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.