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Charter schools serve about three million students across 42 states and the District of Columbia. To clarify, charter schools are public schools operated by independent organizations, usually nonprofits. Most are schools of choice, and unlike magnet schools in traditional districts, they are not allowed to select their students. If too many students apply, they hold lotteries to see who gets in. Charter schools are freed from many of the rules that constrain district-operated schools. In exchange for increased autonomy, they are held accountable for their performance through contracts with authorizers.
Each state’s charter law empowers a variety of different agencies to authorize charters. The most common types of authorizers are a local school board, a state education agency, higher education institutions, and statewide bodies set up for the sole purpose of overseeing charter schools. Authorizers vet and approve charter school applications, and they also close or replace underperforming schools.
Based on both performance and sustainability, charter schools have been the most successful education improvement strategy of the millennium, and they’ve been particularly effective at educating low-income students. In places like New Orleans, Denver, and Washington, D.C., the charter formula – school-level autonomy, accountability, diversity of school design, and parental choice – has proven far more effective than the centralized, bureaucratic approach inherited from the 20th century.
However, over the last few years, the growth of charter schools across the nation has slowed. In an effort to understand this decline in growth, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) examined charter school proposals and approvals over the last five years, analyzing 3,000 charter school applications to authorizers in the 20 states that oversee nearly two-thirds of charters nationwide. Their new report Reinvigorating the Pipeline: Insights into Proposed and Approved Charter Schools unearths important facts about the nation’s charter school pipeline, facts that also dispel some of the commonly perpetuated myths about charter schools.
Coinciding with the decline in charter growth has been the emergence of a nationwide anti-charter propaganda campaign, generated by the teachers unions and their allies, that has resulted in widespread misinformation about charter schools. Anti-charter activists decry charters as both a failed educational experiment and a corporate attempt to “privatize” America’s public schools. Unfortunately, previous studies have shown that Americans overall – especially those who have been exposed to charters only through media coverage – don’t have a clear understanding of what charter schools are. As a result, they’re susceptible to these well-trodden myths.
At a time where charter school waitlists continue to grow and many children lack access to quality school options, NACSA’s report provides valuable data that not only has important implications for the future of charter school growth but also separates the facts about the charter school landscape from the all-too-common fictional narratives.
Five New Findings About The Charter Landscape And Why They Matter
Finding One: Proposals For “No Excuses” Schools Have Declined Significantly Over The Last Five Years, Highlighting An Increasingly Diverse Pool Of Charter School Applications
Applications for “no excuses” charter schools – schools with a culture of high expectations, strict discipline policies, and an unrelenting focus on college – fell sharply over the last five years in all 20 states studied. In 2017-2018, “no excuses” schools made up just 7% of all schools proposed, down from 14% in 2013-2014. In addition, the approval rate of “no excuses” schools fell from 65% to 39%, suggesting that authorizers are less likely to approve the model than they were five years ago.
Charter authorizers nationwide actually received proposals for an increasingly diverse variety of school models, including STEM, Classics-based, policy-oriented, dual language, diverse by design and more.
Why Finding Number One Matters
The national media often showcases “no excuses” schools as the typical charter model when, in fact, mature charter sectors contain a variety of educational models to meet the needs and interests of a variety of students.
Kids come from different backgrounds, speak different languages, and have different interests. They also thrive in different educational environments. Cities with robust charter sectors, like New Orleans where almost 100% of public school students attend charter schools and Washington, D.C. where nearly 50% of the public school students attend them, have become fertile grounds for growing schools with innovative learning models. These cities have an abundance of school models – residential, Montessori, computer science-focused, environmental-focused, and more – in addition to the “no excuses” model.
NACSA’s finding highlights that charter sectors provide public school parents and students with access to many different types of schools, a fact which is often ignored in the national discourse.
However, the report also revealed that authorizers still remain more likely to approve some models, like Classics-based schools, than others, like single-sex schools. From 2013 to 2018, Classics-based schools made up 4% of schools proposed but had an approval rate of 57% while single-sex schools made up 3% of proposed schools but had an approval rate of only 21%.
While the report did not include data on proposal quality or parental demand, which authorizers certainly take into account when approving applications, it seems unlikely that all applications for Classics-based schools would be on average twice as good as those for single-sex schools. As such, this finding also suggests that authorizers may need to rethink their capacity for evaluating a wider diversity of school models. After all, authorizers have a tremendous impact on the charter landscape, especially in terms of the types and numbers of schools available to families.
Finding Two: Both Proposals For, And Approval Of, For-Profit Charter Schools Have Declined Significantly Over The Last Five Years
The proportion of proposals to open a charter school affiliated with a for-profit operator, also known as an education management organization (EMO), fell by 50% over the last five years, from 21% of all new school proposals in 2013-2014 to 10% in 2017-2018.
Why Finding Number Two Matters
Unions and other opponents of school reform fixate on for-profit charter operators, whom they accuse of privatizing public education and profiting at children’s expense. In reality, the overwhelming majority of charters are operated by nonprofit organizations. Many states have banned for-profit operators, which manage less than 15% of the nation’s approximately 7,000 public charter schools.
Because the data reveals that most applications had no affiliation with a for-profit institution, this finding shows that for-profit operators – never common to begin with – are becoming less widespread. In general, this is a positive development for the charter sector as most for-profit operators have not been nearly as successful at creating high quality schools as their nonprofit counterparts.
Finding Three: Proposals for “Freestanding” Charter Schools Are At A Five-Year High
Groups of educators, community organizations and parents often submit applications for freestanding charter schools, which NACSA defines as schools unaffiliated with either a for-profit education management organization or nonprofit charter management organization (CMO). The report’s authors found that most of the charter applications submitted over the last five years were for freestanding schools. In 2017-2018, proposals for these charter schools made up 55% of all applications for new schools.
Why Finding Number Three Matters
The national narrative around the charter sector tends to focus on large charter networks. Advocates often highlight the success these networks have had at educating disadvantaged students while critics usually condemn the schools for their educational practices since some employ a “no excuses” model. Regardless, this finding shows that most of the charter school applications submitted over the last five years have actually been for freestanding schools.
Freestanding schools occupy an important place in the charter landscape. Recognizing the need for alternative educational models, dedicated educators, community organizations and/or parents often launch a charter in order to provide families with access to a previously unavailable school model that’s designed to serve the specific needs of the children in their community. While charter management organizations like IDEA, KIPP and Success Academy have had tremendous success at educating low-income students and have positively impacted the charter sector as a whole, many of the sector’s most innovative learning models are piloted at freestanding charters.
Despite the high number of freestanding applications, NACSA’s report also suggests that school proposals affiliated with a network of any kind are much more likely to receive approval than individual proposals. Over the last five years, 61% of schools approved were associated with a charter network. The quality of proposals from charter network affiliates might be significantly stronger than proposals from independent applicants, but it’s also possible that some authorizers consider a proven operator more likely to succeed than an independent charter school. If authorizers become overly risk-averse and avoid taking chances on new freestanding schools, the charter sector runs the risk of missing out on the innovative contributions of these schools.
Finding Four: Few Charter School Applications Include External Financial Support
Over the last five years, most charter school applications did not identify any philanthropic support (defined as a commitment of $50,000 or more). Only 15% of school proposals specified such support; however, proposals that had secured these financial commitments were more likely to be authorized, with an approval rate of 52%.
Why Finding Number Four Matters
Anti-charter activists and teacher union representatives love to claim that “billionaires” and “Wall Street guys” open public charter schools, but it’s unlikely that billionaires are submitting proposals for these schools given that most applicants lacked external funding commitments of at least $50,000.
Many charters close for financial rather than academic reasons, so authorizers understandably value signs of financial security and stability in an application. Because most charter schools nationwide do not have access to facilities or local property tax revenue, they receive significantly less funding than their neighboring traditional public schools. Many charter opponents claim that the philanthropic donations charters receive are enough to close the public funding gap between charters and traditional public schools, but this finding implies that most new charters actually lack any substantial philanthropic support.
Finding Five: Charter Sectors Vary Widely From State To State
Previous studies have shown that charter performance varies from state to state, and NACSA’s report highlights that the charter landscape likewise differs between states.
The frequency of proposals for each school model varies significantly depending on the state. For instance, in Washington, D.C. one out of every three proposals received over the last five years was for a blended learning model (a school where students spend part of the day learning directly from the teacher and the other part engaged in online learning). On the other hand, authorizers in Connecticut and Massachusetts did not receive a single proposal for a blended learning school during that same time period. Inquiry-based models, like Montessori and Waldorf schools, made up 34% of the proposals in Arizona while in Indiana and Illinois they made up just 3%.
Operator type also differs greatly from state to state. In half the states studied, for-profit operators made up less than 10% of approved school proposals over the last five years; moreover, six states did not approve any schools affiliated with a for-profit EMO. EMOs actually represent a significant portion of approved schools in only four of the states studied: Florida, Ohio, Arizona, and North Carolina.
Why Finding Number Five Matters
Both charter critics and advocates often make blanket statements about charter schools, but, in truth, the quality and types of schools in the charter sector differs considerably between states. When it comes to charter schools, blanket statements have little meaning because the 42 states and the District of Columbia with charters all have different laws and practices. Any idea can be poorly done, and some states have done chartering poorly. Nevertheless, states that have embraced charter schools, adhered faithfully to the charter formula and put guardrails in place to ensure strong authorizing practices have created much-needed, high-quality public schools that have had a profound impact on both student achievement and the educational options available to families.
