Chester E. Finn

Charter School Accountability: Problems and Prospects

Today, public school accountability depends mostly on compliance. This accountability-via-regulation will only make charter public schools like district public schools. A different approach to charter accountability is envisioned, designed to help these schools succeed as genuine education alternatives. This accountability-via-transparency is based on giving charter schools operational, financial, and program autonomy in exchange for holding them accountable for results. Furthermore, rather than bureaucratic control from higher levels within the system, charter accountability is propelled mostly by public marketplaces in which a school’s clients and stakeholders reward its successes, punish its failures, and send it signals about what must change. In what follows, approaches to accountability in today’s charter world are reviewed; how a transparent charter accountability system following Generally Accepted Accountability Principles for Education (GAAPE) would work for charter schools, their sponsors, and statewide programs is described; and three accountability dilemmas that charter schools face are discussed in the conclusion.

State Academic Standards

Standards-based reform has been America’s premier education strategy for more than a decade. Its many backers seek stronger school and student performance and more equal opportunities for children, especially disadvantaged youngsters. Every state in the union claims to be engaged in this challenging and high-minded quest. Under both Republicans and Democrats, Congress and the White House have recast federal policy to support standards-based reform. Business leaders, school officials, newspaper editors, and teacher unionists all pledge their allegiance to this ambitious approach to educational renewal. Hopeful signs abound. Some states are boosting their scores, children are learning more, teachers are using surer methods of instruction. Education is attracting more high-level attention and political energy than ever before. Yet standards-based reform also faces genuine peril. Its enemies’ ranks are growing. Its allies sometimes falter. Careless implementation has produced snafus. The future for standards-based reform is uncertain. But the price of failure would be high.

Targeted, Not Universal PreK.

Universalizing the preschool experience is no way to achieve lasting gap reduction. Instead, invest in education for preschoolers who need it the most.

Improve Governance for Charters.

With 25 years of experience, the charter sector has had enough time to experience a host of unanticipated and unresolved problems related to the complex ways in which charter school governance relates to school leadership. The time has come for the sector to revisit some fundamental decisions about how charter schools and networks are governed, both to tighten arrangements that are excessively loose and to encourage further innovation. The future of chartering should not be a linear extension of the past. If we left some problems unsolved in 1991 (or had no idea that they would become problems), that is no reason not to take stock of things as they stand today and to set matters right before moving forward. This article is based on the authors’ book, Charter Schools at the Crossroads: Predicaments, Paradoxes, Possibilities (Harvard Education Press, 2016).

The District and Charter Sectors of American K-12 Education: Pros and Cons.

ABSTRACT This article probes ways in which the school-choice marketplace as it developed via chartering has not worked as well in practice as many had hoped. It includes reflection on the profoundly different operating principles and theories of action that separate the district and charter sectors in their pure forms. It also offers market-strengthening suggestions that blend the 2 approaches, organizing them under 10 categories.

Urban School Reform

When Ohio issued its first district and school-level report cards in 1998, they confirmed what most Daytonians had known for at least a decade: the Gem City’s public schools were in academic tatters. By the state’s reckoning, Dayton and Cleveland were the two worst districts in Ohio. At the time, the Dayton public schools (DPS) served about 26,000 students, employed 3,847 people (half of them teachers), and had an operating budget of

The Dawn of Charter Schools

203 million. But its academic performance was woeful. As summed up by the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s education reporter, “With dwindling enrollments and abysmal test scores, the [Dayton] school district looked like a poster child for all that was wrong with the big urban school systems. Too many students were dropping out. Too many never came at all. There was little or no discipline. Teacher morale sagged. School board members bickered. Deficits soared.”1

Baptism Under Fire

To make sense of the complex origins of Ohio’s charter school program and related school and school finance reforms, it helps to understand the state and its political divisions, some of America’s most distinctive. These divisions turn out to be more complicated than big-city Democrats versus suburban and rural Republicans. Few other states have eight major cities. Known, in fact, as the Big 8, they marked Ohio politics throughout the twentieth century. Other states have regional competitions: New York City versus upstate, Chicago versus downstate, northern versus southern California, and so forth. What makes Ohio different, explains political scientist Herb Asher, who has studied Buckeye State politics for decades, is that, except for the thinly populated semi-Appalachian southeast, every region of Ohio has a major population center that generates parochial demands and political power.

Polarization and Politics

Since the state had capped new charters, in Fordham’s new role as sponsor we decided to focus our energy, leverage, and money—as well as that of the Gates Foundation—on helping our initial ten schools to improve. They were a varied bunch. Eight had previously been sponsored by the Ohio Department of Education, schools that the department had been required by House Bill 364 to cut loose. The other two were allowed to open by virtue of winning tickets in the 2005 charter school lottery. Both were sister schools of Cincinnati’s acclaimed W. E. B. DuBois Academy and were to be run by the DuBois leadership.

An Education Tragedy

I’m amazed at some of the really, really painful stories that six-year-olds and seven-year-olds are bringing to school, and the efforts of schools to deal with these things. I’ve gained more respect for traditional educators.”1