Category Archives: Charter schools

Does Portfolio Beget Portfolio or Does Charter Beget Portfolio?

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One question I’ve been muling over is whether district leadership adopting portfolio principles actually leads to aggressive portfolio implementation, or whether charter market share growth is what actually drives increased implementation of portfolio principles.

Above is a screenshot of CRPE’s rankings of portfolio districts.

The top two districts are or will be +75% charter within a few years.

The next few districts, for the most part, have modest charter market shares (10-25%).

When I have more time, I might try to take the above cities and plot correlation between charter market share and portfolio model adoption (note, however, that cities like Washington D.C. and Newark aren’t in the CRPE network, I think, so CRPE’s list might not be comprehensive).

I might also quibble that CRPE is being a little generous in some of their rankings. Is Los Angeles really a national exemplar in accountability?

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Here’s my gut instinct: over the long-haul, we’ll see more districts “forced” into portfolio through increases in charter school market share than we’ll see districts adopt portfolio because that’s what their district leadership believes in.

In other words, when a third of your children attend charter schools, things like unified enrollment, unified accountability, and increased autonomy for all schools becomes a logical way to organize the system.

At some point, the regulatory environment will evolve to match the conditions on the ground.

Sometimes this will happen earlier on, such as Denver.

Other times, it will happen a little too late, as in Detroit.

But, without charter market share in the 20-40% range, I don’t think we’ll see many cities adopt unified enrollment, unified accountability, educator autonomy, and a decentralized ecosystem for talent and school supports.

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In sum: I think charter growth begets portfolio more so than portfolio begets portfolio.

This is a hunch. I might be wrong. Let me know if you think I am.

A Modest Policy Proposal to Give Families the Schools They Want

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Many charter schools have long waitlists.

Unfortunately, many school districts – which are legally charged with providing families with good schools – use public power to prevent families from attending their preferred schools.

Finances are a primary reason school districts prevent families from attending certain schools. When a family attends a charter school, a school district loses revenue.

Despite the fact that school districts are not-for-profit organizations, they dislike losing revenue as much as greedy corporations.

One of the main ways school districts block families from attending the schools they prefer is by not giving these schools facilities.

So here’s a proposal: anytime a charter school has a waitlist that’s 4X it’s enrollment, the local school district must either (a) give the school an additional facility or (b) the next time a new mill is issued, the district cannot access any funds until a new or existing facility is allocated to the charter school.

Of course, you might argue that this policy should be triggered when a charter school has a waitlist that equals its full enrollment.

That’s why this is a modest proposal.

If 2,000 families want to sent their children to a charter school that enrolls 500 hundred students, I’m not being so bold as to propose that all these families get the schools they want.

Just 1 out of every 4 of these families.

Unfortunately, in many cities, this would be progress.

*Like many posts, this one was the result of a conversation: shout out to Kristi Kimball for ideas that this post was built upon.

We are Tired of Waiting

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The title of this post is taken from the words of four public schools parents in Philadelphia.

They recently wrote these words in an op-ed.

Additional excerpts from their op-ed are below. The piece is so powerful I had trouble cutting out any parts:

As parents, nothing is more important to us than great schools for our kids…

Yet year after year, tens of thousands of Philadelphia families are forced to send their kids to schools that are, by any measure, failing students.

And year after year, families in our communities are told to just wait for the next “fix” that will – no kidding, this time for real – make these schools great. Wait until we have funding. Wait until we fix this law or that law. Wait until we have a new plan.

We are tired of waiting.

We demand better educational opportunities in Philadelphia – now.

And that’s why we lent our voices to a campaign called “No More Waiting” (nomorewaiting.org).

The evidence shows that right now, good charter schools are the best answer. Why? Charter schools are working for kids in Philadelphia. Just ask the families of the 65,000 students who have chosen to enroll in charters, or the 22,000 more students who are on waiting lists…

According to a recent study by experts from Stanford University, African American students in poverty who attended charters are more likely to get ahead in reading and math. In other words, better results today – no waiting.

These are the facts. Charters represent the best opportunity for tens of thousands of African American and Hispanic kids to get a great education right now. Yet most rhetoric about charter schools in the city ignores these facts.

Instead, critics profess concern about our families while telling us that charters – the best way to get results today – are a luxury we just can’t afford. What they’re really saying hasn’t changed much for decades. To tens of thousands of families all over Philadelphia, the critics of charters are saying: Hold up. Wait until we develop another plan to fix public schools.

Two months ago, the School Reform Commission had an opportunity to provide immediate help for thousands of children and families in underperforming schools. The SRC reviewed 40 applications for new charters, many of which were submitted by operators who are already running some of the best schools in the city. Yet the SRC rejected the vast majority of them – telling tens of thousands of families to keep playing the waiting game.

We cannot wait any longer. Our children need better schools right now.

We agree that public schools need more funding, and that they deserve a plan that resolves the funding crisis that batters our schools year after year. But we refuse to accept the status quo while politicians haggle over how much funding is enough and who gets to spend it. Those are priorities for adults.

Our priorities are our children and their future. Kids in schools that continue to struggle don’t have any more time to waste. Each year they fall further and further behind.

While politicians fight over a funding solution, let’s spend on schools that are working, schools that are getting results for our children.

Right now.

To restate a common theme of this blog:

1) Right now, across the country, there are great schools that want to serve more students.

2) Right now, across the country, there are families living in poverty that want to attend these schools.

3) Right now, local governments across the country, which are entrusted with providing educational opportunities to children, make it illegal for these schools to serve these families.

Who Will Lead the Suburban Charter School Network Movement?

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I grew up in Valparaiso, IN. It’s a town of about 30,000 people that’s located 55 miles outside of Chicago.

The public schools I attended were decent but not exceptional. The quality of the schools paled into comparison to the best charter schools I visit today. I would have benefited from increased choice and quality in public schooling in my town. The same is probably true for the millions of students who currently attend public schools in the suburbs.

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Right now, the best charter schools are often launched and scaled in cities. CREDO data shows that urban charters are the highest performing part of the sector.

What would it take in order for this to change? What would it take for there to be 20-30 national class CMOs serving suburban students?

I’m not sure, but in considering charter growth, I often think about the entrepreneur profile of a given network.

To date, the high-performing urban charter movement has largely been driven by mission driven entrepreneurs who are drawn to serving students in poverty.

My guess is that the entrepreneurial profile will look different in the suburbs:

1. For-profit Entrepreneurs

While mission driven entrepreneurs might be more compelled to work with students in poverty, for-profit entrepreneurs might simply be drawn to a market opportunity. Chains such as Sylvan Learning provide some insight into how its possible to scale in suburban environments.

2. School Could be So Much Better Entrepreneurs 

Organizations such as Alt School, Acton Academy, and Basis seem to be born out of the recognition that schools that serve middle and upper class children can be significantly improved.

The entrepreneurs launching these schools seem to be driven more by building world class, innovative educational institutions than by serving students in poverty.

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Foundations and non-profit venture funds should think about how to further support and incentivize high-quality entrepreneurs that fit into these profiles.

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My main worry is that the regulatory hurdles to scaling in the suburbs will be very difficult to overcome. Each suburban public school district is a fiefdom of its own, and given the small size of many of these districts, even one new charter school could severely impact a district’s budget.

As such, perhaps vouchers will be ultimately be a more politically viable option for school choice in the suburbs. Given the better off student population (less worries of creaming), the educational culture of suburbs (private schools are already accepted), and I’m guessing voting patterns that are more conservative than big cities – vouchers could be the way forward.

So maybe the title of this post is asking the wrong question.

Rather, perhaps we should be asking: what political entrepreneurs will scale vouchers across suburban communities?

Will We See More Charter School Mergers?

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I was at Stanford today, where I had a chance to speak to business and education school students.

I also had a chance to meet with some good folks who work in and about the university.

One such conversation led to the issue of mergers.

In many industries, both larger firms and private equity companies buy up smaller companies that have profit potential but are plagued by poor management, inefficiencies, etc.

Replace “profit” with “student achievement” and you can imagine that similar opportunities exist in the charter sector.

I think we will see more mergers in the future, but that they will probably arise in certain circumstances; specifically: the will arise when the organizational cost to merge is less than the organizational cost to create.

These instances might include the following:

1. Saturated Markets

In saturated charter markets (where charter enrollment capacity significantly exceeds actual student enrollment), mergers can reduce enrollment risks for the takeover entity. It might be easier to take a slightly under enrolled school and grow it to capacity than to start a school and newly enroll 100% of students.

2. Facility Constrained Environments

Facilities are one of the greatest barriers to charter growth. In these environments, mergers would basically be a form of facilities acquisition.

3. Human Capital Constrained Environments

In human capital constrained environments, the quality of centralized systems become a greater driver of student achievement. A mature CMO with strong centralized systems might therefore feel more confident in its ability to increase student achievement via a merger.

4. Rigorous Authorizors

In rigorous authorizing regimes, charter school boards that faced certain revocation might become more active in seeking out merger opportunities, so as to avoid outright closure. It is likely that this increase in demand for mergers will lead to increases in mergers actually occurring.

Lastly, if done well, mergers would increase student achievement and decrease the disruption caused by closure, both of which would be great for kids.

Predicting CMO Size

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I often think about how CMO sizes will evolve over time. I’ve written about it before but this exchange  between Marc Andreessen and Robin Hanson has me thinking about the issue again.

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One could imagine the same thing happening with charter school organizations: the most effective scale while boutique organizations specialize.

I’m unsure if this pattern will occur with CMOs. If it doesn’t occur, or it occurs at a lesser level, I expect it will be for these reasons:

1. Schools are everywhere.

Economic activity concentrates in cities; so does talent. And these relationships are not simply proportional to population; the effect is more than that. Economic activity and top talent are not geographically distributed equally by population.

This concentration of economic activity and talent allows for private sector firms to get high market share while only operating in major cities.

The number of schools in a location, on the other hand, is directly proportional to the population.

2. Non-profit incentives limit scale.

For-profit companies have a direct financial incentive to go where the customers are.

Non-profit companies have different incentives. These incentives can be very powerful, and many non-profit organizations have scaled despite large financial incentives; but my guess is that the lack of profit incentive, on average, reduces firm size.

3. Regulatory hurdles abound. 

Opening schools across different states carries a high regulatory burden. Unlike most for-profit organizations, a CMO is required to go through a strict vetting process to enter the state, as well as for each subsequent schools it opens.

Considerations 

Again, I’m not sure how the CMO market will unfold. We’re just starting to see numerous CMOs get above 10,000 children, so it’s hard to draw strong conclusions from the data.

But if do we see less scale in the CMO sector, the following may become greater needs:

1) Incubators: If the charter sector becomes dominated by small to mid-size CMOs, then we’ll need a lot of CMOs. This will require a lot of incubation.

2) Service Providers: Service providers can sometimes be easier to scale than charter organizations because service organizations require less frontline staff. Organizations such as Teach For America, Relay Graduate School of Education, and the Charter School Acclerator may play significant roles.

This is an issue that I will be tracking.

Voting For and Against High-Performing Charter Schools

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Try and reconcile these two facts:

(1) Over 50% of Newark families tried to enroll their child in NorthStar Elementary, a high-performing charter school managed by Uncommon Schools.

(2) In 2014, Ras Baraka ran for mayor of Newark on an education platform that opposed much the superintendent’s “One Newark” plan, which included a significant increase in charter schooling. Baraka won 54% of the vote.

While I don’t know how many of the families who tried to enroll in NorthStar Elementary also voted for Mayor Baraka, I imagine there is substantial overlap.

I also guess there’s a similar patter with the de Blasio election and the 22,000 families who tried to enroll in Success Academies.

It is likely the case that families who are trying to enroll their children in high-performing charter schools are also voting for elected officials who run on anti-charter school platforms.

Why might this be?

First, many families are probably not single issue voters. They might vote for a candidate whose policies they largely support even if they disagree on education.

However, for families who are voting on policy grounds and have their children in public schools, it’s likely that education will be a key issue. So the “other policy considerations” argument probably doesn’t explain everything.

The more powerful explanation, I think, is that most people vote based on identity; they vote for people who they think are like them / share their values / belong to their tribe.

Mayor Baraka’s campaign slogan – “when I become mayor we become mayor” – perfectly captured the fact that he shared a common identity with many people in Newark.

To the extent charter advocates wish to alter these voting patterns, it seems like one of two things needs to happen:

(1) Charter advocates need to mobilize more charter families into single issue voters.

(2) Charter advocates need to align themselves with candidates who share a common identity with charter school families.

Neither will be easy to accomplish.

Mobilization is technically difficult. It is hard to get very busy people with strong identities to vote solely on the basis of one policy issue.

Building broad coalitions is emotionally difficult. It is hard to build relationships and trust with people who are very different from you.

Yet, despite their difficulty, both mobilization and coalition building seem very important to the goal of significantly increasing the number of families who can benefit from high-performing charter schools.

Addendum: Make sure to read Ryan Hill’s good comments. And Seth Andrew’s.