Charter School Accountability


	Appendix B. Accountability Resources Accountability Initiative of the Charter Friends National Network http://www.charterfriends.org/cfi-accountability.html "Accountability: The Key to Charter Renewal" by Bruno Manno http://www.edreform.com Association for Performance-Based Accreditation http://www.apba-az.org/index.htm Charter-Granting Agencies Accountability Toolkit (Edition 4) http://www.cacharterschools.org Charter Friends National Network http://www.charterfriends.org Chicago's Charter School Accountability Documents Colorado League of Charter Schools' Accountability Plan Document http://www.charterfriends.org/accountability/cfi-accountability8.html# Colorado League of Charter Schools' Site Visit Team Leader Guide http://www.uscharterschools.org/pub/uscs_docs/r/co_team_ldr_guide.htm "A Comprehensive, Practical Guide to Holding Charter Schools Accountable" http://www.cacharterschools.org Consortium for Policy Research in Education http://www.upenn.edu/gse/cpre DC Public Charter School Board http://www.dcpubliccharter.com/ DC Public Charter School Board's Annual Report Guidelines http://www.uscharterschools.org/pub/uscs_docs/r/dc_annual_report.htm DC Public Charter School Board's Expectations Regarding Accountability http://www.uscharterschools.org/pub/uscs_docs/r/dc_expectations.htm "Filling In the Blanks: Putting Standardized Tests to the Test," by Gregory J. Cizek "A Guide for Chartering Entities" by Bryan C. Hassel, Gina Burkhardt, and Art Hood http://www.uscharterschools.org/pub/uscs_docs/fs/entities.htm Just for the Kids http://www.just4kids.org Los Angeles Charter School Evaluation http://www.wested.org/policy/pubs/full_text/lausd.htm Massachusetts Charter School Accountability Handbook Massachusetts Charter School Inspection Handbook National Association of Charter School Authorizers Greg Richmond, Director, Charter Schools Office, Chicago Public Schools tel 773-553-1535; email: grichmond@csc.cps.k12.il.us "Navigating the Standards Maze" http://www.cacharterschools.org "The New Accountability" by Susan H. Furhman http://www.upenn.edu/gse/cpre/frames/resrch.html "One Hand Tied: Defining and Measuring Charter School Performance" http://www.cacharterschools.org School Report Cards, Center for Market-Based Research at the Goldwater Institute "The State of Charter Schools 2000 - Fourth-Year Report of the National Study of Charter Schools" http://www.ed.gov/pubs/charter4thyear/ Endnotes Chester E. Finn, Jr., Bruno V. Manno and Gregg Vanourek, Charter Schools in Action: Renewing Public Education (Princeton: Princeton, 2000). Also see Paul Hill, Robin Lake, and Mary Beth Celio with Christine Campbell, Paul Herdman, and Katrina Bulkley, "A Study of Charter School Accountability" (submitted to the U.S. Department of Education, September 30, 1999). See Susan H. Fuhrman, "The New Accountability," Consortium for Policy Research in Education Policy Brief RB-27 (January 1999). This guide uses the terms "authorizer" and "charter-granting agency" to mean both the official public bodies authorized to grant charters and oversee charter schools and the staff hired by these agencies to carry out the work. Hill et al., 1999. The Consortium for Policy Research in Education also funded a substantial part of that research (see CPRE website: http://www.upenn.edu/gse/cpre). For more information on defining for whom and for what schools are accountable, see C. Abelmann, and R.F. Elmore with J. Even, S. Kenyon, and J. Marshall, "When Accountability Knocks, Will Anyone Answer?" Consortium for Policy Research in Education, CPRE Report Series RR-42 (1999). Also see F.M. Newmann, B. King and M. Rigdon, "Accountability and School Performance: Implications for Restructuring Schools." Harvard Education Review: vol. 67, no. 1 (Spring 1997). The authors use the term "agreement" to refer to the formal arrangement between authorizer and charter school about the terms of accountability. In some jurisdictions, this agreement takes the form of an actual contract. In others, it is part of a larger contract or "charter". In other cases, a less formal memorandum of understanding serves this purpose. For simplicity, the term "agreement" covers all of these particular legal approaches. For a detailed discussion of contracting in the U.S. see Paul Hill, Lawrence Pierce, and James Guthrie, Reinventing Public Education (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1997). Note also that the notion of contracting is not a new idea internationally. The World Bank has worked with governments around the world on various approaches to decentralization. See N.F. McGinn, "The Impact of Supranational Organizations on Public Education," International Journal of Educational Development. 14 (3) (1994): 289-298. From Hill et al., 1999, case studies. Bruno Manno, "Accountability: The Key to Charter Renewal," Washington: Center for Education Reform, 1999. For more information see Finn et al., 2000. Abelmann et al., 1999. Hill et al., 1999. Finn, et al., 2000, Chapter 11. Chicago Public Schools, Charter School Accountability Agreement, p. 2 (emphasis added). For a discussion of the predicted-gains approach being used in the broader statewide accountability systems of North Carolina and parts of Texas, see D. Grissmer and A. Flanagan, "Exploring Rapid Achievement Gains in North Carolina and Texas," (Washington, DC: National Education Goals Panel, 1998). The document is available online at the National Education Goals Panel website, http://www.negp.gov/issues/publication/negpdocs/negprep/rpt%5Fgrissmer/grissmer%5F2.pdf For example, a school with 400 students that had an average math score in the fourth grade of 23% proficiency rate would have a sampling error of six percent. This means that the actual average range of performance for this group of students was between 17% and 29% - a difficult range with which to make comparisons. Some state and district accountability systems build in incentives for schools to focus on low-performing subgroups. For example, the Texas Assessment and Accountability System (TAAS) rates schools in part based on the gains of the lowest performing tier of students in school as well as the gains of students by race. RPP International, The State of Charter Schools: Fourth-Year Report of the National Study of Charter Schools (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 2000): p. 54. Document is available on-line at http://www.ed.gov/pubs/charter4thyear For a treatment of broader issues in assessment, see Gregory J. Cizek, "Filling in the Blanks: Putting Standardized Tests to the Test," Fordham Report, Vol. 2, No. 11 (Oct. 1998). http://www.edexcellence.net/library/cizek.pdf From Hill et al., 1999, case studies. Massachusetts Charter School Inspection Handbook: p. 8. From Hill et al., 1999, case studies ibid. ibid. For a detailed discussion of the creation of transparent data systems for schools, see Finn et al., 2000, ch. 6. Interview with AZ State Senator John Huppenthal, from Gregg A. Garn and Robert T. Stout. "Closing Charters: How a Good Theory Failed in Practice," pages 142-158 in Robert A. Maranto et al., Eds. School Choice in the Real World: Lessons from Arizona Charter Schools (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999): p. 156. From Hill et al., 1999, case studies. ibid. ibid. ibid. The comments in this subsection were informed by a series of charter renewal simulations conducted in conjunction with Paul Hill and funded by the Gund Foundation. See the National Commission on Governing America's Schools, "Governing America's Schools: Changing the Rules." Denver: Education Commission of the States, 1999; Hill, Guthrie, and Pierce, 1997. This guide was published by Public Impact, an education policy and management consulting firm based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Bryan C. Hassel, director of Public Impact, consults widely on charter schools and education reform. He is the author of The Charter School Challenge: Avoiding the Pitfalls, Fulfilling the Promise (Brookings, 1999) and of numerous articles and reports on charter school finance and accountability. Bryan holds a doctorate in public policy from Harvard University. Paul Herdman is a doctoral candidate at Harvard University. Through the University of Washington's Center on Reinventing Public Education, he has contributed to the U.S. Department of Education study of charter school accountability and several publications related to urban school reform. Prior to his current work, Paul was a policymaker in the Massachusetts charter school office and co-founder and director of a school-within-a-school in New York City. For more information, contact: Public Impact 423 Hermitage Court, Charlotte, NC 28207 ph: 704-370-0357 fax: 704-333-8978 http://www.publicimpact.com Bryan Hassel's email: Bryan_Hassel@publicimpact.com Paul Herdman's email: Paul_Herdman@gse.harvard.edu
INTRODUCTION \| SETTING THE TERMS \| GATHERING DATA \| USING DATA \| CONCLUSION \| APPENDICES AND ENDNOTES