’t imagine what a joke these regulations are going to be once they get through the scrum of lobbyists and purchased politicians.
I agree with you Ciara. Some straight up enforcement of accountability is needed in every state, audits of books of operators encluding data on enrollments.
I’m fairly confident my local public high school could reach 100% graduation rates if they “lost” the bottom half of the class somewhere between freshman and senior year, but I don’t think we should accept that as valid.
That only works if there’s a public school to act as a safety net, and there goes the whole “level playing field” piece of the plan.
I can tell you exactly what would happen if they opened a charter school here, with a limited population and some geographic isolation. The higher income slice would create their own “public school” and the public school would immediately go from “B” to “D”. It would worsen inequality here, and fast. This idea that the children will fan out equally and “everyone wins!” is a just a freaking fairy tale. That isn’t how it’s going to go. The whole country doesn’t look like DC or Boston. There are lots and lots of places with economically diverse public schools. It’s their great strength. I value it.
I’d also like to mention that I know this practically blasphemy at this point. it’s become such entrenched conventional wisdom, but I live in Ohio and I don’t want my local public school district run like Ohio charter schools. That’s not something I aspire to. I think the “governance” scheme the charter system came up with here is a disaster. I’ll stick with an elected board and financial oversight from the county auditor, thanks very much.
I think it was pretty arrogant and anti-democratic to create a “governance scheme” with so little public input in the first place, quite frankly. I wasn’t aware I hired a whole bunch of DC think tank people to “re-invent governance” in this state. I’m not real impressed with their work product on that.
Public schools were governed and regulated locally for a reason. It doesn’t work when lawmakers “relinquish” that duty to private boards and the state legislature. I don’t think it’s ever going to work. You can’t have thousands of local schools regulated solely from Columbus. It’s a bad model, which is probably why they set up a whole local governance scheme for public schools in this state.
Charter reccos from ANNENBERG . All common sense, nothing real new but worth reading nonetheless
Bill Cirone Santa Barbara County Superintendent of Schools
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While the Annenberg Institute works on improvements, they could contact the IRS and ask for a review of 501(c)(3)’s, offered to clients of financial firms. Charitable endowment programs are funding charter school lobbying groups.
Without public transparency of contributor’s’ names, donations from hedge fund owners and others, seeking profits, may have a goal of personal financial gain. Those donors may be getting tax advantages, by cloaking their spending, in the guise of charity, to the detriment of middle class tax payers and their children.
The Annenberg Institute should also make it much easier for the public to access their own 501(c)(3) information, just to get into the spirit.
Excellent point.
Almost none would pass the test.
Sent from my iPhone
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Let’s not give in to thinking that charter schools as a collective can become capable to contribute to sustaining the common good and democratic ideals in any ways better than what they have already demonstrated. It simply isn’t in their DNA to do so.
“…to contribute to sustaining the common good and democratic ideals…” …which as a society is really what we expect out of a public service particularly public schools. Getting paid with public money doesn’t make an enterprise a public service.
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Politicians will continue to block any transparency because they are paid to do so by those they don’t represent. If they truly cared for their constituents, this would be a non-issue. As long as charters receive public dollars, they should be regulated and audited!!
I believe that charter schools should be required to provide the expensive special services that public schools must provide. Any service that a student may need to help reach their potential including, but not limited to, school psychological, social work, occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech and language therapy, behaviorists should be provided by them. If they are unable to, then they must pay someone else to provide the services, just as public schools are required. Often it is the public system that provides it free of charge even after paying them tuition! In my area we must provide these services using our already thin staff. If a student needs counseling at the charter school we must pay for it. Charter schools should also be required to keep the students they selected for the entire school year. Thank you. I enjoy your blog Diane. Arthur C. Potwin. School Psychologist.
I understand the demand for accountability of charter schools in many states, but I get extremely frustrated when blanket statements are made of ALL charter schools. My school in Minnesota can answer yes to all of the questions: Our finances are fully transparent, posted on our website, the local paper and receive a clean audit every year from an outside agency. We do this while receiving 10-15% less per pupil than the district schools. We are accountable to the voters and must meet all the same graduation requirements as traditional schools. All of our teachers are licensed, many of them highly qualified and some with multiple licenses. As far as serving ALL students our current special education population is nearly 40% (3 times the local districts average, and yes we provide all of the accompanying services), we have 50% free and reduced lunch (10-20% higher than the local districts average), our racial make up is relatively the same as the local districts across all categories, and we welcome the students that the local districts have abandon because of special education status, failure to deal with anxiety and depression, failure to deal with bullying, especially of GLBTQ students (our local district was recently under federal investigation for not dealing with bullying that resulted in three suicides). Plus we refuse Title I dollars so that we can opt out of standardized testing and have fair and humane assessments that are recognizes the individual. Our students and parents CHOSE our school because it better meets their individual needs – both academic and social.
Peter,
Your description of your school epitomizes the ideal behind the charter proposal which originally came from Al Shanker of the AFT. Unfortunately, the national chains like KIPP and Aspire (with help from Arne at the DOE) have co-opted charters to make big bucks. Honest enterprises such as the one you describe will be swept away just as will hapless public schools before the tsunami of $$$ from hedge funders.
You know what is funny abut this article? Diane and hundreds of l others have been saying this from the start. It was obvious right in the beginning of charters how this was going to turn out and not only is nothing being done but things are continuing.