Report Card: Charter School Laws

Fourteen out of 41 U.S. states and federal districts that operate charter schools earned a grade of B or higher on The Center for Education Reform’s annual report card.

Another report from Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes published different results on the performance of charter school students in 16 states.

The Center for Education Reform’s report gave A grades to the District of Columbia, Minnesota and California for passing strong charter school laws and implementing them. Their laws empower authorizers such as nonprofit groups and universities to hold schools accountable, said Alison Consoletti, director of research for the center.  

They also allow charter schools to grow freely, provide the same amount of funding for them as they do for their district counterparts and give them control over their curriculum, budget and other areas.

“If you can eliminate all those obstacles, you’re setting them up for success to begin with,” Consoletti said.

The balancing act

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has been pushing states to eliminate caps on the number of charters that they operate and enticed them with the pot of economic stimulus dollars from the $5 billion Race to the Top fund. But that’s just a small piece of the picture, said Jonathan Oglesby, a spokesman for the center. South Carolina, for example, does not set charter limits, but also does not provide equitable funding for charter schools, so it earned a C grade.  

In F-rated Kansas and Virginia, the law allows charter schools to open without any limitations; however, that’s not what the state practices, Consoletti said. Virginia only has four, and while Kansas has 40, its law is weak in other areas, including independence, funding and authorizers.

“If a charter school doesn’t have the same funding from the beginning, that’s a much bigger hurdle for them to overcome,” Consoletti said. “It’s putting them at a disadvantage from the day they open.”

On the flip side, D-rated North Carolina caps charter schools at 100 and has stayed at their cap for more than five years, which inhibits growth and the infusion of new ideas into its education system.  

“They’re stuck, basically,” Consoletti said, “and they haven’t really done anything in the legislature to fix that.”

Road to improvement

If these states want to improve their grades, they need to change their laws so that authorizers besides local education boards, which generally do not support charter schools, can create and manage the schools.

For example, Central Michigan University authorizes about 50 schools in the state and created an office to hold them accountable. The state received a B grade for its strong laws and practices.

 

Model practices

In 1991, Minnesota became the first state to pass a charter school law, which Joe Nathan –– a senior fellow and director of the Center for School Change, a program of the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota –– helped write. The charter law rests on three principals:

1. People should have an opportunity to carry out their dreams ...
2. as long as they’re willing to be responsible for results.
3. The state believes in the freedom to create new kinds of public schools that are open to all kids and receive greater flexibility in exchange for greater accountability.

“One of the things that’s been very encouraging has been that a number of districts in rural and urban areas have responded to the charter law by creating new options within the district,” Nathan said.

Parents have lobbied for many of those options, including opening an arts school, making teachers the majority on some education boards, starting a Chinese elementary immersion school and creating a seventh- through 12th-grade Montessori school. Many of the state’s schools have improved student achievement, but others were closed because of poor performance.  

“What we’re trying to do," Nathan said, "is to help all youngsters achieve their potential.”

State and federal district report card

A grade
District of Columbia, Minnesota, California

B grade
Utah, Arizona, New York, Michigan, Indiana, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Mexico

C grade
Wisconsin, Georgia, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada

D grade
Texas, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Illinois, Tennessee, New Hampshire, Arkansas, Maryland, Rhode Island, Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Wyoming

F grade
Kansas, Virginia, Iowa, Mississippi