Short-Term Charter Renewals Provide Options: CSI and DPS Discuss how they use this strategy
I was a founding board member and eventually board chair of Colorado’s Charter School Institute (CSI). While serving, I wanted more tools to address struggling schools. Today, authorizers employ strategies that would have helped me, and that can help more districts with the same feeling.
One new strategy is granting shorter renewal terms, including some that automatically extend if the school achieves pre-established conditions or performance expectations. If the school does not achieve the benchmarks, the authorizer will conduct a comprehensive performance review.
Practitioners of this approach include Colorado’s biggest authorizers, such as Denver Public Schools (DPS) and CSI. DPS was a national leader in developing this approach, and CSI has also been using it for a several years. I sat down with Matt Meyer from DPS and Ryan Marks from CSI to hear about their experience in a recent CACSA Podcast, which can view here.
When charter schools are doing fine, five-year terms are the established best practice for several reasons. Most importantly, they free up the school’s staff and leadership to focus on teaching and they let them pursue their own priorities. They give parents a clear signal that they can count on the school to be there for their family. Five-year terms also allow authorizers to focus their attention on other schools that may need more attention. Terms longer than five years are not good practice.
In particular circumstances, more Colorado authorizers are employing these shorter, performance-based contracts, and the practice is likely to spread further. District leaders should explore this concept, understand its pros and cons, and consider when they can apply it effectively. This approach can be used by big and small authorizers. Options include short contracts of two or three years:
- That automatically extend for 2 or 3 more years if the school meets benchmarks;
- In which the school agrees to close if they do not meet benchmarks; and
- That automatically lead to a full review at the end of the probationary period.
Often a short-term renewal is not connected to benchmarks. In these cases, the authorizer plans a full review after the short term regardless of the school’s performance. Applying conditions to a short-term contract can be most useful when there is a single issue the authorizer wants to see improve.
While solid staff and a sophisticated approach to accountability can ease the burden of this approach, benchmarks can also leverage the state accountability system, making it practical for many districts. The approach has also been used by small rural districts, such as the Montezuma Cortez School District.
The pandemic has complicated charter accountability, making strategies like this more important. Given the disruptions to data caused by the pandemic, traditional approaches to accountability are less likely to work. But as authorizers consider new approaches, it is important to work with charter schools and include them, as well as authorizer’s boards, in any process that reconfigures renewal options. Ryan explains CSI’s approach as follows:
“We kind of kept working around, let’s do ‘the next right thing’ here, to steal a line from Frozen… (We) ground (renewal) in our values and tried to be very communicative with all the different stakeholders. So, because of that, it went well… We were very transparent. We worked with schools, we worked alongside schools, we worked with our board to make sure that all of our work was values-aligned and transparent and above board.”
If charter terms are shorter, the authorizer will conduct more renewals in the following years. This can feel like an added burden; but shorter terms are also a strategy to focus authorizer resources on the schools that need the most scrutiny. In this way, extra scrutiny is reserved for schools that deserve it, which can reassure observers that an authorizer is exercising sufficient due diligence. As Meyer explains:
“Those five-year renewal terms are really important if you are someone who is not as trusting of a charter school because we only have so much staff capacity, and it really opens up our capacity to differentiate and focus on schools who we do need to more closely watch (by giving them a short-term renewal), versus going through a really time-consuming process when all indicators are they are serving students well.”
The approach is most often used to promote improvement in academic results. Still, it can also be applied to drive needed changes in other areas, like finance, operations, or governance. The benchmarks must be clearly defined, measurable, and directly tied to the issue needing improvement. Clearly and narrowly defined benchmarks safeguard the autonomy crucial to the charter concept. Authorizers should also avoid subjective measures that may generate controversy and conflict if the school and district later disagree about whether they’re met.
In some cases, schools do not reach the benchmark. Depending on the benchmark, the issue will be reexamined during a new renewal process. It is often reasonable to renew a school that did not achieve a specific benchmark. Not meeting some conditions, such as academic performance, can be more serious and may ultimately lead to a school’s closure. In such cases, short-term contracts can make it more likely that the school will surrender its charter. A surrendered charter helps the school and the district work together and provides time to lessen the disruptions to the affected families. For example, a DPS charter recently surrendered its charter after a short contract. The charter board’s decision ensured the families in the school knew about the closure far enough in advance to allow them to participate fully in the district’s open-enrollment process. Alternatively, closures can drag on during an appeal. After an unsuccessful appeal, parents are left with fewer options if they held out hope their school would survive until after open-enrollment deadlines passed.
The nuance this approach allows may be one of the reasons that DPS and CSI enjoy strong alignment between staff recommendations and their boards’ final votes recently. I’m sure all board members feel the weight of their obligations intensely. It doesn’t feel good to close a school that may turn it around; but putting off the next review for five years can feel like an abdication of responsibility. The approaches to performance management applied by strong authorizers like DPS and CSI create a broader range of options. These new options honor the leaders’ public obligations and allow them to match their decisions to the reality of an individual school and their community’s needs better. We should continue to study and explore how this approach works.
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CACSA/CDE Quarterly Authorizer Meeting: February 28
The CACSA/CDE quarterly authorizer meeting is scheduled for Monday, February 28, from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm. The meeting is currently planned as a hybrid, in-person/remote meeting. The in-person location is at the Westin Westminster, 10600 Westminster Blvd, Westminster, Colorado 80020. This meeting is at the same location as the Colorado League of Charter School’s conference, and in-person attendees are invited to join a kick-off reception at the conference.
Register here.