School Choice & Charters

Study: Charter Evaluations Have Room for Improvement

By Karla Scoon Reid — February 25, 2004 3 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Evaluating charter school performance continues to be an inexact science, but one that can be mastered when overseers have more resources to conduct thorough reviews, a national study released here last week concludes.

Even charter school authorizers with ragged evaluation systems manage to stumble into taking the “correct” action when it comes to weighing a charter school’s fate, the report says. And authorizers aren’t hesitant to close schools that require that drastic step.

Read “High-Stakes": Public Impact’s National Study of Charter School Accountability,” from Public Impact.

“The decisions ultimately come out correctly, but not on the basis of the kind of process we would like to see,” said Bryan C. Hassel, a co-author of “High-Stakes: Findings From a National Study of Life-or-Death Decisions by Charter School Authorizers.”

Mr. Hassel, the president of Public Impact, a Chapel Hill, N.C.-based education policy consulting firm, said he wanted to examine whether charter authorizers were shutting down schools that were not performing and how those decisions were being made. The Smith Richardson Foundation, of Westport, Conn., paid for the study, which is co-written by Meagan Batdorff, a consultant with Public Impact.

The study compiled 506 “high-stakes” decisions—renewing, not renewing, or revoking charter school contracts—made by charter authorizers nationwide in 2001. Using that list, 50 randomly selected cases were reviewed through interviews and analysis of documents and media accounts.

Among the study’s main findings was that roughly one out of six high-stakes decisions led to school closures. About 84 percent of the decisions were renewals, while 16 percent resulted in schools’ loss of their contracts.

Mr. Hassel, who presented his study at the Brookings Institution in Washington Feb. 18, believes the figures represent a “fairly high rate” of closure because most of the high-stakes decisions made were sound. In the 50 case studies, the researchers found that only one school was not closed despite signs of “underperformance,” while supporting evidence was not clear in the closures of four other schools.

The report adds that many charter authorizers based their decisions on inadequate information or had failed to develop clear expectations with the schools. In more than half the cases, authorizers did not make “merit based” comparisons of evidence and agreed-upon goals. Political pressure was more commonly apparent, it says, in charter school decisions made by local school boards.

The researchers recommend that states provide more money to strengthen charter authorizers’ evaluation capabilities. Attracting authorizers other than local school boards would be beneficial, they argue, because universities and state education agencies—which issue charters in some states—tend to develop better evaluation programs.

“If you’ve got a lot of schools to oversee, you can’t just do it on the back of an envelope,” Mr. Hassel said. “You have to develop a system and be more deliberate about it.”

New Bureaucracy?

Robin Lake, the associate director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington in Seattle, says that authorizers should not expect more state funding until the evaluation process is improved.

Ms. Lake suggested during the Brookings Institution discussion that states set minimum standards for oversight. Authorizers should be randomly audited to ensure that they are conducting adequate reviews, she added.

Mark Cannon, the executive director of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, balked at the notion of drafting state policies that provide evaluation guidelines for authorizers. The Alexandria, Va.-based group represents 50 authorizing bodies.

While the association encourages charter authorizers to use a rigorous review process, he said, more state compliance rules “could stifle the innovation that charter schools tend to promote.”

No one wants to create another publicly financed bureaucracy, said Tom Mooney, the president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers. But Mr. Mooney, a chief critic of his state’s charter school system, said in a telephone interview that adopting state standards for charter authorizers could provide a better accountability process.

“Most people want safeguards of quality and safeguards of how money is being spent,” he said.

Related Tags:

Events

Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and other jobs in K-12 education at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.
Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

School Choice & Charters Tracker Which States Have Private School Choice?
Education savings accounts, voucher, and tax-credit scholarships are growing. This tracker keeps tabs on them so you don't have to.
School Choice & Charters Opinion What's the State of Charter Schools Today?
Even though there's momentum behind the charter school movement, charters face many of the same challenges as traditional public schools.
10 min read
Image shows a multi-tailed arrow hitting the bullseye of a target.
DigitalVision Vectors/Getty
School Choice & Charters As Private School Choice Grows, Critics Push for More Guardrails
Calls are growing for more scrutiny over where state funds for private school choice go and how students are faring in the classroom.
7 min read
Illustration of completed tasks, accomplishment, finished checklist, achievement or project progression concept. Person holding pencil tick all completed task checkbox.
Nuthawut Somsuk/iStock/Getty
School Choice & Charters How a District Hopes to Save an ESSER-Funded Program
As a one-time infusion of federal funding expires, districts are searching for creative ways to keep programs they funded with it running.
6 min read
Chicago charter school teacher Angela McByrd works on her laptop to teach remotely from her home in Chicago, Sept. 24, 2020.
Chicago charter school teacher Angela McByrd works on her laptop to teach remotely from her home in Chicago, Sept. 24, 2020. In Montana, a district hopes to save a virtual instruction program by converting it into a charter school.
Nam Y. Huh/AP