Education Week - February 27, 2019 - 7

What Form Can Charter Schools Take? A Brief Field Guide
By Sasha Jones
Charter schools are hardly an obscure corner of the public school sector-there are
7,000 charter schools across 43 states, serving a total of 3.2 million students. And those
schools often find themselves at the center
of fierce debates over issues including policy,
funding, and oversight.
Yet many in the public-even some policymakers and educators-can find themselves
confused about what a charter school really
is, or what forms charters can take on.
The simplest way to put it: A charter school
is a public school that is independently operated. Beyond the basics, however, there can
be much to differentiate one charter school
from another, ranging from management to
authorizers to the money that keeps it running. Additionally, charters can be affected
by local laws that may place regulations on
how a charter is allowed to run.
Here's a quick look at some of those issues,
ways that charter schools can differ, and potential strengths and weaknesses that come
with various approaches.

According to the National Association of
Charter School Authorizers, in 2013 school
districts authorized 56 percent of charters.
By 2017, this percentage had dropped to 48
percent, the most recent numbers available.
Who can authorize a charter school, and
whether there is a statewide authorizing
body, also varies based on state laws. According to the NACSA, school districts are authorizers in 32 states, and may act as authorizers in special cases in three states: Alabama,
Kentucky, and Maine.
How LEAs act as authorizers also depends
on state laws. According to the Education
Commission of the States, in California,
LEAs are the primary authorizers, but can
relinquish their authorizing authority to an
independent chartering board. In Minnesota,
however, LEAs are one of many authorities.

Co-Located Charters

Who Oversees Charters?
All charter schools must be authorized
by institutions that decide who can start
a new school and what is expected of that
school. These institutions also oversee a
school's performance. Overall, there are
six main types of authorizers: independent
chartering boards, state education agencies, higher education institutions, noneducational government entities, such as a
mayor's office, nonprofit organizations, and
school districts, (otherwise known as "local
education agencies," or LEAs).
In practice, the majority of charter schools
are authorized by local districts, although
the percentage has steadily decreased.

"Co-located" charters share a facility or
exist in close proximity to a traditional public school. These schools may be located in
large cities, where real estate is expensive,
and schools have to battle it out for available
space, or in rural towns where it may not be
financially viable to build a new facility.
Co-located facilities often are the source
of tension between the charter and the traditional public school sharing a space. For
example, one or the other school may have
to reserve areas of the facility, such as the
gym or field, ahead of time for events and activities. Advocates of charter and traditional
schools sometimes say one type of school
pulls students and resources away from the
other, starving its counterpart.
However, a study by Sarah Cordes, an assistant professor of education at the Temple
University College of Education, indicates
that co-locating may offer benefits to both
sides. Her study of 900,000 3rd to 5th graders in New York City found that when a
school shares a building with a charter,

Common-Core Testing 2.0:
Get Updated in 7 Questions
By Catherine Gewertz
A lot has changed with the
PARCC and Smarter Balanced
tests since they were first launched
in 2015. Here are a few things to
know about them.
PARCC isn't just a test now. It's an
item bank, too.
Whenever people I know talk about
PARCC, they're talking about a test.
What's an item bank?
Fair enough. Let me explain.
PARCC did start out as a full-length
test that students take at the end of
the year. But the PARCC consortium
changed its business model in 2015,
recognizing that fewer states wanted

that full-length test anymore. It decided to let states take a more customized approach.
Under the revised model, states
can now license the full PARCC
exam, or just some individual questions. That allows them to build
a test that's a mixture of PARCC
questions and questions they write
themselves. In 2017, the states in the
PARCC consortium hired a nonprofit
called New Meridian to oversee that
collection of 10,000-plus test questions-known as an item bank.
Does that mean states are now giving a
"partial PARCC" test?
Yes and no. A few states still give
the full PARCC exam. A few oth-

levels of engagement and safety increase.
Co-located schools reported small increases
in attendance for both types of schools, and
a 20 to 40 percent decrease in the number
of students retained for not performing at
grade level, according to the study.

Privately Operated Charters

'Affiliated' Charters
With funding from the district and governance by the school board, so-called "affiliated" charter schools-a term mainly
used by the Los Angeles Unified School District-offer limited autonomy and flexibility.
Unlike most independent charter schools,
which are given as much self-governance
as permitted by law, affiliated charters are
largely indistinguishable from traditional
public schools.
While the term may be associated with
Los Angeles, which has about 50 districtaffiliated charter schools, some other states
have charters that essentially act as affiliated charters due to strict laws governing
schools. Maryland charters, for example,
must adhere to the district's collective-bargaining agreement, hire certified teachers
(charters may apply for exemptions from
both), and participate in the state retirement system. There is no explicit language
under Maryland's charter law that provides
them with fiscal and legal autonomy with
an independent board.
In effect, affiliated charters must adhere
to district guidelines and curriculum, use
district facilities, and hire district teachers. Additionally, they are bound by union
bargaining agreements, and, in the case of
LAUSD, teachers may go on strike hand in
hand with their noncharter counterparts.
Still, affiliated charters typically have more
flexibility than traditional public schools
in that they have some site-based freedom
over non-state funding and educational
programming, including texts, methods, and
testing.

The majority of charter schools are privately operated, usually by nonprofit and, in some states,
for-profit education management organizations.
Some organizations own and operate charter
schools across the country. For example, KIPP,
a network of charter schools operated by a nonprofit of the same name, has 224 college-preparatory charter schools across the country.
KIPP is an example of a charter management
organization (or CMO), which either manages
certain aspects of a charter school for a board
or an entire network of schools. Although KIPP
is run by one nonprofit entity, different boards
manage each school.
Education management organizations (or
EMOs) are typically run by for-profit organizations, which manage all aspects of the school and
students' education.
Unlike affiliated charters, privately operated
charters have the freedom to stray from certain
district and union rules. For example, privately
operated charters can implement longer school
days or years, enforce students to wear uniforms,
or incorporate different topics in the curriculum.
This freedom, however, can raise concerns
about transparency and accountability. Critics of
privately operated charters have also expressed
concerns over how such schools use tax dollars.
Many of these factors are dependent on the
authorizers who oversee such charters.
"If you have a good authorizer and a good accountability system, ... then [charter schools] are
accountable to the public for their performance."
said Nathan Barrett, the senior director of research and evaluation at the National Alliance
for Public Charter Schools.
Coverage of how parents work with educators,
community leaders and policymakers to make
informed decisions about their children's education
is supported by a grant from the Walton Family
Foundation, at waltonk12.org. Education Week
retains sole editorial control over the content of this
coverage.

ers are licensing questions from
the item bank that contains all
of PARCC's original content. But
New Meridian has developed test
questions for the item bank, too.
Some of those questions are also in
circulation.

No. Smarter Balanced offers states
two options: buy the full test by itself,
or buy the full test plus a package of
other resources, such as formative
tools-exercises that are designed
to support and gauge learning as it
happens-and interim tests.

Then can we still call these things
"PARCC" tests?

I thought PARCC and Smarter Balanced
were tests. What are these consortia?

Right now, most of the questions in
the New Meridian item bank were
designed by the PARCC states. But
by the spring of 2020, most items
that states license will likely have
been designed by New Meridian, in
consultation with state departments
of education and teachers.
Smarter Balanced is still a fulllength test, and only a full-length
test.

They are tests. But those tests got
their names from the big groups of
states that designed them.

So Smarter Balanced doesn't let states
use just some questions from its item
bank?

States? That rings a bell. Refresh my
memory.
The U.S. Department of Education
wanted to create tests that states
should share to measure students'
mastery of the Common Core State
Standards, which came out in 2010.
The feds handed out $360 million in
grants for that project. But they required that big groups of states band

together to design the tests.
Two consortia of states won that
money: The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, and the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Career.
They each got nicknames: PARCC
and Smarter Balanced.
Do the consortia exist anymore?
There is still a consortium of 12
Smarter Balanced states that share
decisionmaking about test design
and other business. All 12 administer
the Smarter Balanced assessment.
The PARCC consortium disbanded
in 2017 after transferring all of its
test questions to the Council of Chief
State School Officers, an organization that represents state school superintendents.
The only "PARCC" that still exists
is in the form of test content: those
legacy questions in the New Meridian item bank.

EDUCATION WEEK | February 27, 2019 | www.edweek.org | 7
http://www.waltonk12.org http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - February 27, 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - February 27, 2019
