Empowering Charters Through Early Detection
|
Throughout the nation, states and chartering organizations grapple with how to empower successful charter schools while assisting or closing those that struggle. Detecting early what schools are struggling is critical for ensuring children are properly educated and taxpayer funds are protected. Identifying challenges before they hit the headlines reduces reputational risk.
At the Vander Weele Group, we believe meaningful monitoring is an essential tool for identifying better ways to support successful schools while detecting troubling performance early. Asking the right questions, reviewing the right data, and acting on the information quickly in an organized process improves the likelihood of success. Providing technical assistance and a well-conceived intervention process reduces the risk of failure. Our monitoring systems provide a well-rounded approach to examining a school’s academics, classroom supports, finances, facilities, safety, transportation, marketing, data collection, and management. Our on-site technical assistance recognizes the demands on charter schools to quickly master not only the delivery of instructional services, but to also excel in marketing, budgeting, accounting, human resources, leadership, and more. We provide resources tailored to each school’s needs. We add capacity to states and chartering organizations whose monitoring programs are challenged by the rapid growth in the nation’s charter schools. We also help schools navigate compliance with a complex legal and regulatory framework. Our multi-disciplinary approach promotes overall success. |
|
|
“There is a pattern to the failures. In nearly all the cases, red flags appeared in charter applications well before the schools even opened. And as problems mounted once the schools were up and running, the state was in no position to offer a lifeline, in part because the state’s oversight and support process is disjointed and understaffed."
– NC Policy Watch, “Failing charter schools: Inadequate screening and oversight causing big problems for many NC families.” |
ESSA and School Choice
President Trump is a staunch advocate for school choice and privatizing public education. He has called school choice a “civil right” and praised charter schools for their “amazing gains and results.” His FY2018 Budget Blueprint proposes an an additional $1.4 billion in school choice programs.
President Trump demonstrated his commitment to school choice and privatization by selecting Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education. Secretary DeVos served as chair of the American Federation for Children, which aims “to provide low-income and middle class families with access to great schools through publicly-funded private school choice.” She is a strong supporter of charter schools and school vouchers, which use public dollars to let students attend private schools.
While advancing their education agenda, President Trump and Secretary DeVos must reckon with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the new education law passed in 2015 with bipartisan support. ESSA includes several ways that states can expand school choice, yet the law also weakens the federal government’s ability to control education at the state level. In ESSA, states and Local Education Agencies (LEAs), which are typically school districts, can privatize education by offering school choice at low-performing schools, expanding the number of charter schools, and subsidizing private providers’ services for public school students.
President Trump demonstrated his commitment to school choice and privatization by selecting Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education. Secretary DeVos served as chair of the American Federation for Children, which aims “to provide low-income and middle class families with access to great schools through publicly-funded private school choice.” She is a strong supporter of charter schools and school vouchers, which use public dollars to let students attend private schools.
While advancing their education agenda, President Trump and Secretary DeVos must reckon with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the new education law passed in 2015 with bipartisan support. ESSA includes several ways that states can expand school choice, yet the law also weakens the federal government’s ability to control education at the state level. In ESSA, states and Local Education Agencies (LEAs), which are typically school districts, can privatize education by offering school choice at low-performing schools, expanding the number of charter schools, and subsidizing private providers’ services for public school students.
ESSA and Charter Accountability
|
ESSA provides approximately $270 million a year for charter schools and President Trump proposes $1.4 billion more for school choice, but with those funds come the obligation to monitor. State entities - defined as State Educational Agencies, State Charter School Boards, Governors, or Charter School Support Organizations – must reserve at least 7 percent of their funds to provide technical assistance that includes improving fiscal oversight and auditing of charter schools. They must explain in their applications for funds how they will provide oversight and ensure that charter schools use the funds only for purposes allowed under the law.
States must also provide assurances that they will provide technical assistance to public chartering agencies to support improved monitoring and holding charter schools accountable to implement the academic, financial, and operational quality controls to which they agreed. ESSA cites monitoring as an important part of the States’ systems of technical assistance and oversight that should be included in charter authorizing standards. Public Chartering Agencies must monitor each of their charter schools to ensure they are recruiting, enrolling, retaining, and meeting the needs of all students, including children with disabilities and English learners. States receiving grant money must provide technical assistance to public chartering agencies to improve the quality of authorizing charters, including how to conduct better fiscal oversight and auditing. Charter school plans have a greater likelihood of being selected if they include plans to adequately monitor subgrantees. The U.S. Department of Education also has an obligation to monitor. It must monitor charter school applicants receiving subgrants and review whether State entities are using grant funds for agreed upon purposes. Other accountability provisions require charter schools, chartering agencies, and states to review the schools’ independent, annual financial statements annually and ensure that they are publically reported. States must ensure funded charter schools publish performance and other information about the school and they must describe what rules that generally apply to public schools are waived for charter schools. Additionally, State entities must indicate how charter schools are addressed in the State’s Open Meetings and Open Records laws. ESSA also has consequences – state entities must describe how a school’s charter can be revoked based on financial, structural, or operational factors involving the management of the school, language that the law requires be part of a formal agreement between the authorizing agency and the school. All those provisions are designed to improve transparency, oversight, monitoring and evaluation of charter schools – a stated goal of ESSA. |
History of Choice in the United States
School choice has existed in the United States since the late-19th century. In 1869, Vermont launched the first school choice program, in which towns without schools would pay to allow their students to attend schools in surrounding towns. Maine started a similar program in 1873. However, the modern school choice movement began with economist Milton Friedman’s 1955 article, “The Role of Government in Education.” In his article, Friedman proposed that the government should fund, but not administer, the nation’s education. Specifically, Friedman recommended a system of vouchers. Parents would receive a certain amount of money from the government that they could spend on “approved” educational services, offered by for-profit or non-profit institutions.
The school choice movement did not gain momentum until the 1980s. In 1983, a national education commission published the report, A Nation at Risk, which attracted massive media attention. The report detailed disturbing statistics about education in the United States, including that 23 million American adults were illiterate and that standardized test scores were decreasing. President Ronald Reagan harnessed public outrage about the quality of public education to advance his school choice agenda. Following the report’s release, Reagan promised to “restore quality to education by increasing competition and by strengthening parental choice and local control.”
During the 1990s, states began passing school choice legislation. In 1990, Wisconsin founded the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the first modern private school choice program. Then, in 1991, Minnesota passed the first law allowing for the establishment of charter schools. A decade of school choice growth culminated in Florida’s Opportunity Scholarship Program, the first statewide school choice program. Established in 1999, the program allowed students attending failing schools to attend a different public or private school. No Child Left Behind, the 2001 federal education law, included similar school choice for students at failing schools but did not allow any funds to be directed to private schools.
Today, school choice has become widespread: 18 states offer voucher programs and 43 states have enacted charter school laws, a number that is growing. While there are school choice supporters on both sides of the political spectrum, Republicans, in particular, advocate school choice policies. President Trump's FY 2018 Budget Blueprint calls for an additional $1.4 billion to be invested in school choice. Under President Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, many expect school choice to remain at the center of education reform in the United States for years to come.
By Theo Grant-Funck, Staff Writer
The school choice movement did not gain momentum until the 1980s. In 1983, a national education commission published the report, A Nation at Risk, which attracted massive media attention. The report detailed disturbing statistics about education in the United States, including that 23 million American adults were illiterate and that standardized test scores were decreasing. President Ronald Reagan harnessed public outrage about the quality of public education to advance his school choice agenda. Following the report’s release, Reagan promised to “restore quality to education by increasing competition and by strengthening parental choice and local control.”
During the 1990s, states began passing school choice legislation. In 1990, Wisconsin founded the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the first modern private school choice program. Then, in 1991, Minnesota passed the first law allowing for the establishment of charter schools. A decade of school choice growth culminated in Florida’s Opportunity Scholarship Program, the first statewide school choice program. Established in 1999, the program allowed students attending failing schools to attend a different public or private school. No Child Left Behind, the 2001 federal education law, included similar school choice for students at failing schools but did not allow any funds to be directed to private schools.
Today, school choice has become widespread: 18 states offer voucher programs and 43 states have enacted charter school laws, a number that is growing. While there are school choice supporters on both sides of the political spectrum, Republicans, in particular, advocate school choice policies. President Trump's FY 2018 Budget Blueprint calls for an additional $1.4 billion to be invested in school choice. Under President Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, many expect school choice to remain at the center of education reform in the United States for years to come.
By Theo Grant-Funck, Staff Writer