Allen: The Content of Laws Matters In Ensuring Student Success
January 21, 2016
Jeanne Allen, Founder and President Emeritus of The Center for Education Reform (CER), issued the following statement on the release of Measuring Up to the Model: A Ranking of State Charter School Laws yesterday from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS):
“We applaud Nina and her team at NAPCS for advancing our shared goal of fostering great laws in what is arguably one of the most promising public school reforms of all time –charter schools. As we know, strong charter school laws are vital for a thriving, successful charter school movement, and the more analysis and investigation into their impacts, the better.
“Because CER also has studied and analyzed charter school laws since 1996, it’s important that public policy influencers and lawmakers understand the critical distinctions in these two important, but compatible reports. NAPCS assesses ‘whether and how state laws and regulations address the National Alliance model law,’ except for in a few areas – such as caps, multiple authorizers, and funding – where they deemed it necessary to capture what’s happening in practice in order to ‘fairly capture the strength of the law’.
“CER’s national rankings and scorecard, currently scheduled to be released after most legislative sessions are over this year to guide future discussions, are based not only on the policies imbedded in each law, but how such policies actually effect the proposing, review, development and progress of each potential or existing school itself. Over time we have learned that what matters most in ensuring the healthy creation and growth of exceptional charter school opportunities for families is whether or not the state permits the diversity of founders, boards and authorizers that the authors of the charter schooling first outlined as the way to create diverse choices. The provision of independent structures from which innovation and freedom can best be applied to the educational process is a necessity, and thus laws which only allow existing local and state structures or are connected to districts and state education agencies do not foster the growth of high quality charter schools nearly as much as those which provide for additional authorizers.
“This is why, for example, while Alabama’s newer charter school law earns second place on NAPCS’ rankings, according to CER’s methodology, Alabama’s law will likely earn a mediocre grade this spring.
“In addition to authorizing, CER also ranks whether the state provides for equitable funding – codified in law – and gives charter schools enough autonomy to create and manage their schools, including choosing who they hire, whose programs they use and what, if any, managers they need to support them to do their job. Laws should be firm on the ends and loose on the means, and not prescriptive about how to achieve the goal of the contract for which they are held accountable by law.
“We welcome and encourage the increased debate and dialogue surrounding charter school laws as it raises the level of awareness and activity that should be the focus on our nation’s most important priority – our children and exceptional educational opportunities for all.”