Indiana, South Carolina, and Washington state have the strongest charter school authorizing policies according to a report released this week.
Authorizers are the organizations that approve and oversee charter schools. Sometimes called sponsors, authorizers have been getting more attention lately as the sector grows and has had to confront headline-snatching scandal within its ranks.
The new report from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers analyzes and compares states with similar authorizing environments as laws vary greatly from state to state. (You can read more about that issue here.)
NACSA divided states into three groups: those where the majority of authorizers are school districts, those with many different kinds of authorizers, and states with just a few authorizers. Here’s the complete ranking:
It’s important to note that the rankings are based on best practices identified by NACSA, not necessarily on the performance of a state’s charter schools as a whole. So, for example, Washington is ranked the best among states with one or two non-district authorizers, but it only has one charter school which opened just this September.
You can dig into individual state profiles and policy recommendations in the full report here.
Graphic from ‘On the Road to Better Accountability, an Analysis of State Charter School Policies’ from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers