Introduction

American public education is being reinvented, with a major impetus for this effort coming from charter schools—independent public schools of choice accountable for the results of student learning. As of March 1999, there were over 1,200 charter schools that enroll about 300,000 students in 28 states and the District of Columbia (though the majority of the schools are found in around a dozen of these jurisdictions). A total of 35 charter laws exist.

The charter school movement makes for strange bedfellows. The policymakers who are encouraging the spread of charter schools are a remarkable bipartisan group Charter laws were signed into law by 15 Democratic governors and 19 Republican governors; and groups such as the local chambers of commerce and the Urban League help found and run charter schools.

What is a charter school?

An independent public school of choice, given a charter or contract for a specified period of time (typically five years) to educate children according to the school’s own design, with a minimum of bureaucratic oversight. It may be a new school, started from scratch, or an existing one that secedes from its school district. It is held accountable to the terms of its charter and continues to exist only if it fulfills those terms. As a public school of choice, it is attended by students whose families select it and staffed by educators who choose to teach in it.

Why this guide?

Among the most challenging and complicated issues facing individual charter schools—and the charter movement as a whole—is the matter of charter-school accountability. Today, it’s hard to know how well charter schools are actually doing. While the charter accountability effort continues to make progress, the nation still finds itself in a situation where much of the desired data about charter schools do not exist. There are three predominant reasons for this situation.

First, the charter strategy is so new that it’s difficult to measure results. There’s just not much data out there. Second, today’s charter accountability systems remain underdeveloped, often clumsy and ill fitting, and are themselves beset by dilemmas. A final reason for the dearth of good charter-school accountability information lies with charter authorizers and operators. Truth be told, they are often content to leave charter accountability agreements nebulous and undefined. Leaving accountability agreements vague and indeterminate is fraught with danger because over the long term this approach is more likely to lead to a charter school being subjected to the rule- and compliance-based accountability practices that characterize conventional public schools. Moreover, the charter school is also more likely to be the subject of the political and administrative whims of interest groups that oppose charter schools and that exert pressure on chartering authorities to make life difficult for charter schools.

This guide aims to overcome the lack of good accountability information by presenting a methodical way of thinking about charter school accountability. It hopes to provide charter authorizers and operators with a solid foundation and practical frame of reference for making judgments about whether a charter school is likely to be effective in reaching its goals. While few charter applications initially will contain all the elements of an accountability plan recommended in this guidebook, charter applicants should provide sufficient evidence in their initial proposals to demonstrate that they understand the rudiments of a sound accountability design and are able to put such a design in place.

Who should use this guide?

This charter school accountability guide is designed to provide direction to charter founders, operators, and others who are interested in creating accountability plans for individual charter schools. It may also be useful to chartering authorities in helping them determine what information they’ll need to monitor and track the performance of the schools they’ve chartered. Since no two states have identical charter laws the information offered here is presented so that individuals with schools and chartering entities can adapt it to widely different circumstances.

What’s in this guide?

This guide opens with remarks that set the context for our discussion on charter-school accountability. The presentation that follows is organized by two types of goals for which charter schools should be held accountable:

1. A school’s academic goals for student achievement; and
2. A school’s other—i.e., non-academic and operational—goals, including those goals that are unique to each charter school.
   

The guide then examines each element of this two-fold framework, providing the reader with a description and a set of questions for each area that should be answered in formulating a comprehensive charter-school accountability plan. Finally, the appendices contain examples that illustrate many of the issues discussed in this guide.

Developing an accountability plan with challenging but attainable and measurable goals in each of the two areas that are discussed in this guide—a plan agreed to by both the chartering agency and the charter school—reduces the possibility of arbitrary action in the future by a chartering authority against a charter school during a charter renewal process. Conversely, agreeing to an accountability plan from the start gives the charter-school community a clear sense of what’s expected of it and the grounds on which its effectiveness will be judged.

The focus of this guide is the individual school, not the issues and questions that relate to evaluating whether a state’s charter law is working. These are two distinct issues. When evaluating the effects of a charter approach, elected officials or other policymakers—particularly charter issuers—need to be mindful of the distinction between whether the law is working and whether a school is working. This presentation suggests a framework for determining whether individual charter schools are accountable for what they agree to do. Determining whether individual schools are accountable is a significant part of the answer to the question, "Is the law working?" But it’s not the only question that should be answered to determine the success of a state’s charter law.

Acknowledgments

Over the last three years, my colleagues (Chester E. Finn, Jr., Gregg Vanourek, and Louann A. Bierlein) and I have visited nearly 80 charter schools in 14 states. The Charter Schools in Action project—supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts—included site visits to schools, phone and in-person conversations with well over 1,300 people (parents, students, teachers, administrators, community leaders, business leaders, policymakers, etc.) who support and oppose these schools, and three surveys of over 5,000 students (grade five and above) who attend charter schools, the parents of these youngsters, and the educators who teach in these schools. (Copies of the final report on Charter Schools in Action are available by calling 1 800 HUDSON 0 or on the Internet at www.edexcellence.net) Furthermore, I’ve also spoken to many groups on what I’ve learned about charter schools—especially charter-school accountability issues—based on that project. Finally, I’ve worked with the District of Columbia Public Charter School Board (the appointed chartering authority in DC; the elected DC school board also has the authority to charter schools) as they’ve developed and implemented their accountability plan for the schools that they have chartered. The approach presented in this guide arises from these experiences. To all those encountered along the way, I want to express a special word of gratitude for the time they took to tell their stories and enlighten me on their efforts to reinvent public education under the banner of charter schools. Finally, special thanks to an anonymous donor whose financial contribution underwrote most of the expenses associated with the writing and production of this guide.

A results-driven approach

What’s the difference between the charter-school approach to accountability and the conventional public-school approach to accountability? Central to the charter notion is a horsetrade: Public schools are given operational, financial, and program freedom and autonomy in exchange for being held accountable for the results of student learning. As a California charter school principal told me, "The charter-school approach offered us a way to get the state and the district, with all their rules and regulations and bureaucracy, off our backs. That allows us to do whatever we need to do to help kids learn." So the charter approach to accountability is primarily results-driven, not resource- or input- or rule-driven.

The purpose of a results-driven accountability plan is to gather information that will help the school community, the chartering authority, and the general public know whether the charter school is reaching its goals. Inevitably, some individuals will use this information to compare charter schools with other charter or district public schools. A charter-school accountability plan should be formulated to prepare for this eventuality. A good description of the aim and parameters of a charter school accountability plan can be found in the following excerpt from a document on charter-school accountability published by the District of Columbia Public Charter School Board (the document is found in Appendix A):

A charter-school accountability plan should be designed to provide information needed to measure and track the school’s progress toward its goals, make program adjustments when needed, and report to parents, the community, and the chartering authority on performance and progress. The accountability plan is the mechanism through which the school indicates the goals (outcomes) and performance levels it elects to be held accountable for attaining. However, it is important to recognize that the performance will be compared by the public and the media to that of traditional public schools and with other public charter schools. The design of your accountability plan needs to acknowledge and prepare for this inevitable comparison.

Begin with the mission

The task of developing a results-driven accountability framework for a charter school begins with a clear description and understanding of the mission of the school. Peter Drucker, in Managing the Non-Profit Organization, emphasizes the importance of this point for all non-profit organizations: "The mission comes first…and the first job of the leader is to think through and define the mission of the institution." (pp. 1, 3) For example, a charter school that provides a residential learning environment will have a different mission than a charter school for youth involved in the juvenile-justice system or youngsters who are attending a math and science charter high school. Each of these charter schools will have a different accountability plan based on their differing missions. The leader of each of those institutions must work to relate that unique mission to the results the school intends to achieve for those that each school serves.

What does a mission statement need?

[A mission statement needs] three things: opportunities; competence; and commitment. Every mission statement…has to reflect all three or it will fall down on what is its ultimate goal, its ultimate purpose and final test. It will not mobilize the human resources of the organization for getting the right things done.

Peter Drucker, Managing the Non-Profit Organization, p. 8

Each school's mission statement—while being precise, not longer than a sentence or two—should embody answers to three questions, what Drucker calls "the three ‘musts’ of a successful mission." The questions are:

1. What challenge will we meet? The answer to this question tells the public where a charter school will make a difference. It states the opportunity presented to the charter school and defines the special need it will serve. In essence, the answer to this question helps the charter school define the target audience—the market niche—it will serve.
   
2. Can we meet that challenge competently? Whatever need the charter school proposes to meet must be done skillfully and well. It must be accomplished in a way that sets and meets a high—perhaps a new—standard of performance. Unless a charter school has knowledgeable individuals and adequate fiscal and other resources, it will not be able to accomplish its mission in a competent manner.
   
3. Are we willing to personally commit ourselves to achieving the mission? A charter-school mission statement cannot be impersonal. It has to convey to those who read or hear about that mission a sense of involvement—a personal commitment. Without this commitment that pledges full engagement by those involved in the school—especially teachers, parents, and the students themselves—it will be difficult to follow through on the course of action that is needed to accomplish the school’s mission.

Typically, charter laws establish four general criteria for holding charter schools accountable: 

1. The school must produce satisfactory academic progress by its students on state- or district-wide tests and similar measures;
   
2. The school must demonstrate success in meeting non-academic goals, including those that are unique to the school’s design and set forth in its charter or contract;
   
3. The school must provide evidence that it is a viable organization, especially when this concerns the responsible use of public funds but also including management and governance issues; and
   
4. The school must comply with whatever applicable laws and regulations are not waived for charter schools.

The first two criteria deal chiefly with the school’s success in producing results, whereas the third and fourth criteria—drawn from more traditional thinking about public school accountability—are concerned primarily with inputs, procedures, and rules compliance.

Unfortunately, American public education is far more accustomed to the input and rule- compliance approach and has more fully developed technologies for obtaining information about—and enforcing—these criteria. In this important respect, the reality of charter school accountability has not caught up with the theory. Moreover, the absence of a well-conceived and agreed-upon accountability plan between the charter authorizer and sponsor will make it more likely that the rule-based approach will be required of a charter school.

To avoid being bound by the rule-based approach, a charter operator should reach a written accountability compact with a charter authorizer on the core goals and indicators that an individual school agrees to attain. For the purposes of our discussion, the four general criteria for holding charter schools accountable can be reduced to two types of goals for which a charter school is accountable:

1. A school’s academic goals that specify what students are expected to know and do; and
   
2. A school’s other goals, including non-academic goals for students, those that are unique to each school, and those that relate to a issues like school leadership, management, governance, finances, and compliance with rules from which a charter school is not exempt.

The first of these—student academic goals—is the most important to the overall success of the school. It gets the lion’s share of attention in this guide. The main components of a results-oriented academic achievement strategy for students include standards (along with a curriculum), testing, and consequences.

The school’s academic goals for students

A charter school must set academic goals for itself. They should be based on the school’s mission and respond to the educational needs of the student population the school intends to serve. An example of an academic goal for an elementary school is the following: "Our charter school will be organized to achieve academic success for each K-6 student by providing all students with a rich and challenging curriculum." And an example of an academic goal for a high school is: "We will develop in our students the knowledge and skills they need after high school for success in college or employment." After academic goals like these have been established, the task facing the charter school is to specify its goals in a set of standards. The standards-setting task can be more difficult and time-consuming than developing a school’s general academic goals. For a practical approach to standard setting, see Appendix B for the process that Boston’s Academy of the Pacific Rim used to establish its standards, an approach that is consistent with and an elaboration on what follows.

Standards: There are two types of standards. Content standards define the knowledge and skills that students should acquire at various stages of their education. Performance standards spell out the expected levels of proficiency—i.e., what is good enough to advance from one stage to the next. The following statement from Boston’s Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter School illustrates this distinction:

In math, a content standard might be "by the end of the eighth grade, each student can do two-digit multiplication problems. …a performance standard…would be "given ten multiplication problems with two-digit numbers, each student can compute the correct answer for seven of those ten problems in less than 12 minutes.

It’s not necessary for each charter school to start from scratch and write its own unique set of content and performance standards. Standards have been developed by national organizations and some states that can be adapted or adopted by charter schools

In trying to determine what set of standards to use, it’s helpful to develop a limited number of criteria for judging whether the standards developed by an outside group (or the ones developed by a school) are appropriate for a particular school. These criteria should be related to the mission of the school. Here are some examples of yardsticks that can be used. First, standards should address core academic areas. They should not deal with nonacademic concerns such as students’ values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Second the standards should be at least as rigorous as those of other countries. Third, they need to be measurable so that students can demonstrate whether they have attained and mastered the standards. Fourth, standards must be balanced and cumulative. They should define both knowledge and skills and build upon each other.

Examples of strong standards:

Examples of weak standards:

• Students understand, analyze and interpret historical events [Which events?], conditions [What conditions?] and trends [What trends?].
  

• Students formulate and solve problems [What kind? Addition, division, algebra, calculus?] and communicate [How?] the mathematical processes [What processes? Theorems? Equations? Calculators?] and the reason for using them.

Denis P. Doyle and Susan Pimentel, Raising the Standard, pp. 36-37.

The problem that charter schools face in trying to conform to this standards-driven accountability model is that many states and communities have not yet installed its essential components, either for charter or for conventional public schools. Only a few jurisdictions (such as Texas) have completed this process. Furthermore, for most conventional public schools, none of this matters very much. The school rolls on from year to year with students in place and no uncertainty about its institutional future. For a charter school, however, the horsetrade at the core of its existence depends on standards and tests to demonstrate its effectiveness. In circumstances where these do not exist, are not workable, or are not trusted, the school’s ability to prove itself is hamstrung and information vital to its clients, managers, and sponsors is unavailable. And if the situation cannot be remedied, the charter school may be closed.

Here are helpful references on setting standards and using tests: 

• Raising the Standard by Denis P. Doyle and Susan Pimentel. This publication includes a CD-ROM containing examples of standards from states and national organizations. It can be ordered by calling 1 800 499 9774 or visit www.goalline.org
  

• The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation has published reviews of state’s standards in the core subjects of mathematics, science, history, English, and geography and a summary review of all five content areas. Single copies of each of the six publications are free by calling 1 888 TBF 1474 or visit www.edexcellence.net.
  

• Filling in the Blanks: Putting Standardized Tests to the Test by Gregory J. Cizek. Published by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, this is a layperson’s guide to understanding standardized tests, Single copies are free by calling1.888.TBF.7474 or visit www.edexcellence.net.
  

• A reminder: see Appendix B, for what’s been done by Boston’s Academy of the Pacific Rim.

Standards and curriculum: Some charter schools don’t initially grasp the practical implications of the theory of accountability-for-results. For example, some don’t understand the distinctions among an educational philosophy, a set of standards, and a coherent, operational curriculum geared to those standards. Many charter documents are filled with prose—sometimes quite elegant prose—that outlines a compelling educational philosophy. Far fewer charters demonstrate a clear sense of what comes next: coherent content and performance standards and an actual curriculum. Let me emphasize again that a charter school does not need to start from scratch to develop a curriculum. A school can buy into a prepackaged curriculum like Core Knowledge. Or a school can decide to go the route of contracting with a provider like Edison, Sabis, or Modern Red Schoolhouse, purchasing a full set of pre-set standards and tests (plus many other resources).

Tests: Assessments are the mechanisms that schools use to gauge whether students are learning to the standards set for them. Charter accountability plans should include the use of different assessment instruments and approaches to measuring student mastery of standards. These assessments include external audits like norm- or criterion-referenced multiple-choice tests that sometimes also use open-ended ("essay style") questions or other independent audits like the Advanced Placement Exam or the International Baccalaureate Exam. Additional assessment efforts may include the use of portfolios, performance assessments, individual student self-reports and exhibitions, and teacher-designed tests and personal observations.

Collecting individual student "baseline" achievement data describing what students know and can do when they enroll in a charter school is especially important to tracking student learning. With good baseline information, student progress can be determined over time by comparing each student’s starting point to his or her current situation. This measure of learning over time can help determine the "value added" by the school’s educational program.

[In short], we are left…with three ineluctable facts about testing and American education at the dawn of the 21^st century: 1) standardized achievement tests are a widely-used mechanism by which parents and policymakers have defined and continue to report the standing and progress of students in K-12 schools; 2) although incapable of providing information on ultimate educational outcomes, standardized achievement tests can yield highly accurate, dependable information about a finite but vital constellation of knowledge and skills; and 3) abuses of standardized tests by those who deploy them can distort the information they provide and misinform students, parents, and policymakers regarding educational health.

Gregory J. Cizek, Filling in the Blanks, p. 3

While many charter founders have pledged that individual schools will develop their own innovative instruments and approaches, they soon discover that following through on these promises turns out to be extremely difficult and time consuming. For example, it is not easy to develop an "authentic task" or a "scoring rubric." Charter operators would do well to wait until the charter school is over its start-up bumps before plunging into the process of developing such instruments. They ought also to ensure that promises regarding such tools and measures are modest. In addition to using a limited number of different assessment tools, charter school operators should also limit to a small number the measurable indicators on which they report and track student academic progress.

Consequences: For a results-driven accountability system to work, students, parents, and educators need to know that it matters whether youngsters learn what they are expected to learn. This means that consequences must be associated with achieving or not achieving those expectations. Deciding how consequences will be integrated into the student accountability system is a difficult task to undertake. It is usually easier to do this in the discipline area than in the academic area. In part, this can be traced to the fact that schools are genuinely committed to the precept that all kids can learn. This means—perhaps naively—that no pupils will fail. They work earnestly to provide remediation and other academic assistance to help youngsters master the curriculum and attain standards. But they may be lax when it comes to consequences for poor academic performance. This shortcoming is most evident in schools that do not have (or do not believe in) a rigorous set of standards with a supporting curriculum. Laxity is also a constant temptation for schools that are having trouble attracting and keeping enough students—and thus cannot afford to lose many.

Students often ask teachers before a test: "Does it count?" If it counts, it has "high stakes"—i.e., consequences. For example, students should be promoted and graduate only when they have met and mastered the required standards, and universities should admit students only when they meet college-level entry norms. But these "high stake" consequences should not apply only to students. Teachers, principals, and others should also be rewarded for success, penalized for failure, and be dismissed if they cannot get the job done.

Summary: Standards, testing, and consequences—these are the three crucial parts of speech in the grammar of charter school accountability. This accountability triad should be incorporated into every charter-school accountability plan.

Here is a partial checklist of questions to ask as individuals create or review a results-driven charter- school accountability plan that wants to create a firm foundation on which to gauge the satisfactory academic progress of students in a charter school.

• What are the school’s general academic goals for students? Are they an outgrowth of the school’s mission? Are the school’s standards related to its academic goals? Do the standards specify both content and performance? Have the general goals been specified in student performance targets that are concrete, challenging, attainable, and measurable? Are there annual as well as long-term targets?

• How are standards, curriculum, and instruction linked? Does the accountability plan provide evidence that those who will run the school understand the distinctions among an educational philosophy, a set of standards, and a coherent, operational curriculum geared to those standards? Is there a scope and sequence for the curriculum?

• Are state standards in place that the charter’s standards should follow?

• Is baseline achievement data being collected? In what subject areas? Using what instruments?

• How does the school know if students are able to meet the academic standards that have been set? What tests will measure student mastery of the standards? What assessments will be administered? For what purposes? Are there any "high stakes" assessments? When are they administered? Are the students in the charter school taking the district and state assessment?

• How will assessment and achievement information be reported: in absolute terms, vis-à-vis the other school’s standards; in value-added terms demonstrating how much more a student knows at the end of a year than at the beginning; in comparative terms that relate a students to norms or standards of other schools or students? What audiences will receive this information? How often?

• How will assessment information be used to improve student learning? How will it be used to plan staff development that will support the goal of improved student learning?

• What incentives do students and teachers have to reach the standards? What consequences are there for students and teachers not reaching them?

• What’s done to assist low performing students? What’s done to assist poorly performing teachers? Is there a staff development plan to remedy problems of poor teacher performance?

The school’s other goals

In addition to academic achievement goals, charter schools customarily write into their charters certain special goals and programs of their own devising, activities that are central to their self-concepts and missions. These vary widely, depending on the school’s philosophy, its target clientele, the needs of its community, etc. Some are curricular, shaping what the school teaches and how it does so. Boston’s City On A Hill Charter School has a special goal that requires comprehensive civic education and community involvement for each student. Curricular goals may also focus on a discipline (e.g., math, science, and foreign languages) or the development of special skills (e.g., performing or theatre arts).

Other charter school goals may involve special categories of students (e.g., the disabled, those in the juvenile justice system) or the parents of children at a school. For example, California’s Fenton Avenue Charter School has a goal that involves maintaining a parent education center that conducts continuing education programs for students’ parents, including English language and citizenship education. And some charter-school goals for students are specific—i.e., they propose to increate attendance and graduation rates and decrease dropout and discipline incidences. There may be similar ones for teachers involving, for example, qualifications, absences, or turnover.

Still other goals combine elements of a school’s life, like the curriculum and parent involvement. In Franklin, Massachusetts, the parent-founded Benjamin Franklin Classical Charter School has created a goal that entails a parent involvement program that’s integrated with the Core Knowledge curriculum of the school and linked with a student character education program. It includes using parents as teachers’ aides, mentors, and role models. Homework activities involving parents are assigned that support the school’s character education program.

There are operational areas for which charter schools should set a discreet number of goals, including issues that relate to management, governance, staffing, fiscal, and compliance with certain requirements. Schools must be well-managed organizations if they are to be efficient providers of educational services. This includes creating an environment and those support systems that will be conducive to student learning—e.g., goals that set high professional standards for those in key governance and administrative leadership roles, for teachers, and for other staff; goals that help determine school responsiveness to community, parent, and students concerns; and goals that provide evidence of compliance with applicable statutes, codes, and regulations.

The following lists some areas for which organizational and operational goals may be set for inclusion in a charter-school accountability compact.

• In evaluating a charter proposal, reviewers of the school’s educational and business plans will look for the quality of:
• Provisions being made by the school for families to be active participants in their children’s education and in school operations.
• Plans for developing working relationships and service links with community organizations.
• The organization and culture of the school and the degree to which these factors support students learning and promote responsible citizenship.
• Policies, practices and programs likely to make the school a safe and orderly environment for learning.
• Plans for the professional development of teachers, administrators, and other school staff.
• A founding group and planning process that ensures that the interests of the community, parents, teachers, and other stakeholders are represented.
• A stable, effective governance model that is capable of providing a strong vision and continuity of leadership.
• A viable administrative structure capable of providing strong leadership for the school and making adequate provision for teacher, student, and parent input to decisions that affect the school.
• People possessing the professional skills needed for organizational, financial, pedagogical, legal, and other tasks required to operate a well-functioning school.
• District of Columbia Public Charter School Board, Charter School Application Review Process and Scoring Rubrics for Use with Charter School Application Review Criteria. During the proposal evaluation process, each reviewer is asked to score the charter applicant on a 1 to 4 scale (1. minimal; 2. limited; 3. adequate; and 4. strong), using a set of detailed rubrics.

In short, an accountability plan should provide a charter authorizer, the school community, and the general public with a set of goals and indicators that will help them determine whether a school is meetings its non-academic, organizational responsibilities. Schools should collect and publish information on their progress toward such goals. As with a school’s academic goals, it’s important to keep these goals limited and clear. And particularly in the compliance area, it’s useful for charter authorizers to meet with charter school representatives and determine jointly what information to collect and publish. For example, rather than require every Massachusetts charter school be subject to the same rule-based requirements applicable to district public schools, the state chartering agency and charter operators agreed that there would be only two financial reporting requirements: a pupil and financial report (due September 15) and a year-end audit (due October 15). The District of Columbia Public Charter School Board requires quarterly financial report the first school year and a concluding financial audit, with an annual audit report thereafter (if the charter school has no evident fiscal problems after the first year).

The following fiscal management indicators will be included in each charter school final performance report (due by December 1 of each year).

• Indicator: Balanced Budget: 1) Prior year balanced budget successfully implements; 2) Realistic current-year balanced plan.
• Indicator: Financial Audit Findings
• Indicator: Financial Obligations: pension payments, payroll taxes, insurance coverage, loan payments and terms.

Chicago public Schools Charter School Office, Chicago Charter Schools Accountability Agreement, See Appendix C

Not every non-academic goal should be written into a school’s accountability plan. Some can be internal to the school or be part of a strategic plan for some dimensions of the charter school’s life—e.g., the governing board, parent organization, or staff. The accountability plan should contain only a few key goals that are concrete and measurable—i.e., they should have precise and reasonable benchmarks or targets—and that give the school’s key constituencies useful and accurate information on how effective the school is in reaching its non-academic goals.

Charter authorizers or others charged with monitoring charter schools should encourage schools to report on these goals. They should also provide common definitions for general items like student attendance and dropout rates so that data are comparable. But they should not micromanage all of what is reported and the ways in which information is published. The best judge of whether the school is publishing enough (and correct) information of these non-academic and distinctive goals is likely to be those constituencies who choose to attend the school or others in the neighborhood or local community who support the school. If one of these audiences doesn’t have enough information, the school is sure to hear about it.

Here are some questions that charter authorizers, founders, and operators can ask to determine whether a school has a realistic approach to designing an accountability plan that will provide useful information on a school’s non-academic goals:

• In what areas (e.g., curriculum, enrollment, management, instructional leadership, staffing) does the school have non-academic goals? For what groups (e.g., parents, teachers, students, and the community) does the school have non-academic goals? Are the goals clear, concrete, and limited? Are they challenging and measurable? What baseline data will be collected? What measures will be used to track progress toward achieving these goals?
  

• Who will be given feedback on the progress (or lack of progress) made in achieving these goals? Teachers? Parents? Community members? Charter issuers? Others? How will this feedback be used to improve the school’s educational program and its organizational viability? What are the rewards or consequences for reaching or not achieving the school’s non-academic goals?
  

• What fiscal controls does the school have to track its finances and maintain needed cash flow? Are there annual audit plans by a reputable firm with the results reviewed by the school’s governance authority?
  

• What is the school’s governance structure and leadership arrangement? Are there goals that help the school determine whether its governance and school leadership provide the school with the policy and day-to-day direction needed to make the school a viable organization?
  

• What laws and regulations have not been waived and is the school required to observe (e.g., special education or civil rights issues, safety and health codes, insurance provisions)? What controls are in place to assure compliance with these laws and regulations?

Additional data collection efforts

Collecting accurate, timely, and good information in each of the two accountability areas that have been discussed is a major undertaking. But this is not the only information-gathering effort charter schools should undertake. Turning in data for accountability purposes is not, after all, the same as maximizing the school’s own understanding of its strengths or weaknesses. Such diagnostic and self-correction efforts are important, too. For example, some charter authorizers (e.g., Massachusetts, Arizona, and the District of Columbia) require annual day-long school visits by outside inspection teams composed of educators and community members. This visit augments and verifies information contained in a school’s own accountability report.

Some charter schools undertake their own individual diagnostic efforts or cooperate with other charter schools to do this via "peer review," through accrediting bodies, and with the help of consultants. For example, three California charter schools I visited made use of various consulting arrangements to assist them with their evaluation and accountability efforts: the Sonoma Charter School hired two researchers from the University of California’s Charter School Resource Network; the Charter School of San Diego contracted with the San Diego school district’s accountability division; and Fenton Avenue Charter School in Los Angeles contacted with the University of Southern California's Center on Educational Governance. In Colorado, that state’s League of Charter Schools (a voluntary association of charter schools) has created a five-year cycle of accountability activities that is based partially on a school accreditation model—i.e., it includes a two-year activity that involves a school self-study leading to a report prepared for a visit by a team of peers who then summit a final report to each school (see Appendix D). These additional data collection efforts that help charter schools better understand themselves are well worth the effort they entail. They can provide further evidence of the school’s effectiveness that lend support to the data provided for accountability purposes.

Reporting issues

A charter school’s accountability obligations are not discharged until it reports to its authorizers, constituents, and taxpayers on its condition and progress in meetings its goals. There are many types of reporting mechanisms and methods—e.g., weekly and monthly newsletters, regular meetings with constituents, yearly reports, videos, websites, radio, and public television.

State charter laws often require that a charter school produce an annual report. This approach is usually the most manageable and user-friendly approach to making important information public on a regular timetable. Appraising the school’s progress in one-year increments makes sense for a variety of reasons, especially for schools whose term of operation is typically five years at a time.

Where these annual reports are required by law, charter authorizers should be clear as to what they expect the reports to contain. Without such guidance, charter schools are as susceptible as any other school to the temptation of publishing only the good news. A consultation process that includes authorizers and operators is a useful way to develop the main information categories to be included in an annual report.

Even where the charter law does not require an annual school report, a charter operator—using the school’s charter accountability compact with its authorizer to specify the main elements of the report—should undertake one. The report becomes an important way to ensure that the work of the charter school is part of the public record. (See Appendix E for an example of the information required and suggested in the school-level annual report for Massachusetts charter schools and Appendix F for an example of those in the District of Columbia.)

Technical assistance

Since the idea of independent and autonomous public schools is so new to American education, charter operators face a major challenge in creating a results-oriented accountability plan that is not characterized by rule-based over regulation. There are a growing number of state-based charter-school resource centers that can help in this task. Many of these resource centers are part of the Charter Friends National Network, established in 1997 to connect and support state-level charter school initiatives.

Another approach to seeking technical assistance is for like-minded schools to create their own organization—a kind of school cooperative—that would develop plans and also contract for the assistance that its members need in crafting an accountability plan. Appendix G contains an example of such an organization—the District of Columbia Charter League for Accountable Schools (DC CLAS). This voluntary organization is a foundation-funded effort to make the charter-school members who belong to it the primary agent responsible for developing and seeking the assistance they need to become accountable public charter schools.

Here are some questions that charter operators and authorizers can ask to determine if charter compacts address these related accountability issues:

• What additional data collection efforts will the charter school undertake? Do any of these involve an external audit by individuals not linked to the school who will provide the school with both positive and critical feedback on its work?
• Is an annual report planned? What additional reports chronicling the life of the school or documenting the school’s effectiveness will be produced? What information will they contain? To whom will these reports be distributed? When and using what outlet(s) or format(s)?
• Does the school need assistance from outside advisors in creating its accountability plan or in planning additional data collection efforts? How will it undertake these?

School failure and its prevention

A good accountability system that tracks the performance of individual students and charter schools can provide charter sponsors with early warnings of trouble and supply parents with needed consumer information on a variety of issues. What should be the stance of a chartering authority to failing or misbehaving charter schools? How much should they try to help? What interventions should they mount? What consequences should befall a faltering charter school? Should policymakers close it down? Place a warning sign on the door? Bail it out? Take it over?

All new movements have their failures. Charter schools are not exempt from this fact. The good news is that charter failures will point the way toward the kind of serious accountability system many people believe is vital for all of U.S. public education: schools that do not produce the necessary results have no right to continue engaging in educational malpractice.

Charter schools point the way because their horsetrade involves consequences for failing to achieve promised results. Retaining or renewing a charter hinges on demonstrated performance. Retaining students hinges on satisfying clients. It is a powerful combination. Since the charter school movement began in 1991, there have been around thirty outright charter school closures—i.e., the actual shutting down of a school or revoking of its charter. Some schools in other states have been placed on probation or closed voluntarily. (For more information on closures see the second of CER’s Charter School progress report series, "The Closures: The Opportunity for Accountability").

Other charter schools will fail. Some failures will occur for educational reasons, others because of management, governance, fiscal, or business difficulties. (Most closings so far have involved financial problems.) Although this prospect should be viewed with equanimity, there is no denying that the public-relations fallout may be heavy. Charter opponents are eager to exploit these cases as evidence that the entire charter movement is too risky. In any case, closing schools down is so drastic a step that in reality it probably will seldom be used as the main line of accountability. Unfortunately, states have not paid enough attention to less draconian steps by which a faltering charter school might be warned or healed. Only a handful of jurisdictions have a well-formed plan for dealing with problem schools or outright failures. Few even have an adequate monitoring program to pick up early warnings of schools in trouble.

Such a monitoring system need not be nor should only be run directly by government. An association of charter schools, for example, a state or regional think tank, or even a university policy center might be an appropriate locus. Nor need such a program be complicated or burdensome, drowning infant charter schools in compliance paperwork. It may require little more than periodic conversations with appropriate school and community members, a phone number that people with complaints or worries can call, a close reading of each school's annual report, and a cycle of day-long site visits once or twice a year to every charter school in the jurisdiction. If schools are not showing the progress promised in their charters, or if they show signs of severe organizational or financial problems, some sort of intervention should follow. Here are five versions.

1. The sponsor warns the school and gives it the opportunity to get its house in order within a specified time period. One can think of this as a kind of probation. It has occurred in several states, including Arizona and Massachusetts. A state can provide technical assistance directly (though not many state agencies or districts possess the necessary finesse) or require that the school seek it from some other provider.
   

2. The charter sponsor intervenes to change the charter school's leadership. That is what happened at Darnell E-Campus Charter School in San Diego when it experienced a number of problems, especially in governance and administration. The district removed the principal, appointed an acting principal, and gave the school a fixed date by which it was to resolve nine problem areas, working with a deputy superintendent from the district.
   

3. The sponsor intervenes and a successful charter school in the area is invited to assume responsibility for the troubled school. An example of a friendly "takeover" occurred in San Diego when Windows Charter School was closed by the district for what the district claimed were fiscal and safety reasons. Windows turned to Guajome Park Academy Charter School in the neighboring Vista Unified School District and became one of Guajome's campuses under the umbrella of Guajome's Expeditionary Learning Center Program.
   

4. The sponsor reclaims the charter of a school that has failed to open after a specified period. This happened in Michigan when Central Michigan University revoked 14 of the more than 40 charters it had granted so that the limited number of charters it had at its disposal could be given to those in a better position to open proposed schools.
   

5. The most extreme form of intervention is the immediate shutdown of a school and the orderly transfer of its students to other schools. Because of the kind of resentment, hostility, and showdowns such a move is likely to raise—there is evidence of this in the growing list of school districts that states have taken over—so draconian a step should only be taken for serious misconduct or wrongdoing that threatens the health or safety of children. And if charter schools are making adequate progress on making adequate progress achieving the goals set out in their charters, it needn’t happen at all.

Policymakers and chartering authorities may well develop other approaches to intervention in troubled charter schools. The purpose here is not to argue for any one type. But it is naive for policymakers not to contemplate the possibility of a school that sinks so fast that its pupils are stranded, possibly in the middle of a school year, or a school that may appear to be "swimming" but is in fact engaging in inappropriate actions that cannot be tolerated in a public institution. Therefore, the governing bodies that issue charters need to be prepared to save children in the event of school meltdown. It is appropriate for them to adopt a "tough love" approach to failing schools: delineating areas in need of improvement, imposing deadlines, and, when necessary, intervening more directly.

This should, however, not be read as advice to place schools on life-support systems. This is exactly the wrong way to think about charter schools. It destroys all serious accountability and essentially transforms charter schools into conventional schools that are assured money and students without regard to actual performance. This "keep it going at all costs" approach is a temptation that must be resisted.

Reviewing or renewing a charter

A small but growing number of schools have already gone through the charter renewal process, either because the charter was due to expire or because a successful early renewal would be advantageous to the school—e.g., it would be looked upon favorably by a bank if the charter school wanted to establish a line of credit for a major capital expenditure. This area remains largely uncharted. Here are some guidelines that might be followed by the chartering authority:

• Start with the accountability requirements found in state charter law. As mentioned, these typically include satisfactory progress in meeting achievement goals; demonstrated success in reaching other program goals; fiscal probity; and compliance with other applicable laws.
  

• Make the review process a community event that occurs in several stages. For example, publicize the charter school’s request for renewal and compilation of evidence that it has satisfactorily met the terms of its charter; hold a hearing at which testimony is taken and evidence aired; conduct a site visit to the charter school; etc. However, make sure the gathered evidence is germane to the renewal request. There may be individuals whose testimony is based on sheer opposition to the charter idea.
  

• Add well-respected community members to the panel that oversees and judges the renewal request. For example, a judge or another individual experienced in reviewing evidence and knowledgeable in mediation techniques or a person who has been on school accreditation panels can add a useful perspective to the renewal discussion. Outside reviewers can be especially helpful where the charter is reviewed by an agency that was forced against its will to grant the charter in the first place—e.g., a hostile local board that was overruled "on appeal" and made to grant the charter.
  

• Establish an appeal procedure. For example, create a small panel of respected outside reviewers from the local community who are prepared to review (quickly) all disputed issues between charter operators and sponsors.

If the charter authorizer has regularly monitored the charter school, conducted annual site visits, read the school’s annual report, etc.—then the renewal process can be a positive experience for the school, its constituents, and the community. But chartering authorities shouldn’t be afraid of closing a school down. They should follow the lead of the Minnesota state board of education that reviewed the Dakota Open Charter School for American Indian students outside Redwood Falls. Citing lack of student achievement, that board voted unanimously to close the high school grades of the K-12 school.

Accountability : The Challenge

Charter schools are typically thinly administered and free from many of the operational, financial, and educational constraints that hamstring conventional public schools. In exchange for this freedom from constraints, they are accountable for results. But in creating an accountability system to monitor their progress toward achieving results, they find themselves facing several challenges.

If the accountability system created to monitor progress to results is too onerous, it may deflect the school leadership from the pursuit of sound teaching and learning. If it is too prescriptive, forcing everything into the familiar categories of conventional schools, it may constrain the school's ability to do things differently. If it is too superficial, it may not yield the requisite information. If too laid back, it may not detect serious trouble in time to take appropriate action. And if it is too flexible in allowing each school to define its own terms, it may provide no basis for needed comparisons. There are three challenges that charter schools face as they negotiate the shoals of charter-school accountability.

First, in grappling with charter-school accountability, it’s essential for charter authorizers and operators to keep in mind the distinction between the ends of education and the means used to achieve them. Standards embody the ends of education—what we expect our young people to know and to do so that they are prepared for responsible living in the worlds of work, family, and citizenship. The means concern the ways our schools are organized and the methods they employ to assist our young people in acquiring knowledge and skills.

The genius of the charter concept is that it is demanding with respect to the ends—the results—of education but relaxed about the means whereby those results are produced.

Yet the primary accountably mechanisms in American public education remain focused more on how schools comply with rules and regulations—endeavors that usually involve the means of education. Unfortunately, U.S. public education is far more accustomed to holding school accountable for complying with prescriptions that deal with the means of education rather than the ends—the precise opposite of what charter schools are supposed to be doing. This creates a dilemma for those in charter schools. The charter idea is doomed unless the mechanisms that states and charter authorizers use for monitoring charter-school performance recognize the huge difference between holding schools tightly accountable for results and keeping them on a tight leash with respect to means.

A second challenge concerns state testing systems and the "fit" between what a school says it will do and what a state testing system constricts it from doing. For example, standardized testing programs used by states and communities for conventional school accountability purposes may not suit a charter school’s distinctive mission or philosophy (or its student body, especially if it enrolls many at-risk youngsters). The standards built into such tests may be unrealistically high for one pupil population, and absurdly low for another. The multiple-choice format may conflict with the charter school’s deepest beliefs about teaching, learning, and assessment. The grade-level assumptions of the tests may not correspond to the charter school’s "scope and sequence." Conversely, a charter school’s use of innovative assessment techniques and indicators whose reliability is not proven—or whose results are not comparable—may cause doubts about the school’s reported success. In simplest terms: what a charter school was founded to teach may not be exactly what the state (or district) measures. And the ways in which the charter school most desires to demonstrate its effectiveness may not yield the kinds of information that the larger world seeks form schools.

Whatever the ultimate resolution of this complicated issue, it’s vital for a charter operator to recognize that items like state-wide tests are part of the accountably deal with the state and the charter authorizer. It’s naïve to design a curriculum that doesn’t prepare students to do well on them. Conversely, the chartering authority must realize, both on the testing side and when designing other forms of accountability monitoring, that if it wants some schools to be truly different—especially if it wants them to serve at-risk youngsters—it’s got to be imaginative and sensitive in monitoring their performance. There is no simple solution to this dilemma. But a charter accountability compact should be clear about what’s expected by the charter authorizer.

A final challenge concerns the two "agents" to which a charter school is accountable. Every charter school is accountable to a "higher authority"—i.e., the charter authorizer. But it is also accountable to its customers via the marketplace: dissatisfied customers—parents and teachers—can vote with their feet and flee. The school, in other words, can be abandoned by those who attend (or work) in it if they are not satisfactory places in which to study or work.

Market accountability could turn out to be more important than anything devised by state enforcers. Before the charter program has had time to have a genuine impact on student achievement, it’s particularly important to pay close attention to the marketplace dimension of accountability. It’s likely to tell us something about whether the school has the potential to work. Finally, combining the accountability triad of standards, testing, and consequences with the immediacy of a market mechanism creates a promising prototype for conventional schools as well.

A closing word

Without timely and reliable information on student and school performance, accountability will not work, either for policymakers or for the education marketplace, particularly parents. Good information is the starting point for making good decisions about charter schools.

And there is the issue of the judgments a charter authorizer or some other person or entity makes about a particular school based on information emerging from an accountability process. While the accountability test that charter schools must undergo should be a tough test, it shouldn’t be a test that expects perfection. Some policymakers and analysts will be sorely tempted to establish a "double-standard" accountability system for schools in which more is expected of a charter school (for less money) than district schools. On the contrary, the accountability test should strive for a fair, balanced, and realistic judgment.

Today, virtually every state with a charter program is grappling with issues discussed in this guide as it seeks to design and implement suitable performance-based accountability systems. Charter school accountability is a serious matter. Not only will it make or break the charter movement itself, it will also be the primary source of evidence as to whether that movement is making a valuable contribution to the improved education of American children—and the renewal of U.S. public education—or is another half-tried reform fad that sinks into the sand like so many others. Perhaps most important, what we learn from accountability within the relatively small world of charter schools can inform and foster the development of more effective accountability arrangements for U.S. public education as a whole.

Schools

• Charter School Listing:
  The Center for Education Reform’s "National Charter School Directory: 1997-1998"
  

Standards: