CER Press Release
Washington, D.C.
January 16, 2012

With fewer than half of the U.S.’s state charter school laws earning a satisfactory grade, policymakers this year are faced with enormous challenges. The success of these new public schools is unparalleled, with more than 2 million students today attending in excess of 6,000 public charter schools. Yet, with fewer than half of the states able to meet the demands of parents and educators who want the freedom to choose charter schools, state laws simply must improve to ensure growth and sustainability.

This is the conclusion of the 14th annual Charter School Laws Across the States Ranking and Scorecard produced by The Center for Education Reform. Among the nation’s 43 charter school laws, there are only four As, nine Bs, 19 Cs and the remaining 11 states earned Ds and Fs.

“At 21 years old, the national charter school movement is only making satisfactory progress,” said CER president Jeanne Allen. “Satisfactory progress is not good enough for our students’ report cards and it shouldn’t be good enough for our state report cards. In the past two years, we’ve seen two new charter laws but both are average in their construction, unlikely to yield large numbers of successful charter schools, and only minimal state improvements. Many states failed to advance substantive reform in 2012, a fact we hope to see change this year.”

Only four states improved their laws since the Center’s report card was issued last year, but nowhere near the trends of the late 1990s era when 17 states created or amended charter school laws.

Since 1996 the Center has studied and evaluated charter school laws based on their construction and implementation, and whether they yield the intended result of charter school policy, which is to ensure the creation of numerous quality learning opportunities for children.

The annual charter school rankings are a critical component of The Center for Education Reform’s Parent Power Index©, which together with the other key elements of reform make up the complete index. Many states will see changes in their scores on the Parent Power Index as a result of the Charter School Laws Across the States Ranking and Scorecard, which will be available to the public January 22.

“As policymakers consider changes to their charter school laws, they also need to be mindful of what it takes to have truly great education reform policies across all issues.” Allen said. “If a charter school law isn’t strong, school choice options minimal or non-existent, digital learning exists for the few over the many, and teacher quality measures are not assured, students will not have opportunities they need and deserve.”

CER’s 2013 Charter School Laws Across the States Ranking and Scorecard are reflected at http://www.edreform.com/in-the-states. The revised Parent Power Index© for States, 2013, will be available January 22.

For the past few years, states have been busy writing and revising their laws on charter schools—in most cases, with an eye toward expansion. Today, a pro-charter advocacy group released a guide meant to give states some direction in this regard.

The Center for Education Reform’s model charter school legislation reflects the organization’s view of the features of a strong charter laws, some of which are bound to prompt disagreement.

The guidance calls for multiple, independent authorizers of charter schools, including not just local school boards, but also public charter school boards, state boards of education, mayors of cities, and boards of trustees of higher education institutions.

Many pieces of the model law will unquestionably please backers of charter schools. The guidance says that there should be no caps on charter school growth (those limits are in place in many states), and it says charters should receive funding from federal, state, and local sources “that is equal to the amount that a traditional public school would receive for that same pupil.”

Other recommendations are likely to prove more controversial. For instance, the center recommends that for-profit companies, not just nonprofit organizations, be allowed to manage charter schools.

The presence of for-profits in the charter school landscape is a divisive issue, with critics of charter schools, and even some of their supporters, questioning whether those companies will look out for students’ and communities’ best interests.

But the center says it doesn’t matter if a for-profit or a nonprofit is the education management organization as a school, as long as they’re subject to strong oversight.

“If strong, independent authorizers are already in place in a state, then charter schools or their EMOs will be held responsible and accountable for their actions,” the center argues, in language accompanying the model legislation. “The law should not restrict whether for-profit or nonprofit groups should be allowed, or restrict how or what they manage within charter schools.”

[CLARIFICATION (Oct. 16): This item originally said that the Center for Education Reform was recommending that for-profit organizations be allowed to "operate" charter schools. The center's model legislation instead says for-profits should be able to "manage" schools by providing various educational and administrative services. This is not the same as the center's definition of an operator, which it says is the entity that opens the school and holds its charter.]

Forty one states today allow charter schools. The model legislation is not just meant for the nine holdouts, said Alison Consoletti, the center’s vice president or research. The hope is that the states with laws already on the books will consider reshaping their laws to conform with the center’s guidance.

Press Release
Download or print your PDF copy of The Essential Guide to Charter School Lawmaking: Model Legislation for States Grounded in Experience and Practice

CER Press Release
Washington, DC
April 2, 2012

The wide variations in charter school laws state by state average out to a grade in need of improvement, according to The Essential Guide to Charter School Law by the Center for Education Reform. In its 13th annual analysis of laws across the states, CER, the leading advocate for substantive and structural change in US education, documents the conditions for effective laws that support the growth and success of these proven models of public schooling.

“Charter schools — public schools, open by choice, accountable for results and free from most rules and regulations that stifle progress in traditional schools — are permitted in 41 states and the District of Columbia, and yet the conditions for success in those states compromise the availability of great new public schools that parents and students most need and deserve,” said CER President Jeanne Allen. “While some state laws are still as great as intended when they were created, many states, just like schools that complain they are forced to ‘teach to the test’ rather than deliver exceptional education, have just gone through the motions, passing laws that give very little life to charter school reforms.”

The 2012 report analyzes each law against nationally recognized benchmarks that most closely dictate the impact of charter school policies on healthy, sustainable charter schools. Components such as the creation of multiple independent authorizers and fiscal equity can transform a state’s educational culture. States that do so include Washington, DC, Minnesota and Indiana. The lack of components that ensure operational freedom, equity and alternate paths to authorizing limits charter progress and often leads to contentious charter battles. States such as Virginia and Georgia are notable in this category.

The US GPA of 2.1 -a ‘C’ – on state charter school laws is a result of states having earned five A grades, nine Bs, seventeen Cs, seven Ds and four Fs. Categories ranked include: the existence of multiple independent authorizers, number of schools allowed, operational autonomy, and fiscal equity when compared to their conventional public school peers.

“This should be a wake up call to everyone from reformers to the President. Just having a law is not even half the battle,” writes Allen in the report’s introduction. “Knowing how to understand a law and implement it is the most essential act anyone engaged in lawmaking will ever undertake, and this report is for and about the hundreds of local, state and national policymakers whose pens and keyboards create the laws that can transform — or erect barriers to — true educational progress for all children.”

An online press briefing on the report’s findings will be held Monday, April 2nd at 1:30p EST. The briefing can be accessed here.

DOWNLOAD: Charter School Laws Across the States 2012 – The Essential Guide to Charter School Law

In response to President Barack Obama’s remarks today on his Administration’s education reform initiatives and Race to the Top competition, Center for Education Reform president Jeanne Allen released the following statement:

Today, President Obama championed his administration’s education reform initiatives in a Wisconsin speech, focusing on states that he claims are leading the charge for education reform.

The Obama Administration has jumped on board the charter school bandwagon and, in doing so, is telling states they must do better and create or fix laws in order to compete for their share of $4.3 billion in federal “Race to the Top” funds.

As admirable as the Obama administration’s policy on charters may appear to be, the President and his Education Secretary are, too often, giving states credit for talking about charter schools rather than actually changing laws to improve the likelihood that children will have real school choice.

For example, Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s description of reforms in Tennessee, Rhode Island, Indiana, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Illinois has been misleading. While the Secretary has said that ‘numerous states have adopted reforms that would have been almost unthinkable a year ago,’ this is simply not the case.

No state cited in this popular mythology has revoked limits on the number of charters allowed to open this year. Several, in fact, merely fulfilled budgetary promises of charter funding after having first wiped them off the books.

In reality, most of the nation’s 40 charter laws will need dramatic legislative changes to develop robust charter laws that actually allow for the growth of the types of schools both President Obama and Secretary Duncan routinely credit with raising academic achievement and turning around students’ lives.

We want to see states get bold and adopt strong charter laws – which everyone knows how to do, but often aren’t courageous enough to buck the status quo, the unions, and even continued ignorance of what precisely a charter school is. But that isn’t happening.

For President Obama and his Education Secretary to claim victory before “Race” participants have even reached the starting gate is disappointing.

It is time that President Obama and Secretary Duncan stop championing half measures and start demanding real results and bold changes in state laws.