Given the tumult created by recent shenanigans at the Cesar Chavez Schools Network, today’s forum on ensuring a high quality charter school sector in Colorado could not have been better timed.
Sponsored by several foundations, non-profits and academic institutions (not all of them advocates of a “radical charter agenda” ), the forum brought forward several fascinating points about the challenge of authorizing, evaluating and, when necessary, closing charters.
On the one hand, several speakers hammered home the importance of rigorous authorizing. Approving charter schools that have weak boards, thin plans and unmeasurable desired outcomes makes no sense.
On the other hand, said Ting Sun of the California Charter School Assn., there is a need to balance accountability with innovation. In California, signs are appearing of what she called “re-regulation creep.” Too many regulations heaped on charter schools by state legislatures could stymie the innovation that has created such success, especially on the margins.
Another interesting discussion centered on measures of charter school quality. While states generally have gotten better at measuring school quality in terms of student achievement (and Colorado, with its growth model, is near the front of the pack), other attributes and weaknesses are harder to measure. What about operational strength, financial strength, the engagement of the board? These questions seemed especially relevant in the wake of the Chavez fiasco.
What I found most interesting, though, was the presentation by Jim Ford of the Raza Development Fund. Raza’s $50 million School Building Fund is a loan pool available to help “charter school operators and charter school facility developers secure and improve adequate facilities for schools.”
Before approving loans, Raza engages in exhaustive due diligence. As a result, said Raza’s Jim Ford, the fund spots “red flags” that others might miss. He described Fund workers methods as “looking for issues, looking for problems, a lot like an investigative reporter.”
As a result, not one of the 58 schools and charter management organizations with which Raza has worked had a charter revoked or non-renewed. Nor have any of the schools gone broke, Ford said.
After making a loan, Raza stays on top of matters through ongoing monitoring. For example, the fund insists that charters have board development and training plans. Fund workers regularly review the minutes of board meetings. Minutes, Ford said, “can tell the entire story of what is going on in a school.” The minutes can be thorough or spotty. They can show who is showing up and engaged and “who is asleep at the switch.”
None of this is complicated or hard to do. But charter authorizers don’t seem to be very good at it. Ford said there are quite a few schools, in Colorado and elsewhere, that authorizers approved after his fund decided lending money wasn’t a good risk.
Finally, Denver school board President Theresa Peña lamented the fact that it is so politically difficult to close a bad charter. Supporters pack board meetings to pressure the board to keep the school open, and the pressure is hard for elected officials to resist.
“I’m tired of having our board room stormed to keep low-performing schools opened,” she said, adding that just once she’s like to see the room packed with people demanding that a bad school be closed down.
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