FOCUS D.C. Public Charter School Bulletin

November 2, 2007

--Charter School Enrollment at 30%; Only New Orleans Higher
--Charter Board Announces 2007-2008 Accountability Program
--Legislation Introduced to Provide Extra Funding for School System; Drafters Seek To Evade Uniformity Requirement

Charter School Enrollment at 30%; Only New Orleans Higher

Official charter school enrollment has jumped to more than 22,000, just over 30% of overall public school enrollment in D.C. Only New Orleans, which is using charters to rebuild its post-Katrina school system, has a higher percentage of students in charter schools. Audited D.C. enrollment figures will not be available until early next year.

Although overall charter school enrollment grew by nearly 11%, a significant number of charter school campuses did not meet their enrollment projections, while many others exceeded theirs. This may be an indication that the charters are now in competition with each other, not just with the school system, which lost 7% of its student body this year.

Charter Board Announces 2007-2008 Accountability Program

The D.C. Public Charter School Board, now D.C.’s only charter authorizer, recently announced its accountability regime for the 57 charters it oversees. Before the end of the school year, each of these schools will undergo several in-depth reviews of their operations and performance.

The first of these is a review of the school’s compliance with state and federal laws and regulations, including the No Child Left Behind Act, and with the terms of its required accountability plan. This is a half-day on-site review, during which the school must provide a variety of documentation and make available its key personnel to the review team.

Each public charter school also must undergo a “Special Education Quality Review,” described by the Board as “an extensive review of student records and supporting documents to determine compliance” with special education laws.

The Board also conducts annual “Program Development and Self-Study Implementation” reviews. The self-study implementation review “assesses the status and quality of program implementation” at first-year schools; the program development review “assesses the academic, non-academic, and organizational performance” of schools in their second and subsequent years of operation. Both of these reviews last 2-3 days and include class observations and meetings with school personnel, parents, and trustees.

Under U.S. Department of Education guidelines, the Board, not the state, is primarily responsible for charter school compliance with No Child Left Behind. Those schools that are required to implement a School Improvement Plan under NCLB must undergo a review designed to assess their progress in implementing those plans.

In addition to submitting to these formal reviews, the Board requires the charters to submit a variety of regular reports. Key among these are monthly (for newer schools) or quarterly (for mature schools) financial reports and a detailed annual report and audited financial statement.

Legislation Introduced to Provide Extra Funding for School System; Drafters Seek To Evade Uniformity Requirement

Supplemental FY 2008 budget legislation just introduced in the D.C. Council at the request of the mayor would provide DCPS with tens of millions of dollars to support the “operations and reform initiatives” of the system’s chancellor, who reports directly to the mayor.

According to the legislation, these allocations “are to be exempt from the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula for Public Schools and Public Charter Schools Act of 1998,” which requires that DCPS and public charter school students be uniformly funded when that funding comes out of the D.C. general fund. The Uniform Per Student Funding Formula (UPSFF) is the lynchpin of D.C. school reform as envisioned by the drafters of the School Reform Act (SRA), D.C.’s charter school law, creating competition between DCPS and the charter schools for students and the funding that attaches to them. It has never been popular with government officials, however, who frequently have acceded (albeit reluctantly) to DCPS requests for extra-formulaic funding for one special reform project or another, usually seeking to avoid extending their largesse to the charter schools.

Although the supplemental budget legislation purports to exempt the extra monies from the uniformity requirement, that requirement was established by the SRA, which was passed by Congress in 1996. The UPSFF was merely the Council’s response to the SRA mandate that it establish a uniform funding formula within 90 days of April 26, 1996. Thus, the funding uniformity requirement remains in full force and effect notwithstanding the Council’s attempt to get around it in the supplemental funding bill.

It should be noted in this context that the Fenty administration apparently intends to ask the Congress to provide funding in the FY 2009 Appropriations Bill to enable it to boost the DCPS budget by approximately $1,500 per student, while requesting only around $636 dollars per student of federal money for the charter schools.

Friends of Choice in Urban Schools
1530 16th Street, NW #104
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 387-0405 phone
(202) 667-3798 fax
www.focusdc.org