Renewal Season Under COVID: Requires Changes in Practice
Colorado charter school authorizers are finalizing renewal decisions despite challenges COVID has inserted into the process. Colorado’s authorizers are developing new ways to assess the quality of school operations fairly and accurately while remaining focused on what is best for students in this environment. Two CACSA members have adjusted their approach significantly, and their lessons may help other districts.
Denver Public Schools (DPS) and the Charter School Institute (CSI) are Colorado’s two largest authorizers, overseeing 58 and 42 charter schools, respectively. Both strive to hold schools accountable during the pandemic. Various tools from these authorizers are available at the CACSA Resource Library.
Despite changes in the available data, CSI and DPS did not abandon their obligation to hold schools accountable. Instead, they adjusted their oversight systems, which were already rigorous and sophisticated. Their new approaches allow them to understand how well schools are doing. They still know when to close a school that is not viable or not serving children well. They also have ways to insist on and encourage improvement when closure is not in the best interest of students, but change is genuinely needed. In the future, other districts should consider adopting strategies DPS and CSI are implementing now.
Their approaches provide transparency and predictability to schools, protecting parents’ and students’ sense of control. There are many things we can’t control these days. So it is no small accomplishment to create systems that allow schools to focus on how best to serve students every day and give parents clear signals about their long-term options.
DPS significantly changed its approach in the last two years.
Pre-COVID, their approach’s sophistication matched the scale and diversity of their schools. They frequently use charter contracts of various lengths with conditions customized to school challenges that incentivize or require the school to reach targets to receive renewals. DPS offers some schools automatic contract extensions when they meet goals, which eases the burden on both sides. This approach allows a district with many renewals each year to develop evidence-based justifications for each recommendation nuanced to a school’s situation. This highly-differentiated approach makes it easier for the DPS board to manage a high volume of decisions each year.
Since COVID, DPS has adjusted its approach to performance frameworks, incorporated additional school data, and revised its approach to site visits (both remote and in-person). DPS identifies and tracks problems in ways that allows the district to insist on change. This approach also allows the district to track and document whether schools solve them.
During this round, the process has smoothed one tricky situation. The DPS staff recommended the closure of the Reach Charter School, which received a one-year renewal last year. The small school is designed with an inclusive approach to serving students with disabilities. It faced enrollment challenges and other issues. After reviewing the staff recommendation, the Reach board voted to surrender their charter at the end of this year. They announced their decision early enough to allow current students’ families to participate in the district’s open-enrollment process, easing the disruption to students. DPS has had several schools surrender their charters in the last decade — and has not faced a single appeal of a closure during that time.
The systems built and evolving in Denver provide transparency to all the stakeholders, making things more predictable and manageable for families. Smoothing transitions is critical when schools need to close, but it also builds better relationships when things are going well. That makes it easier for an authorizer to partner with their charters to address shared challenges.
Like DPS, CSI faces many renewals each year. Before the pandemic, they already had a sophisticated system for tracking school performance, a model for Colorado districts. They have provided clear criteria for what kinds of data schools can add and how CSI will evaluate proposed data before it is included. Their site visit protocols have also been updated to address the current school environment.
CSI’s approach has evolved over the last two years. In the first year of the pandemic CSI focused on schools that were lower performing and that were recently showing downward trends, allowing these schools to provide supplemental data. This last year, with even more schools missing data, they divided their portfolio into two groups. Schools performing in the top half were expected to provide supplemental data for an “expanded body of evidence review”. The schools in the lower half of performance were required to provide additional “replacement data.” This approach allows CSI to understand better the schools that are most in need of a close examination while maintaining rigorous standards for the data they incorporate into school accountability.
These are challenging days for authorizers. Charter school accountability is difficult during the pandemic, but Colorado’s biggest authorizers have been modifying their oversight tools. Their strategies maintain accountability for performance, allow the authorizer to understand how schools manage, and give them leverage to focus on the schools that need the most attention. Even our largest authorizers are finding ways to customize their approach to reflect each school’s individual circumstances. CACSA is eager to help districts consider these and other promising practices.
We look forward to working with you on challenges like these in 2022.
Alex Medler