Twelve studies find that overall gains in charter schools are larger than other public schools; four find charter schools’ gains higher in certain significant categories of schools; six find comparable gains; and, four find that charter schools’ overall gains lagged behind traditional schools.
Source: Charter School Achievement: What We Know, July 2005 Update
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Purpose:
A Charter School Accountability Plan should be designed to provide information needed to measure and track the school’s progress toward its goals, make program adjustments when needed, and report to parents, the community, and the chartering authority on performance and progress. The Accountability Plan is the mechanism through which the school indicates the goals (outcomes) and performance levels it elects to be held accountable for attaining. However, it is important to recognize that the performance of charter schools also will be compared by the public and the media to that of traditional public schools and with other public charter schools. The design of your Accountability Plan needs to acknowledge and prepare for this inevitable comparison.
Duration:
Although the Accountability Plan should provide information needed to assure strong performance and continuous improvement over the foreseeable future of the school, the Plan should place a particular emphasis on documenting performance and progress over a five-year period from receipt of the charter. By law, a charter review that examines the progress of the school in meeting the academic achievement expectations set forth in the charter (Accountability Plan) must be held once every five years, beginning on the fifth anniversary of the charter.
Organizing Framework:
An Accountability Plan needs an organizing framework. Below is an example of one organizing framework that includes the areas in which a charter school is expected to be accountable. However, the group may wish to organize the same concerns into a somewhat different set of categories.
- Is the educational program a success?
Is there evidence of significantly improved or persistently strong student performance?
Is the school making satisfactory progress meeting both its academic and non-academic goals?
- Is the school a viable organization?
Are the distinctive programs of the school fully implemented and operating as intended? Do teachers and other staff have the training and resources they need, and are they performing effectively?
Is the school maintaining effective leadership by its Board of Trustees, competent management of its operations, and responsible use of the public funds under its stewardship?
- Is the school in compliance with the rules under which it operates?
Is the school meeting the requirements of applicable laws and regulations?
Is the school meeting the terms of the charter agreement and faithfully implementing the plans contained in the application?
Essential Elements:
If an Accountability Plan is to be conceptually sound and useful to the school, there are certain essential elements or components that must be present. And these elements are related to one another in certain rational ways that are generally understood, but not always agreed upon in the technical fields of evaluation and assessment. We are interested in sound, though not necessarily elaborate design. We don’t believe there is a single best way to design an accountability plan. And we are particularly aware that each school is different with different goals and different strategies. Nevertheless, there are certain elements—give them different names if you like—that the Board would like to see incorporated into each Accountability Plan. Each of these elements is listed below, along with statements of the kinds of information that should be included in the development of each element.
1. A statement of challenging, measurable, attainable goals.
An Accountability Plan should contain:
- Goals that are a natural outgrowth of the mission of the school;
- Goals that focus on outcomes that are measurable, or that are accompanied by objectives that specify measurable outcomes for each goal;
- One or more goals that are related to each of the categories in the framework;
- Student performance goals that are linked to a well-defined set of academic standards that specify both content and performance; and
- Non-academic goals for the school that are related to such indicators as student attendance, graduation rates, types and frequency of disciplinary incidents (e.g., suspensions, expulsions), parent participation, etc.
2. A statement of student academic content and performance standards.
An Accountability Plan should be keyed to a comprehensive statement of academic standards that specifies for each subject or content area and for each grade, age, or other grouping level what students should know and be able to do. Although the student academic standards need only to be referenced in the Plan, they represent the foundation on which the school’s academic program is based. These standards should be challenging, clear, and measurable. Some schools already have developed or adapted a set of standards against which they have designed (or intend to design) their instructional and assessment programs, other schools have adopted an existing instructional program that is standards based, and others have a planning schedule that call for the adoption, adaptation, or creation of academic content and performance standards over the coming months.
Whatever the process may be, the Board expects that every school will in the near future have in place a systematic, comprehensive statement of student academic standards that provides a solid foundation for its educational program and an anchor for its Accountability Plan.
3. A set of performance indicators that specify what will be measured, counted, etc.
An Accountability Plan should contain:
- At least one indicator specified for each goal, with multiple indicators specified for some goals; and
- Indicators that are aligned with goals and that will provide a reasonable basis upon which to judge the degree to which the goal has been met.
4. Annual and long-term performance targets (benchmarks).
An Accountability Plan should contain:
- Provisions for establishing baseline performance levels for each goal and its associated indicator(s).
- One-year and five-year performance targets, as well as annual intermediate benchmarks for each performance indicator.
5. Measurement tools capable of supplying the information needed to judge performance.
An Accountability Plan should contain:
- A design for measuring student performance that—
-- will provide credible evidence of academic progress,
-- use corresponding assessment tools annually so as to produce longitudinal data over the term of the charter,
-- employ multiple tools for assessing student performance (which must include any required district-wide assessments, but may also include other norm referenced tests, criterion referenced tests, authentic or performance assessments such as student portfolios, tests that measure the mastery of academic standards, etc.);
- A schedule for administering assessment instruments and gathering other data; and
- A plan for arraying and analyzing data so that results can be presented in technically sound, understandable, and useful forms.
6. Strategies for supporting program improvement and continuous system renewal.
An Accountability Plan should contain:
- Strategies for using information produced by the Accountability Plan to strengthen the performance of the school.
- Procedures for assuring that accountability information is available and regularly considered in—
-- the management of the school;
-- the policymaking processes of the Board of Trustees;
-- plans for teacher professional development activities; and
-- the design of program and management adjustments that are intended to improve the future performance of particular programs, and of the charter school.
7. Procedures for reporting progress and for gauging customer satisfaction.
An Accountability Plan should contain:
- Sound plans for getting the views of students, parents, teachers, and the community on how well they believe the school is performing and how the school can be improved;
- Strategies for reporting annually to students, parents, teachers, the community, providing them with timely, credible, understandable, and useful information; and
- Plans that offer an opportunity for constituencies to raise and get answers to questions that may arise from the information that is reported.
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