New Charter Schools Bill Filed in KY State House

Rep. Brad Montell, of Shelbyville, announced that he has pre-filed a bill proposing a strong charter schools law for Kentucky. The law would:

• establish an independent charter schools commission to authorize charter schools, in addition to existing local school boards
• give preference to charter schools in underserved districts, allowing for both new schools and conversions 
• set high standards of accountability for charter schools
• set an unmatched transparency standard to ensure all public monies are being used to best educate our kids

High-quality charter schools are an increasingly important tool for states' educational efforts. The bill that Rep. Montell has crafted takes into account all the components necessary to create a law that works well to serve the people of Kentucky well. I hope we will all push our legislators to hear the bill, thoroughly debate it, and pass it for the sake of the future of our Commonwealth.

What Makes Charter Schools Work? Part 7

One of the greatest challenges facing public charter schools across the country is finding and financing facilities. The citizens of Kentucky have paid for many years for our educational facilities across the state, and often they are unused or underutilized. We should remove any obstacles from making use of these public properties for use in public education. This, of course, includes all public charter schools.


7) Allow Public Charter Schools Access to Unused Public School Building Space


To help alleviate this problem, we recommend that the state provide to public charter schools a right of first
refusal to purchase or lease for fair market value a closed or unused portion of any public school facility. We should make use of every resource available to us to provide more educational opportunity, especially when the associated costs are negligible.

Why Do We Need Public Charter Schools in Kentucky?

Like many states, Kentucky has seen drastic increases in spending on education, but has little to show for it. About a quarter of our kids don’t graduate at all, and of those that do, about half require remediation before they can attend a community college. Across the country, many public charter schools have demonstrated the ability to drastically improve both high school and college graduation rates. This is good for our kids, their communities, and for the health and economic development of our Commonwealth.

Our economic health is dependent, among other things, on our ability to attract business to Kentucky. According to Greater Louisville Inc., Louisville’s Chamber of Commerce, one of the greatest challenges to this is the readiness of our workforce, especially when our geographic neighbors (i.e., competitors) are outpacing us.

Our bureaucracy is exceptionally heavy in Kentucky; we have the lowest teacher to staff ratio in the country. This makes Kentucky exceptionally fertile ground for charter schools to show a marked improvement over the status quo.

Our educational system has one purpose, to give our kids the best public education we can. Our tax dollars shouldn’t fund systems, they should invest in children, and once we set that priority for ourselves, that we will put kids first, we will be well on the path to providing the options needed to be sure every kid can excel.

Event Monday!

Please join me on Monday, August 1 at 5:45pm in the Main branch of the Louisville Free Public Library (301 York St, between 3rd and 4th just south of Broadway) for a screening of the powerful documentary, Waiting for "Superman". The film will start promptly at 6pm, and will be followed by 45 minutes of Q&A about public charter schools and Kentucky. We will be joined by Dr. Wayne Lewis, of the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) and Lauren Morgan, of Parents for Improving Kentucky Education (PIKE). I will represent the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and will facilitate the discussion, helping to answer questions when appropriate.

Please invite friends,neighbors, and anyone interested in learning more about charter schools or helping us attain a high quality public charter schools law for Kentucky. Water and light snacks will be provided.

I look forward to seeing you all Monday. 

Joel Adams

  

What Makes Charter Schools Work? Part 6

Educating our kids is an expensive process, and we should strive to be sure that the benefits of those expenditures are applied to public charter schools just as they are to all other public schools. In most states, charter schools struggle to help kids exceed expectations on an uneven playing field. Funding for education, at each level: local, state and federal, should follow each child regardless of what public school they choose to attend.

6) We Should Provide Equitable Funding to Public Charter Schools and Authorizing Entities

When a student transfers from one public school to another, the funding associated with that student follows him or her to the new public school. Public charter schools should receive state and local funds from the home school district of each student attending the school equal to the state and local portion of the per-pupil expenditures in the student’s home district, with federal funds distributed to a school as dictated by federal law. The state should also allow the authorizing entity of the public charter school (either their local school board or another entity) to retain an oversight fee to cover its costs in overseeing the school (e.g., 2% of a school’s per-pupil funding).

Funding all public educational opportunities equally is the fair and right thing to do for all Kentucky's kids.

New Website!

Please check out the new website: KentuckyCharters.org

Sign up and help us innovate to educate in Kentucky!

What Makes Charter Schools Work? Part 5

In order for public charter schools to live up to their potential, they must be held accountable for their performance. This strict accountability is one of the key innovations in education that charter schools offer. It is the current lack of accountability that has many Kentuckians frustrated with our system of education, and it's our children who suffer for it, year after year.

5) We must ensure accountability for public charter schools.


How do we accomplish this? We establish rules that require a fixed term, performance-based contract between a charter school and the entity that approved it. This contract will strengthen public charter school accountability by including both provisions establishing the academic and operational performance expectations for the public charter school and provisions defining the roles, powers, and responsibilities for the school and its authorizing entity.

When we set the bar appropriately high, and hold schools firmly to the terms of their agreements, we both encourage the entry of better schools and efficiently minimize the impact of poorly performing models. The most successful public charter school laws have managed this dynamic well, and we should strive to match it.

Kentucky's kids will be the direct beneficiaries of our diligence.

John Legend and Dr. Deborah Kenny on Morning Joe

Just a simply amazing conversation...

Gather your friends and neighbors...

Are you ready to learn more and get your questions answered yet? Invite some people for a viewing of Waiting for Superman, and let's discuss how you can help make charter schools a reality for Kentucky's kids. Concerns and disagreements are welcome; open minds are required.

Email me at joel@kentuckycharters.com

What Makes Charter Schools Work? Part 4

The fourth critical element for the success of a charter schools law is autonomy.

4) We should give public charter schools the freedom to innovate. We do this by providing approved schools an automatic waiver from most state and local laws, rules, and regulations.

What does this mean? It means that while public charter schools must adhere to the same policies regarding enrollment and accountability as traditional public schools, they should not be bound by bureaucratic processes or agreements that prevent innovation, hinder growth and change, or prevent teachers and administrators from making the best decisions for their schools.

Teachers are the front-lines in education, and their ideas, concerns and solutions should not be tempered by a massive bureaucracy that has to look at every school in the district as if it the same as the rest. Teachers should be able to communicate with principals with the knowledge that they have the ability to act. School principals should have the authority to make decisions in the best interest of the school.

Public charter schools allow teachers to teach; they encourage leaders to lead; they free children to learn.

There are those rare leaders in education who work around the system to benefit the kids they are charged to educate. I will have a story soon about one such leader here in Kentucky. But for now, suffice it to say that we cannot expect great leaders to emerge consistently from under a system that would stifle them. We must change the system to encourage and engage great leaders, and a well-crafted public charter school law will do just that for Kentucky.

Public Charter Schools are as Bipartisan as an Issue Can Get

What do President Obama, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Reverend Al Sharpton have in common? They all support public charter schools!

From the President's campaign:


An excellent interview with Jeb Bush on Morning Joe:


Secretary of Education Arne Duncan with Newt Gingrich and Al Sharpton on Meet the Press:

What Makes Charter Schools Work? Part 3

The third critical element for public charter schools to work well may not be as exciting to talk about, but it makes this list for a reason. Here, we focus for a moment on the process of obtaining a charter and holding its operators accountable.

We call those that evaluate and approve charter schools applications, and later hold them accountable to the terms of their contracts (their charters), charter school authorizers. Authorizers are responsible for maintaining quality in charter schools. This infinitely important task includes providing monitoring and oversight of their financial, operational and performance goals, and it is critical to their long-term success of public charter schools in Kentucky.

Local school boards will certainly be an authorizer for charter schools, but they cannot do it alone. As we have seen in many other states around the country, leaving authorization solely in the hands of the local school boards severely limits charter school options for students and parents.

So who else should be allowed to authorize public charter schools? Some might suggest that we should allow as many authorizers as possible, but this can be dangerous as well. In some states, the large number of authorizers set the bar too low and allowed poorly designed schools to apply repeatedly, until someone approved them. Further, as described above, authorizers have a broad array of responsibilities, and must have the resources to handle their tasks. Given all this, a select group of alternate authorizers with the capacity to fulfill the role's requirements should be allowed to do so.


3) We should allow multiple paths to approval for charter applicants: public charter schools should be allowed to apply to either their local school board or another entity (e.g., state board of education, colleges and universities, state public charter school commission). 

By providing multiple paths to approval, we will provide the public charter school option to those local school boards who want to incorporate it into their public school offerings, while also giving a fair hearing
through another entity to educators, parents, and community members in districts whose school boards are less interested in public charter schools. This will set a high bar to obtain a charter while allowing for as many qualified schools as will benefit Kentucky's students.

What Makes Charter Schools Work? Part 2

 Last time we talked about the need to allow for both conversion and start-up public charter schools. The very notion of conversion charter schools evokes the image of a failing school that is being converted. These schools, and the student populations in these areas, are in the most dire need of an alternative to the current system. So, for these conversions, and for start-ups as well:

2) We should give preference to charter applicants in areas with low-performing schools.

While the benefits of educational choice should be available to all, granting preference to these charter schools will serve two purposes.

First, it will help to close the achievement gaps that we see across the state of Kentucky. Our poorest performing districts correlate to many of our most impoverished districts, and working to even the playing field for educational opportunity will benefit all of Kentucky.

Second, where schools are performing poorly, the benefits of charter schools will be seen most clearly. These successes will help to erase any doubts about the benefits of innovation in the public educational environment, and will help the growth of an array of educational options for parents throughout Kentucky.

We should certainly encourage the development of charter schools throughout the state, but serving those with the greatest need first has always been at the core of the public charter school movement.

What Makes Charter Schools Work? Part 1

Charter schools are each very different, and should be. They are designed to meet the needs of their communities.

Charter school laws are just as different. Some of them work well, and others do not. With 40 laws and nearly 20 years of experience to look to for advice, we can create the best possible charter school law for Kentucky's children.

What should it look like? There are 7 key components that are critical to the success of charter schools in Kentucky. Let's discuss the first one now.

1) We need to allow both conversions and start-ups.

Conversions are just what they seem to be: existing schools, usually failing to adequately serve their students' needs, are converted to charter schools in order to better meet the needs of the student body.

Start-ups are charter schools that present their ideas to one of the state's authorizing organizations and, upon approval of a charter contract, are allowed to open. Start-up charters are often started by groups of educators, parents, and community members. No students are ever forced to attend these schools, but students and parents may elect to attend them if they choose.

Nationally, about 90% of charter schools are start-ups. These include some of the best schools in the nation, like the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) Schools.

Welcome!

What is a charter school? 

Charter schools are public schools.

Charter schools are free to attend and allow for open enrollment by any student in the district.

Charter schools are encouraged to innovate; they may differ from traditional public schools in some of these ways: length of the school day, length of the school year, curriculum, grade-level integration, dress codes, school culture, and more...

Charter schools are held accountable to performance measures that meet or exceed those of the traditional public schools in the state.

Charter schools operate under a contract; they must fulfill their missions and meet their goals, or else face closure.

Charter schools are a proving ground for educational ideas that will improve educational opportunities for all our children.

40 states and the District of Columbia have charter school laws on the books. Now is the time to pass a strong charter schools law in Kentucky!