National Alliance for Public Charter Schools

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National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
Basic facts
Location:	Washington, D.C.
Top official:	Nina Rees
Website:	Official website

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit education reform group advocating for the growth of charter schools. The organization was founded in the mid-2000s by four philanthropic organizations: Doris & Donald Fisher Fund, Walton Family Foundation, The Annie E. Casey Foundation and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In addition to advocacy, the group also performs research and issues reports, such as Measuring Up to the Model: A Ranking of State Charter School Laws and The Health of the Movement: A State by State Analysis.

Today, the organization is based in Washington, D.C. and led by president and CEO Nina Rees.

Mission

“	The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools is the leading national nonprofit organization committed to advancing the public charter school movement. Our mission is to lead public education to unprecedented levels of academic achievement by fostering a strong charter sector.	”
—National Alliance for Public Charter Schools press release

In order to achieve its goals, the organization maintains statistics on the number and performance of charter schools across the nation, works with legislators and state groups to develop charter school laws, and organizes an annual conference.

Studies and reports

"Measuring Up to the Model"

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has become most well-known for its annual report on state charter school laws. The organization compares each state's charter school laws to the model law it developed and ranks states accordingly. Evaluations are based on what the organization calls "20 essential components of a strong public charter school law." Each component is weighted from one to four and each state is given a score of zero to four for each component. The highest possible score total is 228.

In the 2014 edition of the report, the organization made changes to its scoring rubric, mainly regarding the availability and accountability of charter school authorizers. These changes, in addition to changes in state law, affected the scores of some states. Only states with charter school laws enacted were scored, which at the time included 42 states and the District of Columbia.

Below is a table detailing the rank of each state, the score of each state, and the difference from the previous year. To access the full report, click here.

2014 state charter school law rankings
State	2014 ranking	2013 ranking	Ranking difference	2014 score	2013 score	Score difference
Alaska	40	41	-1	67	63	4
Arizona	16	13	-3	147	141	6
Arkansas	29	25	-4	128	122	6
California	9	7	-2	156	150	6
Colorado	5	4	-1	163	160	3
Connecticut	33	31	-2	114	110	4
Delaware	17	21	4	146	127	19
District of Columbia	10	17	7	153	134	19
Florida	8	5	-3	156	151	5
Georgia	22	16	-6	138	135	3
Hawaii	21	14	-7	140	139	1
Idaho	20	32	12	141	110	31
Illinois	31	28	-3	125	117	8
Indiana	2	9	7	170	148	22
Iowa	41	38	-3	63	71	-8
Kansas	42	40	-2	60	63	-3
Louisiana	3	6	3	167	151	16
Maine	4	2	-2	163	166	-3
Maryland	43	42	-1	42	42	0
Massachusetts	11	11	0	151	145	6
Michigan	18	15	-3	145	138	7
Minnesota	1	1	0	174	172	2
Mississippi	14	43	29	149	39	110
Missouri	26	18	-8	132	132	0
Nevada	13	22	9	150	126	24
New Hampshire	30	30	0	128	113	15
New Jersey	32	29	-3	116	114	2
New Mexico	12	10	-2	150	147	3
New York	7	8	1	158	148	10
North Carolina	19	23	4	144	125	19
Ohio	28	27	-1	129	117	12
Oklahoma	36	34	-2	112	109	3
Oregon	27	26	-1	129	120	9
Pennsylvania	24	19	-5	137	131	6
Rhode Island	34	35	1	113	108	5
South Carolina	15	12	-3	147	141	6
Tennessee	35	33	-2	112	109	3
Texas	23	24	1	137	124	7
Utah	25	20	-5	134	131	3
Virginia	39	39	0	72	69	3
Washington	6	3	-3	162	161	1
Wisconsin	38	37	-1	76	77	-1
Wyoming	37	36	-1	87	87	0
Source: National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, "Measuring Up to the Model: A Ranking of State Charter School Laws, 2014," accessed November 1, 2014

Click on the chart below to see a list of the 20 components the organization uses to evaluate state laws.

Essential components of strong charter school law
1	No caps on the growth of public charter schools in a state.
2	A variety of public charter schools allowed, including new start-ups, public school conversions, and virtual schools.
3	Multiple authorizers available, including non-local school board authorizers, to which charter applicants may directly apply.
4	Authorizer and overall program accountability system required, whereby all authorizers must affirm interest to become an authorizer (except for a legislatively-created state public charter school commission) and participate in an authorizer reporting program based on objective data, as overseen by some state-level entity with the power to remedy.
5	Adequate authorizer funding, including provisions for guaranteed funding from authorizer fees, and public accountability for such expenditures.
6	Transparent charter application, review, and decision-making processes, including comprehensive academic, operational, governance, and performance application requirements, with such applications reviewed and acted upon following professional authorizer standards.
7	Performance-based charter contracts required, with such contracts created as separate post-application documents between authorizers and public charter schools detailing at least academic performance expectations, operational performance expectations, and school and authorizer rights and duties.
8	Comprehensive public charter school monitoring and data collection processes, so that all authorizers can verify public charter school compliance with applicable law and their performance-based contracts.
9	Clear processes for renewal, nonrenewal, and revocation decisions, including school closure and dissolution procedures to be used by all authorizers.
10	Educational service providers allowed, provided there is a clear performance contract between the independent public charter school board and the service provider and there are no conflicts of interest between the two entities.
11	Fiscally and legally autonomous schools, with independent public charter school boards, whereby public charter schools are created as autonomous entities with their boards having most powers granted to other traditional public school district boards.
12	Clear student recruitment, enrollment and lottery procedures, which must be followed by all public charter schools.
13	Automatic exemptions from many state and district laws and regulations, except for those covering health, safety, civil rights, student accountability, employee criminal history checks, open meetings, freedom of information requirements, and generally accepted accounting principles.
14	Automatic collective bargaining exemption, whereby public charter schools are exempt from any outside collective bargaining agreements, while not interfering with laws and other applicable rules protecting the rights of employees to organize and be free from discrimination.
15	Multi-school charter contracts and/or multi-charter contract boards allowed, whereby an independent public charter school board may oversee multiple schools linked under a single charter contract or may hold multiple charter contracts.
16	Extra-curricular and interscholastic activities eligibility and access, where: (a) public charter school students and employees are eligible for state- and district- sponsored interscholastic leagues, competitions, awards, scholarships, and recognition programs to the same extent as traditional public school students and employees; and (b) students at charters that do not provide extra-curricular and interscholastic activities have access to those activities at traditional public schools for a fee via a mutual agreement.
17	Clear identification of special education responsibilities, including clarity on which entity is the local education agency (LEA) responsible for such services and how such services are to be funded (especially for low-incident, high cost cases).
18	Equitable operational funding and equal access to all state and federal categorical funding, flowing to the school in a timely fashion and in the same amount as district schools following eligibility criteria similar to all other public schools.
19	Equitable access to capital funding and facilities, including multiple provisions such as: a per-pupil facility allowance (equal to statewide average per-pupil capital costs); facility grant and revolving loan programs; a charter school bonding authority (or access to all relevant state tax-exempt bonding authorities available to all other public schools); the right of first refusal to purchase or lease at or below fair market value a closed or unused public school facility or property; and clarity that no state or local entity may impose any facility-related requirements that are stricter than those applied to traditional public schools.
20	Access to relevant employee retirement systems, with the option to participate in a similar manner to all other public schools.
Source: National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, "Measuring Up to the Model: A Ranking of State Charter School Laws, 2014," accessed November 1, 2014

"Health of the Movement"

In 2014, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools released its first report on the quality of the national charter school movement. The study measured state charter schools against 11 criteria and ranked the 26 states that enrolled at least 1 percent of their students in charter schools and participated in a 2013 study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes. The organization weighted each indicator from one to four and then gave each state a score of zero to four for each indicator. The highest possible score was 116.

The goal of the study was to measure the correlation between state charter school laws and charter school performance. The report found that generally, states with laws that ranked higher in their Measuring Up study also did well in this study. Regarding the results, the researchers noted that a strong charter school law is not the only requirement of a healthy charter school system, that there are exceptions to the rule (recognizing that some states with poor laws ranked high in Health of the Movement), and that there exists a lag between policy changes and results.

The table below compares state Health of the Movement rankings with the rank of their public charter school laws. To access the full report, click here.

Health of the Movement rankings versus state charter school law rankings
State	Health of the Movement ranking	Score (out of 116)	Law ranking (out of 43)	Score (out of 228)
Arizona	14	59	16	147
Arkansas	20	45	29	128
California	8	72	9	156
Colorado	12	63	5	163
District of Columbia	1	104	10	153
Florida	11	70	8	156
Georgia	18	47	22	138
Illinois	13	60	31	125
Indiana	7	73	2	170
Louisiana	2	85	3	167
Massachusetts	6	73	11	151
Michigan	3	84	18	145
Minnesota	16	56	1	174
Missouri	15	57	26	132
Nevada	26	32	13	150
New Jersey	4	76	32	116
New Mexico	21	44	12	150
New York	5	75	7	158
North Carolina	22	42	19	144
Ohio	17	56	28	129
Oregon	25	35	27	129
Pennsylvania	23	24	24	437
Rhode Island	10	70	34	113
Tennessee	9	71	35	112
Texas	19	47	23	137
Utah	24	38	25	134
Source: National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, "The Health of the Public Charter School Movement: A State-By-State Analysis," accessed November 1, 2014

Click on the chart below to see a list of the measurements used in the study.

Indicators used to assess the health of the charter school movement
Growth
1. Public school share
2. Public school student share
3. Students by race and ethnicity
4. Students in special populations (i.e., free and reduced-price lunch status, special education status, and English learner status)
5. Schools by geographic distribution
6. Communities with more than 10 percent of students in public charter schools
7. New public charter schools opened over the past five years
8. Public charter schools closed over the past five years
Innovation
9. Public charter schools reporting use of various innovative practices (i.e., extended day, extended year, year-round calendar, independent study, school-to-work, and higher education courses)
Quality
10. Additional days of learning in reading
11. Additional days of learning in math
Source: National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, The Health of the Public Charter School Movement: A State-By-State Analysis," accessed November 1, 2014

Criticism

According to an article on the website Governing, critics have noted that the study includes little information that differs from what has been reported in Measuring Up, stating that much more data was included on a state's friendliness to charter schools than on the quality and performance of these schools. They have also pointed out that "the rankings set a low bar for academic quality by comparing charter schools with local public districts, many of which are struggling urban schools, rather than with top-performing schools elsewhere."

In the report, the organization stated a reason for the limited quality measurements:

“

When we began our data-gathering efforts, we set out to gather data on almost a dozen indicators related to quality, including postsecondary activity rates, graduation rates, and attendance rates. However, we were able to include only two of them in this year’s report because of the significant data collection challenges that we encountered. These two data points, from CREDO’s 2013 National Charter Schools Study, are the only source of student outcome data across a large number of states that allows a meaningful and fair comparison of similar students within public charter and traditional public schools. It is important to note that we are doubling down on our data collection efforts and plan to increase the number of quality indicators that we use in future reports.

”

Recent news

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See also

• 501(c)(3)
• Influencers project
• Education policy project
• Education policy in the United States

External links

Suggest a link

• National Alliance for Public Charter Schools website