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By Jeanne Allen

The just-released 17th edition of the Center for Education Reform’s yearly scorecard of state charter school laws once again finds the Arizona charter law right up there at the top of the list — one of only two states (plus the District of Columbia) to receive an “A” this year.

Arizona was among the pioneers of the American charter-school movement when it passed its law authorizing public charter schools back in 1994, and has led the way ever since, in no small part because of its high scores in the areas of school autonomy, teacher freedom, and the wide latitude it allows for freedom to innovate.

Unfortunately, there are some dark clouds on the horizon. A prime example of “regulatory reload” has made an appearance in this year’s session of the Arizona legislature. A remarkably successful charter community, comprised of 547 schools and serving some 180,000 students, is targeted for a massive and virtually open-ended regulatory intrusion.

The legislative vehicle for this regulatory overreach is SB 1178, a “strike everything” bit of legerdemain that allowed the Arizona House Education Committee to bring back from the dead a bill that was defeated in a Senate committee a few days earlier. It would require an annual report accounting for every penny that a school spends, and authorizes the auditor general to “request” any additional information he may wish to see, a “request” with which the school “shall comply.”

In one breathtaking move, the bill’s eight sentences of text would give the state government the authority to micromanage and second-guess every decision that a charter school operator may make about apportioning its resources to provide a quality education. The amazing thing is that this massive intrusion into charter school operation is the work of comfortable Republican majorities in both chambers of the legislature.

The record of charter schools in Arizona over the past several years is extraordinary. Their students have outperformed the state average at virtually every grade level and subject, and have earned top scores in the nation in the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Ordinarily, policymakers would regard a record like that as something well worth preserving and encouraging. Instead, legislators appear to be preparing to cripple Arizona’s charter schools. Cooler heads need to prevail, and soon.

Jeanne Allen is the founder and chief executive of the Center for Education Reform. Follow her on Twitter, at @JeanneAllen.

The below essay is excerpted from Bush Helzberg’s excellent book, Charter Schools Work: America’s Failing Urban School Districts Can Be Transformed.

Politicians talk about a grand bargain in America. If you work hard, you can have a comfortable middle class job or better. Any career is possible regardless of one’s ethnicity or socioeconomic status at birth.

Unfortunately, the reality in America today is not even close to this ideal. A staggering disparity exists between college completion rates for students from wealthy and low-income families in the United States. According to a 2015 article in the Wall Street Journal, nationally only 9% of students from lowest quartile income families earn a college degree by the time they turn 24. However, 77% of students from highest quartile income families earn a college degree by the time they turn 24.[1]

College Completion Gap

In the 21st century a college education is critical. A report from the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown forecasts that by 2018, 63% of all jobs will require at least some postsecondary education. The vast majority of jobs that pay enough to allow a middle-class lifestyle or better require a college degree. As the chart below illustrates, individuals with a college degree earn significantly more than those with a high school degree or less.

Median Earnings of Full-Time Workers by Education Level[2]

The traditional public school systems in most of America’s urban cores have failed students for decades. Millions of students from low-income families have not had access to high-quality K-12 education. The result for many is a lack of available opportunities. There is no mystery as to why our inner cities are plagued by high unemployment, crime, and violence. If people are not educated, they do not have good opportunities. If they do not have good opportunities, they are much more likely to get involved in criminal activities and end up in the criminal justice system.

Education is a huge and important civil rights issue. African-Americans are much more likely to live in a zip code that has failing public schools and thus have been disproportionately impacted by the failure of our nation’s urban public school systems. The state of K-12 education in America’s inner cities is not only a tremendous social injustice, but is in direct conflict with the American Dream ethos inspired by the Constitution. To have a fair shot at the American Dream, all children must have the opportunity to have the preparation and skills to succeed in college.

One’s destiny in America should not be largely determined by one’s zip code and it does not need to be. In Kansas City where I grew up, the traditional public school district has been failing children for decades. Fortunately, in 1998, Missouri passed a charter school law which allowed others to operate public schools within the boundaries of the Kansas City Missouri School District (“KCMSD”). Charter public schools have collectively transformed the educational opportunities available for thousands of students in the KCMSD.

In 2016 charter public schools educated roughly 40% of the K-12 public school students living within the boundaries of the KCMSD. This level of market share is in the top five in the nation behind New Orleans, Detroit, and Washington, DC. Charter public schools have created a competitive educational landscape which has created an incentive for the traditional school district to improve. While the traditional Kansas City Missouri School District is still far from high-quality, it has shown meaningful improvement in recent years actually achieving its highest rating from the state in three decades for the 2015-2016 school year.

Charter public schools were created in the early 1990s to improve our nation’s public school systems. Charter schools are public schools and like traditional public schools, are funded by local, state and federal tax dollars based on student enrollment. They are free and do not have special entrance requirements. Charter schools are not religious and cannot discriminate against students on any basis. Just like traditional public schools, charter public schools are accountable for state and federal academic standards. As of 2016, there were more than 6,700 charter schools operating in 42 states and the District of Columbia educating nearly 3 million children.[3]

Today, K-12 education within the boundaries of the Kansas City Missouri School District is at an inflection point. There is even optimism among local education reform practitioners that a significant majority of the students in Kansas City, Missouri could be getting a high-quality education within a decade. Hopefully, this book will shed light on the progress that has taken place and potentially serve as a roadmap for others who have the desire and will to address failing inner-city school systems.

For the last decade as Chairman of University Academy (UA), a K-12 college-preparatory charter public school that serves 1,000 students who reside in the boundaries of the KCMSD, I have seen that it is possible for low-income students to achieve at the highest levels. I have also witnessed how multiple charter public schools can collectively create a competitive educational landscape that benefits students and the community.

[1] Melissa Korn, “Big Gap in College Graduation Rates for Rich and Poor, Study Finds,” Wall Street Journal, February 3, 2015.

[2] U.S. Census Bureau, 2012, Table PINC-03; Internal Revenue Service, 2010.

[3] From the website of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

By Jeanne Allen

As the Georgia legislature races this afternoon to finish its work before adjournment, an important piece of legislation may yet get an up-or-down vote. On the bright side, the bill would guarantee that local school districts provide charter schools easier access to critical funding and facilities. Unfortunately, HB 430 includes new, prescriptive regulations that would take Georgia charter school in a very bad direction. It’s another example of why policymakers need to always be on high alert for regulatory creep within charter school policy.

Section 1 of the bill would direct the State Board of Education and State Charter Schools Commission to jointly create one-size fits all standards of “high-quality authorizing practices,” and would then have an “independent party” make sure that charters are deprived of the most important reason for their success: freedom from the regulatory strait jacket that hobbles traditional public schools.

The bill would require that the “independent party” possess a “demonstrated history of evaluating charter school authorizers for quality authorizing practices.” Don’t be fooled. If this section of the bill had a nickname, it would be the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) Guaranteed Contract and Empowerment Act. It’s a sweetheart deal with the organization that would love to insure that its idea of how charters should be run be guaranteed by law.

There’s nothing wrong with having the State Board of Education and/or the State Charter Schools Commission developing what they believe to be best practices for authorizing, but it should be just that — best practices. There should be flexibility and autonomy for authorizers to do this in the way they deem best for the types of schools they oversee.

But mandatory one-size-fits-all-standards are never good policy in charter schooling. It discourages innovation and is antithetical to core principles of charter schools. But if standards are to be imposed, they should be developed openly and with the involvement of the entire charter school community, not in the dark by an unelected and unaccountable third party.

In an otherwise worthy piece of legislation, this language represents the very opposite of what makes charters special in the first place. It would centralize control of charter schools, develop a single set of standards outside an open rulemaking process, use an unelected, unaccountable third party to use those standards to evaluate authorizers annually and determine whether to terminate authorizers and the charter schools they oversee.

In other words: No accountability. No transparency. No due process. And, most alarmingly, no effort to involve in the process the most important stakeholders — parents, teachers and charter school boards. Is this really the direction we want to go after fighting so hard to pass the Georgia Charter Schools Amendment in 2012 that gave charter schooling more freedom?

To be clear: there’s nothing wrong with quality authorizing and standards. But increased regulation and centralized control is not the answer. Not in Georgia, and not in any state.

Charter school supporters should never feel pressured to trade flexibility and autonomy for money and buildings. The offending language should simply be removed and individual charter schools and authorizers allowed to be free to contract and set standards and goals they believe are best for the students they serve.

Jeanne Allen is the founder and chief executive of the Center for Education Reform. Follow her on Twitter, at @JeanneAllen.