Page 8/35 on DOE's Charter School Efforts - NACSA Report Identifies Charter School Neglect in Delaware

Thanks to the Nichole Dobo of the New Journal for digging up this gem (hmmmm... is it me or has there been a lot of digging around DOE of late? Searching for the rubies and diamonds, I'm sure.)  http://blogs.delawareonline.com/delawareed/2011/06/report-from-march-evaluated-doe-charter-school-office/

Here's the link to the report in its entirety:  http://blogs.delawareonline.com/delawareed/files/2011/06/NACSA_DE_Eval_REPORT_FINAL.pdf

C&E 1st notes that the President of the State Board of Education was an authorizer of this report.  Its fairly safe to assume that the full board has read this report and will be aware of these findings going into their vote on the futures of Pencader and Reach in July.

For the purpose of this post, C&E 1st will focus on the highlights of Pages 8, 9, and 10 of the NACSA report (Highlighting and Bolding done by C&E 1st for emphasis.)  The following statements can be found/attributed on Page 8:

• "The charter school law in Delaware provides a framework identifying fourteen criteria that developers must meet to receive approval to open a charter school... In practice, the approval criteria have been interpreted fairly narrowly, creating an environment where reviews of charter school applications are not comprehensive or consistent and are thus open to subjectivity."
• "The authorizer does not have an established process or the evaluative tools to evaluate new charter school applications in their entirety... Few people actually read each application in its entirety, and individual reviewers do not provide comprehensive feedback in any standard format...  As a result, evaluations do not enable the authorizer to determine the extent to which individual components of the application align with each other, with the proposed budgets and financial projections, and with the overall mission and vision for the school."
• "The application decision-making process lacks adequate attention and due diligence to critical areas such as leadership capacity, need or demand for the proposed school, the likely success of the proposed educational program, and applicant capacity to implement and operate the proposed school... there is no place for applicants to address, and reviewers to assess, research or information related to effectiveness of the proposed educational model... As a consequence, CSAC application deliberations do not focus specifically on the viability of the proposed school and how or whether the applicant has capacity to actualize the plan."

The following statements can be found/attributed to Page 9:

• "While the application does not specifically address a vision statement, it requests a statement of the purpose and philosophy of the school. The evaluation criteria do not analyze mission alignment with the educational program or academic goals."
• "the educational program requirements are incomplete and do not elicit a cogent picture of the proposed educational program as a whole."
• "The application also does not require the applicant to address how the proposed learning program will be delivered, a leadership development plan, or position descriptions of school employees."
• "Evaluation criteria for the educational program are vague, incomplete, and overly focused on alignment to state content standards."

The following statements can be found/attributed to Page 10:

• "the application does not require critical information geared toward determining the applicant's plan or ability to create a sound organizational infrastructure or appropriate operations and management systems."
• "application does not require provision of an organizational chart, a description of the leadership model or structure, a comprehensive staffing plan, or a detailed professional development plan, which precludes assessment of the alignment of the organizational plan with school mission and education plan."
• "if a proposed school has a specific learning model - a Montessori program, for example, the authorizer does not require information necessary to ensure teachers will be adequately trained or that the unique aspects of a proposed school design can or will be actualized."
• "The application does not require a comprehensive budget narrative in which the applicant must present assumptions indicating how financial projections are tied to the proposed learning model, unique components of the school design, staffing and organizational plans, facilities plans, fundraising strategies, etc."
• "there is evidence from CSAC preliminary and final reports and recommendations, internal memoranda, case history content and site visit interviews with DDOE/CSO officials and school operators indicating that financial projections and facilities plans are reviewed for viability, reliability, and sufficiency."
• "However, this is not done in any consistent, systematic way, and the review process does not focus on the components or the adequacy of business plan components, and hence, is not a comprehensive assessment of the proposal -including critical infrastructure components - as a whole."
• "For example, the authorizer recently approved a school intended to serve a special education population; however, key questions were not asked during the application review process to assess the viability of the financial plan -enrollment assumptions. The financial plan was constructed on the assumption that at least 60 percent of the school's students would have special needs; the financial viability of the proposed school model was dependent upon receipt of additional funds targeted for special education students. In approving the school, the authorizer did not ask for a contingency budget plan if the school enrolled a much lower special education population -- which now appears likely -- nor did the application ask for, or reviewers inquire into, the recruiting or marketing plan the school would employ to attract its targeted population."
• "the review process does not focus on the experience or qualifications of school founders to start or operate a school, and thus lacks comprehensive assessment of the founding team's capacity to realize the vision of the proposed school program."
• "the review process is limited to ensuring that the composition of the school development group meets statutory requirements (i.e., that the initial founding board includes a parent and a teacher on the board)."

That's the tip of the iceberg.  We'll take on another chunk tomorrow.