KY LEGISLATURE

Ky looks north for charter school inspiration

Kirsten Clark
@kirstenlmclark


Henry Dwyer, 7, left, and William Colin, 7, read books during their class at Community Montessori, a charter school in New Albany.
Jan. 12, 2017

In anticipation of passing the state’s first-ever charter school legislation, Kentucky lawmakers and other key players have begun to discuss what exactly a charter school system should look like in the commonwealth, and some are looking toward the Hoosier State for inspiration.

In recent years Indiana has been recognized as having some of the nation's strongest policies on charter schools.

But the state hasn't always been at the top of the class. Indiana lawmakers have adjusted policy over the state's 15-year run with charter schools by beefing up accountability and closing a loophole that allowed operators of failing charter schools to avoid shutdown, said Rep. Robert Behning, chairman of Indiana’s House Committee on Education.

Indiana has had some smart, ethical people involved with charter schools, said Steve Hinnefeld, a former reporter in Bloomington who followed education policy during the growth of charter schools in the state and now maintains a blog about education issues. But the state has also had some “shady operators.”

“I’d think the lesson for Kentucky should be: Go slow, keep a lid on, require strong accountability,” Hinnefeld said. “It will be easier to expand later than to pull back once the horse is out of the barn.”

Indiana's unique system 

The best way to ensure high-quality charter schools, officials and experts say, is to make sure that the policy allowing them is strong from the get-go.

Charter schools are publicly funded schools that are run by outside groups and are often freed from some of the requirements placed on more traditional public schools, such as not having to follow class-size requirements or having a nontraditional school calendar. Supporters say freedom from some requirements will allow for innovation in education.

Being a charter school has allowed Community Montessori in New Albany, Ind., to embrace the Montessori model more fully than it would have been able to do if it were a traditional public school, said director Barbara Burke Fondren. For example, Community Montessori has multi-age classes instead of the traditional grade levels, which Montessori programs in traditional public schools often don't have, she said.

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At the same time, unlike private Montessori schools, Community Montessori is tuition-free, per Indiana charter school law.

"Families have that option, and yet they don’t have to pay what would traditionally be $15,000 or so for a Montessori education," she said.

Wayne Lewis, who directs educational programs in Kentucky’s Education and Workforce Development Cabinet, said much of what Kentucky’s charter system will look like depends on what happens in the upcoming legislative session, but he’s been part of the discussion and taking a look at works in other states.

“Some states have laws that are stronger than others,” he said. “There are some states whose laws I wouldn’t want to copy.”

Katie Keller, far left, conducts a philanthropy project during class at Community Montessori, a charter school in New Albany.  The students were helping to collect loose change to send to an impoverished school in Nepal.
Jan. 12, 2017

He declined to name those states but said Indiana has the makings of a strong system: multiple agencies that can authorize charter schools, accountability at every level and collaboration between charter schools and traditional public schools. And organizations that assess and compare the strength of states' charter school policy, including the National Association of Charter School Authorizers and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, agree.

In Indiana, charter school students do perform marginally better than their traditional public school peers, and in Indianapolis specifically – which experiences achievement gaps along racial and socioeconomic lines familiar to Louisville – charter schools appear to provide students with enough annual growth in reading and math that “continuous enrollment in an average charter school can erase the typical deficit seen among students in their region,” according to often-cited studies from the Stanford University-based Center for Research on Education Outcomes.

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Like what has been proposed in past Kentucky charter school bills and what policy groups recommend, Indiana has multiple authorizers that are in charge of vetting applicants and giving individual charter schools the green light to open. After that, the authorizers are tasked with monitoring those schools to ensure they are properly educating students and, if they aren’t, they’re responsible for intervening or closing the schools.

That’s why it’s crucial that state policy gets the authorizing right, experts say.

“Performance of the students can only be improved the extent that the charter schools are actually excellent,” said Ashlyn Aiko Nelson, an economist and associate professor at Indiana University who has followed Indiana's charter school policy. “If you allow any sort of school through the gates, you’re not going to get the type of outcomes that you hope for.”

In Indiana, local school boards, public universities, some private universities and the statewide charter school board can authorize charters. And in Indianapolis, the mayor’s office can also authorize charters. It’s one of the only cities in the country to do so, and the mayor's office is widely considered to have done a good job opening high-quality schools, regardless of the mayor’s political affiliation.

Brandon Brown, who oversaw charter school authorization for the mayor’s office until 2015, said during his tenure, only about 20 percent of applicants seeking to open a school were actually granted a charter. Mayoral authorizing is effective, he said, because there’s “ultimate accountability”: if the charter schools are low-quality, the mayor risks losing re-election. Brown is now the vice president of education innovation at The Mind Trust, a nonprofit organization that helps grow charter schools in Indianapolis.

Indianapolis has also managed to foster collaboration between its major urban school district, Indianapolis Public Schools, and the city’s charter schools – though it took 12 years, a new “reform-minded” superintendent and a law, passed in 2014, that allowed the city's public schools to be managed by charter school networks.

Now, the district can contract with a charter school network to improve failing schools. Such was the case with Indianapolis Public School 69, which restarted this past fall as Kindezi Academy, managed by a charter network, after five years as a failing school. Enrollment numbers, which are tied to funding in Indiana, and test scores track back to the public school district, so there is an incentive for traditional public schools to work with charters, Brown said.

Jefferson County Public Schools has in recent years opposed charter schools coming to Kentucky, but the school board recently approved a list of criteria they hope to see in charter school legislation.

Lessons from the Hoosier state

Just six years ago, Indiana's charter school policy left something to be desired, ranking 29th out of 40 states in the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools' analysis. But the state's charter school law was deemed the "strongest charter school law in the country" in last year's report because of recent adjustments to the law.

"There's no question over time there were schools that should've been closed that didn't get closed, and we wanted to make sure we were doing what's right for kids and giving them the highest quality operators as possible," said Behning, a Republican from Indianapolis. "We have tweaked those things. Those are things we have learned by experience."

Problems arose after Indiana pushed to expand authorizing powers by allowing nonpublic universities, including religious institutions, to fulfill that role. Low-quality schools began popping up, he said, and some authorizers were lax in closing schools that failed year after year. What's more, some low-quality schools at risk of losing their charters would avoid closure by "shopping" for a different authorizer.

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So, Indiana created additional levels of accountability, limited the number of authorizers and enacted legislation that prevented poor-performers from jumping from one authorizer to another.

"To have a robust charter community, you need to make sure you have multiple providers, but you don't want it like the wild west," Behning said.

Today, the Indiana Board of Education provides oversight for the state's charter authorizers. If they fail to close low-quality schools, authorizers can be called before the board. Adjustments had to be made to the funding of charter schools as well, Behning said.

Fondren, director of Community Montessori, said funding has proven problematic for charter schools across the state, with some schools closing because of inadequate funding. This is particularly true when it comes to paying for facilities, she said.

Lawmakers in Kentucky who have filed and are expected to file charter school bills this session stress that accountability and oversight must play key roles in whatever system is established.

Sen. Mike Wilson, a Republican from Bowling Green who has penned charter school bills for the past four years, expects to file one again this year. Indiana is one of the states he has looked at, and his bill will likely include some of the same characteristics as the Hoosier state's policy: multiple authorizers including a state charter school commission, all held accountable by the Kentucky Board of Education.

Charter schools must also be subject to open records laws to ensure transparency, Wilson said.

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Sen. Gerald Neal, a Democrat from Louisville who pre-filed a charter school bill in mid-December, said "accountability, transparency and governance" should be central to the system. Though many experts say a state should have multiple charter school authorizers, Neal's bill would give sole authorizing power to local school districts, which he said would minimize harm to traditional public schools.

Two House Republicans, Rep. Phil Moffett of Louisville and Rep. C. Wesley Morgan of Richmond, also filed a charter school bill early this month. Their legislation would grant authorizing powers to certain mayoral offices, local school districts, public universities and some private universities, the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education and the State Board of Education in some cases. The bill also provides for virtual charter schools.

The Kentucky legislative session convened briefly in early January and will meet Feb. 7 through March 30. Lewis said he doesn't expect vouchers – another school choice option prevalent in Indiana – to come before lawmakers this year.

What is a charter school?

Charter schools are publicly funded schools that are run by outside groups and are often freed from some of the requirements placed on more traditional public schools, such as not having to follow class-size requirements or having a nontraditional school calendar.

Reporter Kirsten Clark can be reached at 502-582-4144. Follow The Courier-Journal's Education Team on Facebook at Facebook.com/SchooledCJ.