Can “restart” turn around low-performing charter schools?

When a traditional public school is failing, officials often decide to apply a turnaround strategy rather than to close it. Is it time to apply a similar approach to failing charter schools?

With 43% of its public school students enrolled in charter schools, DC has the largest charter sector outside of New Orleans. But the quality of those charter schools varies greatly, with the lowest-performing schools clustered in Wards 7 and 8. Only 9 of the 25 charters in those wards achieved better results than the district-wide average on standardized tests in 2011-12.

If a charter school performs at a lower level than a traditional public school, it’s hard to see why it should continue to exist. The justification for charters is that they provide parents with more choices, but those choices should be as good as or better than the local public school.

One way to deal with an underperforming charter is simply to close it. And that’s happened: the DC Public Charter School Board (PCSB) has closed 13 schools in the past 5 years. But closing a charter, like closing any school, is disruptive. And the students who are displaced are often left without any good alternatives. Only one of the 40 neighborhood schools in Wards 7 and 8 outperformed the district average, and high-performing charters and traditional public schools in DC are oversubscribed.

Now some education reformers are focusing on a less drastic approach, called charter “restart.” They advocate replacing the charter school operator and its board but allowing the students to stay in place. A new report on charter restarts concludes that a restart is not only less disruptive than school closure but also more likely to succeed than an internal attempt to turn the situation around. The report was commissioned by NewSchools Venture Fund, a nonprofit focusing on improving educational outcomes for low-income children.

The report identifies two pathways to a charter restart. In one scenario, the charter authorizer (in the case of DC, the PCSB) tells the school it either has to shut down or undertake a restart. In the other, the school’s board makes the decision to initiate a restart itself.

In reality, there’s usually some back and forth between the authorizer and the failing school before matters come to a head. The PCSB has a rating system for charter schools that sorts schools into three “tiers,” with Tier 1 being the highest, according to measures such as performance on standardized tests and attendance figures. When a school is in Tier 3 or at a low level in Tier 2, its board is usually aware that its charter is at risk of being revoked.

Restarts may not be easy

While a charter restart may be less contentious than a closure, it isn’t always easy. The takeover earlier this year of Septima Clark, a low-performing DC charter, illustrates some potential pitfalls.

At a recent panel discussion sponsored by NewSchools and a couple of other education-focused nonprofits, Septima Clark board chair Jay Costan spoke frankly about what happened. The all-boys school, which goes from preschool through 5th grade, was at the low end of Tier 2 last year, scoring only 37.1% under the PCSB’s rating system.

“We looked at how we were performing,” Costan said, “and we recognized we weren’t keeping our promises to the kids and to the parents.”

So far, so good: one of the biggest obstacles to a charter restart is a board that won’t let go, panelists said. And the Septima Clark board opted to combine with a high-performing local charter, Achievement Prep, that served grades 4-8 and was looking to expand downwards.

But the founder and head of Septima Clark, Jenny DuFresne, opposed the idea of a restart, arguing instead for an internal turnaround. She ended up resigning in January, before the board had informed parents of the restart plan. Many parents felt more loyalty to DuFresne than they did to the board, and a fierce protest against the takeover ensued.

In retrospect, Costan said, the board should have begun the restart process earlier. They didn’t receive the go-ahead for the merger from the PCSB until February 25th, and they had only until March 15th to convince parents to re-enroll their kids at Achievement Prep. Only 43% signed up. (Because Septima Clark’s charter is being withdrawn and students will need to move to a different building, the situation is in some ways closer to a closure than a restart.)

Costan also said that it would have been better to meet with parents one-on-one about the change rather than holding group meetings that could be dominated by a vocal and disgruntled minority. That was the approach taken at one of the other schools represented on the panel.

When Democracy Prep, a network of charter schools, was preparing to take over the failing Harlem Day charter school in New York, the designated principal-to-be spent hours meeting individually with families.

Like the parents at Septima Clark, some Harlem Day parents protested that there was nothing wrong with the school and that their children were doing well, brandishing report cards full of A’s. But the new principal, Lindsay Malanga, explained that those report cards weren’t based on data that showed real learning.

Another charter school operator, Scholar Academies, encountered little or no resistance from families when it took over Paul Robeson charter school in Trenton. Scholar Academies hired vans and bused Robeson parents to its two high-performing schools in Philadelphia so they could see what to expect.

Restart results look promising

While there haven’t been enough charter restarts to allow for any definitive conclusions, the NewSchools report examined 5 case studies and concluded that generally the results have been good. Test scores and attendance rates at the restarted schools have been on an upward trajectory.

At the panel discussion, the executive director of the PCSB, Scott Pearson, said that the Board wouldn’t necessarily favor bringing in a large charter management organization when looking for a candidate to take over a failing school. And indeed Achievement Prep, which the PCSB approved to restart Septima Clark, doesn’t fit that model: it’s a local stand-alone charter.

But charter restart can be a challenging undertaking. Since in most cases all of the old faculty will be let go, an operator needs to have the capacity to do a lot of hiring fast. And it needs to be able to hit the ground running, reinventing the school’s culture from day one and introducing rigorous academic standards while at the same time reassuring anxious parents that all this change is for the better.

Achievement Prep may prove itself up to the task, but generally speaking it seems that a charter network with a proven track record is a better bet. And a few networks, like the 5-school Scholar Academies, are now positioning themselves as specialists in charter restarts.(Full disclosure: I serve on the board of DC Scholars Public Charter School, which is operated by Scholar Academies.) How much business such networks get will depend to some extent on the willingness of low-performing charter boards to step aside and let someone else give it a try.

It may not be easy for the board members of a failing charter to admit defeat. But, as several of those on the panel pointed out, it’s not about them. It’s about the kids they’ve promised to educate, and their families.