By Rob Kimball
Of the 1,050 charter school authorizers across the nation, 90 percent are local school districts. Ninety-three percent of the net gain in new authorizers over past five years has been local districts. In 2014-15, there were 45 higher-education institution authorizers, just 4 percent of total authorizers. This may not be troubling for the effort to improve public education through chartering, except that authorizing by higher education institutions provides an unequaled opportunity to tackle one of our most complex and pressing problems, improving public education.
The National Association of Charter School Authorizers' 2015 report highlights that many local districts have not developed the oversight capacity known to provide the desired accountability and performance. (HEI is a Higher Education Institution, and LEA is a Local Education Agency.) It is also reasonable to expect that local district authorizers are less incentivized to move beyond the regulatory-driven, compliance-based accountability systems that are the hallmarks of public education or the troubling hit-or-miss formation of new schools that is raising questions about the ability of charters to deliver improvement of public education at scale.
The idea of higher-education authorizers to advance chartering was based on the idea that innovative reform and accountability weren't likely to originate from the local districts themselves. In 1998, the New York State Assembly created the Charter Schools Institute in the state's university system to serve as an authorizer. Legislatures throughout the country soon followed.
Today, 17 states empower higher-education institutions to serve as authorizers, and six of the states (Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, Louisiana and South Carolina) do not have active higher-education authorizers. These states also generally provide for the funding for authorizers to execute their responsibilities. These funds come through collecting an "oversight fee" for each school chartered by the institution, a state appropriation or a combination of sources.
Many higher-education authorizers, like Grand Valley State University in Allendale, have their origins in training public school teachers. GVSU saw its decision to authorize as a natural outgrowth of its mission to contribute to the enrichment of society through excellent teaching, active scholarship and public service.
Other institutions have also seen it as an outgrowth of their mission of improving education. For example, Washington University, in St. Louis, cited its decision to begin chartering schools as a natural extension of the its long-term strategy to focus on key issues affecting the region. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has a similar regional function. Its mission is to work with "community organizations, parent groups, educators and other individuals who are committed to improving the quality of education for children in the City of Milwaukee to charter successful, innovative schools."
Authorizing charter schools also provides colleges with a unique opportunity to build upon a tradition of engaging in K-12 education to study teaching and learning. Study can occur through researching the substantial amount of school and student-level data that an authorizer collects each year.
Higher education authorizers have historically allowed this research to occur in an ad-hoc fashion. However, GVSU facilitates research within its portfolio of 71 charter schools and their 32,000 students through an initiative called EdLabs@GVSUCSO. The initiative, launched in 2015, facilitates and conducts research within the portfolio for internal and external use. Research projects have studied student commute patterns, teacher attrition and student achievement by teacher preparation type in addition to assisting with routine performance measurement of the portfolio.
As university lab schools have done throughout the years, higher-education authorizers use charters as training sites for their teacher preparation students. Over 30 percent of the 1,200 certified teachers within GVSU charter schools are GVSU alumni. Beginning in 2017, GVSU student teachers in GVSU-authorized Detroit charters will receive free tuition, and current, full-time teachers in GVSU charters receive reduced tuition for graduate study in seven degree programs within the GVSU College of Education.
The close relationship between the authorizer and its authorized schools also presents a rich student recruitment and development opportunity. As both a way to expose students to a university environment and to create a more seamless pathway for students to attend, GVSU connects with its charter students through regular campus visits and summer camps that simulate the college experience. Faculty and staff from across departments come together each summer to give GVSU charter students first-hand experience of college-level programming. For many of the students, it is their first experience on a college campus, and for a few, it's their first trip away from their hometown.
Many GVSU charter students are first-time college-going students. GVSU is recognized for its successful efforts to keep and graduate these students. North Lawndale College Preparatory High School, a Chicago charter authorized by Chicago Public Schools, partners with GVSU because of its track record for successfully graduating minority students. Many GVSU charter students attend GVSU on scholarships specifically provided for them.
Authorizing charter schools is a difficult task for trustees and university presidents. Charter performance naturally varies, and closing low-performing schools, essential to authorizing, can be damaging to heavily guarded university brands. GVSU has shuttered 15 schools and is not without scars for its commitment to chartering only high-performing schools that serve the students in greatest need of a choice.
However, the resources and commitment the university brings to the task of authorizing mitigates many of the real political, financial and legal liabilities. Those robust resources, protection from local politics and commitment to maintaining a strong university brand provides a platform for dynamic university leaders committed to reshaping communities and answering many of our most complex problems in public education through the opportunity of charter school authorizing.
(c) Bridge Magazine, reprinted with permission. Bridge Magazine, a publication of The Center for Michigan, produces independent, nonprofit public affairs journalism and is a partner with MLive.