Education Week - June 15, 2022 - 9

What's Behind the
Fight Over the Biden
Administration's
Stance on Charter
School Funding
By Libby Stanford
The Biden administration's push
to tighten the use of federal charter
school aid continues to draw heat,
with the U.S. Department of Education
combing through more than
26,000 public comments on rules it
proposed in March.
The changes would add restrictions
on schools applying for the federal
Charter School Program, which
provides grant money to charters in
their first three years of operation.
Since its inception in 1995 through
July 2019, the program awarded over
$3.9 billion to fund public charter
schools, according to the most-recent
data from the Education Department's
office of elementary and
secondary education. From 2006 to
2017, schools received an average of
about $500,000 each from the grants
included in the program.
The Biden administration's intent
is to put a tighter leash on the use of
the federal money by private entities
and prevent premature closure
of charters. The administration also
hopes to maximize community support
and assure charters don't interfere
with school desegregation efforts.
But for some in the charter community,
the proposals are an attack on
the education model itself. Since they
were released, charter school advocates
including Colorado Gov. Jared
Polis, a group of 18 Republican congressional
lawmakers, and the National
Alliance for Public Charter Schools,
have spoken out against them.
The Education Department is in
the process of developing the final
rules and has not said when they will
be released. In the meantime, here are
details on some of the most controversial
elements, what supporters and
opponents say about them, and where
the process stands.
Charter school closure rates
are a top administration
concern
From 2006 through 2017, the office
of elementary and secondary education
provided grants to 3,138 schools
through the program.
But 15 percent of the charter schools
that receive funding through the federal
program either never open or
close before the three-year grant is
complete, said Jessica Cardichon, a
deputy assistant secretary with the
U.S. Department of Education's policy
development office.
From 2014 to 2018, charter schools
had a higher annual closure rate-5.4
percent-than private and traditional
public schools, according to a study
from the National Center for Research
on Education Access and Choice, a
nonprofit providing research to inform
school choice policies.
Education Department officials
hope the new rules will support successful
charter schools that remain
open long after three years, Cardichon
said.
" There is a place for high-quality
charter schools across all of our grant
programs, " she said. " We are always
looking for ways to strengthen the
implementation of those programs. "
But charter school supporters feel
officials shouldn't dwell on closure
rates because of three- to four-year
lags in data that make it hard to determine
what is happening in real time.
Instead, they say, officials should
focus their efforts on rewarding charter
schools that are successful.
" I would steer clear of micromanagement
and instead think of all the
positive things charters have done
and reward those behaviors, " said
Nina Rees, president and CEO of the
National Alliance for Public Charter
Schools.
Community impact as a
major flashpoint
Broadly, the proposed rules would
require charter school applicants to
have a better understanding of how
their schools would impact local public
school districts and demonstrate
no ties to for-profit companies.
Charter advocates are concerned
that the proposed rules will discourage
incoming charter schools from
pursuing grants, preventing schools
that don't already have substantial
outside funding from coming to
fruition. Fifty percent of all charter
schools rely on the program for their
initial funding, Rees said.
" If the funds are this complicated
to access it will dampen the sector's
interest in opening more schools, "
Rees said. " A lot of charter management
organizations that were potentially
relying on these funds to take
their schools to more neighborhoods
may think twice. "
Under the proposed rules, applicants
would have to complete a community
impact analysis to demonstrate
the need for a new school in the area.
The analysis also would require applicants
to show that the new charter
school wouldn't negatively affect desegregation
efforts in public school districts.
Charter applicants would have
to describe the steps they would take
Charter school parents staged a counter protest during a 2019 march in Sacramento, Calif., where advocates called for
more public schools funding.
to avoid increasing racial or socioeconomic
isolation in the public schools
from which students would potentially
be drawn to attend the charter.
While charter school advocates
aren't against efforts to desegregate
schools, Rees said the community
impact analysis adds an unnecessary
step to the process. Often charter
school authorizers, the organizations
that govern charter schools, require
school applicants to complete something
similar to the proposed impact
analysis, she said.
" The key issue here is [federal officials
are] acting as if these conversations
are not taking place and that
somehow people were opening charter
schools by not taking these things
into account, " Rees said.
The proposed rules acknowledge
that charter authorizers already require
incoming schools to present
data on academic achievement, demographics,
and enrollment and retention
rates of students in surrounding
public schools. The community
impact analysis, and the desegregation
requirement within it, are meant
to build upon that.
" The administration from day one
has been focused on promoting racial
and socioeconomic diversity, " Cardichon
said.
Using excessive enrollment
in existing schools as a
measure of demand
One of the proposed requirements
within the community impact analysis
would have the applicants demonstrate
sufficient demand for a charter
school by indicating overenrollment
in public schools. The proposal raised
alarm among many in the charter
community, who argue that overenrollment
in public schools should not
be a requirement for a charter school.
The Education Department has
since clarified that overenrollment is
one of a number of factors that could
demonstrate need. Applicants can include
other factors that show a need
for the school, such as evidence of
demand for specialized instructional
approaches.
" Traditional public schools do the
same thing before they build a new
school, getting a sense of will they
have sufficient students to maintain
a certain level of enrollment, " Cardichon
said. " The idea that we're doing
something different, we think is a
misconception. "
Proposed partnerships
with public schools
When the proposed rules were first
released, many in the charter community
were also concerned about a
section that indicated charter schools
would have to partner with a public
school district in order to receive the
funding.
The proposed rules state that applicants
" must propose to collaborate
with at least one traditional public
school or traditional school district in
an activity that would be beneficial
to all partners in the collaboration
and lead to increased educational
opportunities and improved student
outcomes. "
The idea is that charter schools and
traditional public schools can benefit
from a partnership with each other,
sharing information on best practices
and systems of support for their
communities. But charter school supporters
worried the rules meant that
they would have to get sign-off from a
public school district in order to open.
The department has since clarified
that it has not yet decided whether the
partnerships will be a requirement.
The public comments, which the department
collected through April 13,
will help inform that decision.
The fight against for-profit
connections
Throughout his presidential campaign
and into his administration,
President Joe Biden has admonished
charter schools that operate under
for-profit companies.
The new rules take those statements
further by requiring applicants
to prove they are not under the control
of a for-profit company. Under
the proposal, applicants would have
to divulge if they have planned or
already entered into a contract with
a for-profit education management
organization.
Schools that plan to contract with
for-profit organizations have to describe
all the details of that contract,
including the amount of federal
funds that would be used to pay for
services under the contract, information
on the governing board members
of the organization, and any conflicts
of interest.
" One of the first [policy objectives]
that this president has spoken clearly
about is around ensuring federal
dollars do not go to for-profit charter
schools, " Cardichon said.
While she acknowledges that forprofit
companies can cause problems in
the charter school space, Rees doesn't
believe the regulations will ultimately
help bring in more well-meaning nonprofit
schools. Schools that contract
with for-profit entities are less likely to
need the funding provided by the program,
she said.
The rules " ultimately are going to
hurt the very people you're trying to
help, " Rees said.
Who wants to see these
new rules?
For proponents of traditional public
schools who are critical of the charter
sector, the proposed rules would
represent a welcome change.
Much of what is included mirrors
what is required of traditional public
schools when they are gathering funding
to open, said Carol Burris, director
of the Network for Public Education,
a group dedicated to promoting traditional
public schools. The network has
published multiple reports on charter
school closures and corruption.
" [The proposed rules] will go a
long way to addressing the problem
that we identified in our reports,
which was the problem of schools
that either never opened ... or schools
that opened, never really get the enrollment,
and wind up closing, " Burris
said. " It's hard for me to understand
why there is so much resistance
to that concept. "
EDUCATION WEEK | June 15, 2022 | www.edweek.org | 9
Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle via AP
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Education Week - June 15, 2022

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