Two organizations–In the Public Interest and the Center for Popular Democracy–have proposed reforms for charter school accountability that would remove the most frequent criticisms of charter schools.
They recommend an 11-point agenda that would strengthen oversight, transparency, and accountability. There are a few missing points that I would add, such as, capping the salary of charter school executives to be no higher than that of the local superintendent; prohibiting for-profit management of charter schools; and barring the use of taxpayer funds for political lobbying or campaign contributions.
The Charter School Accountability Agenda An 11-Point Program for Reform
Accountability
- Require companies and organizations that manage charter schools to open board meetings to parents and the public, similar to public school board meetings.
- Require companies and organizations that manage charter schools to release to parents and the public how they spend taxpayer money, including their annual budgets and contracts.
- Require state officials to conduct regular audits of charter schools’ finances to detect fraud, waste or abuse of public funds.
Protect Neighborhood Schools
Protect Taxpayer Funds
• Before any new charter school is approved, conduct an analysis of the impact the school will have on neighborhood public schools.
• Ensure that neighborhood public schools do not lose funding when new charter schools open in their area.
- Require charter schools to return taxpayer money to the school district for any student that leaves the charter school to return to a neighborhood public school during the school year.
- Prohibit charter school board members and their immediate families from financially benefiting from their schools.
- Prohibit charter schools from spending taxpayer dollars on advertising or marketing.
- Stop the creation of new charter schools if state officials have not shown the ability to prevent fraud and mismanagement.
- Require all teachers who work in taxpayer funded schools, including neighborhood public schools and charter schools, to meet the same training and qualification requirements.
- Require charter schools to serve high-need students such as special education
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Absolutely — especially the part about returning the money to the public schools when they return the student after a few weeks of school!
For all practical purposes, this would require charter schools to be bona fide public schools just like the ones that educated dear old dad.
But the whole dream is DOA. The bottleneck resides at State level oversight, where no State has the resources, if it even had the will, to monitor compliance with that big a battery of loose canons.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
It’s a good start. I would add that if the charter does not improve student outcomes, students should be returned to their public schools. Why splinter resources and costs if the results are no better or different from the original school? This is highly inefficient and wasteful of taxpayer dollars.
This ought to end the race to invest in and profit from education. the only ones who should really profit from an education are the students, not some idiot behind a desk at a hedge fund company.
In theory, many of these regulations are in place in New York State. For example, we have abolished for-profits from directly mananging charters. In practice, though, the regs matter only when the authorizers decide that they matter, and who knows what will happen should Cuomo succeed in getting his way on lifting the charter cap.
Need to make it clear that any assets purchased with public money remain public property if the charter school closes.
Dienne, in many states, the property purchased by charter schools with public funds belongs to the charter, not the public, even if the charter closes.
That needs to change.
So when many charters fail they get rewarded with property paid for by taxpayers?
That is, they are guaranteed a safety net—property paid for with other people’s money—for failing. And looking at it from the viewpoint of ROI[ReturnOnInvestment], in certain circumstances it can make failure just as favorable as success for the bottom line.
In other words, where is the disincentive for failure and worst practices when you can still come out ahead for running “factories of failure”?
$tudent $ucce$$. Ain’t it grand?
😎
This is reasonable and must be implemented.
Excellent recommendations.
Also, a competitive bidding process for all products and services.
Limits to the amounts administrators can spend on expenses and lunches.
Minimum qualifications to lead a school.
Minimum qualifications to be a teacher.
Special education services, as required by public schools.
In Colorado, none of these are required, so there is a lot of abuse. Lack of oversight of charter schools and virtual charter schools is a huge problem. Legislators from both parties love to deregulate charters. I cringe every year when Senator Michael Johnston, a Democrat, submits his pro business anti child legislation.
Not surprising since Johnston is a TFA alum.
“I cringe every year when Senator Michael Johnston, a Democrat, submits his pro business anti child legislation.”
So do I, but remember, whenever you refer to Senator Michael Johnson, you must always refer to him, or anyone like him, as a “Democrat”, not a Democrat.
Just as I always refer to Fox “News” and never as Fox News.
It’s time to start calling out the sellouts, the shills, the puppets, and the ersatz “progressives” who are “The Hired Help” in this long-term business plan to privatize our schools, and ultimately, our children.
Major piece missing here: require neutrality from charter operators in unionization campaigns.
In the 6 years of my union’s existence, strong majorities of teachers have had to fight their employers over and over again to exercise their right to form a union. Taxpayer funds have been wasted on consultants and lawyers to fight the teachers, and teacher time has been spent in meetings telling teachers that unionizing would hurt the kids. In the case of Urban Prep and North Lawndale College Prep — two Chicago charters that unionized last week — the boss is refusing to recognize despite showing of majority.
School districts should not enter into contracts with charter operators who intend to fight unionization.
“…In the case of Urban Prep and North Lawndale College Prep — two Chicago charters that unionized last week —”
Music to my ears.
Real good. I would add that not only do they accept all special education students but that they hire fully certified special education teachers to educate them and that they include ALL special education, including severe/profound multihandicapped and severe autistic and other “expensive” disabilities and follow the rules for their education as set out in state regulations and IDEA and ADA.
Also they should be required to pay the teachers at least as much as the public schools and provide the same level of job security and benefits.
Excellent list. In addition to prohibiting charter schools from using taxpayer funds money to fund advertising and marketing, there is also dire need for regulation of truthfulness in advertising and marketing. Here in Indianapolis, that is totally unregulated and not monitored by either the Mayor’s Charter School
Office (“Office of Education Innovation”) which is the authorizer for over 30 charter schools in the City limits or by the State Charter School Board, which is the authorizer for most of the rest. As a result, one school carried a large banner proclaiming on the side of the school facing one of the city’s most heavily travelled streets until the last few weeks (despite the lowering of their grade to B, which was raised from a D on appeal to the heavily pro charter State Board of Education on November 5, 2014). The same school was caught last year charging a $25 enrollment fee and making major misstatements in advertising mass mailings to potential households. The Mayor’s Office intervened in the first case (enrollment fee) only after being contacted by the media, and intervened in the second case (innacurate overstated state grade) only after I spoke repeatedly to the State Board of Education with media present. It is possible that both charter authorizers may not intend these advertising abuses to occur, but they clearly have not established the staff, resources or processes in place to catch them in any proactive way. They are clearly not considered part if charter school accountability here. That is measured only in terms of test scores.
Addition to my comment above: the large, clearly readable banner proclaimed that the school had earned an “A” grade from the Indiana Dept of Education. It remained attached to the building for over 3 months after the grade was lowered to a B (after initially being a D for the new grading year, but raised to a D on appeal, all taking place from mid-October to Nov 5, 2014). The banner was removed at Mayor’s Office request in mid-February.
Diane, the 3 points you added are basic necessities for charter transparency as are the original 11 and other suggestions from comments above. I keep waiting for someone who has far better investigative skills than I to add up the money each major city/district spends on each charter chain operating there, determine the proportional share of that money that goes to overhead and CEO pay for each none and each jurisdiction and compare it to what the regular public schools spend on all that on a per pupil basis. eg. we already know that Moskowitz runs far fewer schools than the NYC chancellor does yet makes about 2X as much. There was also a story about a charter managed by a dentist? who was paying himself more than the president of Harvard makes. Sorry but I can’t find that link now. The bottom line for me is that the charter sector is one of the most corrupt and mismanaged market sectors in America, especially considering it’s relatively small size vs. the number of incidents that we’ve been able to bring to light.
It is absurd that the public should even need to ASK for such things. A school should not be able to operate without these requirements.
Detroit education advocates are also trying to illuminate the lack of accountability and transparency in governance models which move away from democratically elected school boards. This is especially important as a coalition of the foundations, charters and companies who most stand to profit meet at the Governor’s request to recommend a governance structure for what us likely to be a portfolio model for the Detroit schools.
boards.https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2Td_Qo4880oUmN6c0dkb2RJZjQ/edit?usp=docslist_api
most of these provisions are law in NYS and the siphoning of funds and space from public schools and the lack of accountability for charters continues apace.
Unfortunately, these provisions are far too amorphous, ambiguous, subject to interpretation and easy to skirt if that’s the intention; which of course it is.
And that’s my impression just from my first, cursory reading. I’ll take a closer look again soon and specify some serious concerns I have with this well-meaning proposal.