The National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) released the following statement in response to the recommendations in a report on authorizer accountability released yesterday by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University:

“The Annenberg Institute’s report on “Public Accountability for Charter Schools” is a disappointing entry in the important discussion of how to improve education for America’s children. Its recommendations are incomplete, judgmental, and not based on research or data. If the report’s recommendations were implemented, charter schools would become clones of traditional public schools, losing the flexibility needed to be innovative and better.

In Annenberg’s report, a significant number of important accountability standards and authorizing practices are unaddressed or superficially addressed. Throughout the report, the author repeatedly assumes the worst about charter schools and fails to acknowledge the thousands of charter schools that are working well and the millions of families who believe a charter school is the best choice for their children. The citations that the author offers in support of her recommendations are almost entirely newspaper articles and blog posts. This is surprisingly sloppy work for an institute housed at Brown University.

We appreciate that the author did take the time to look at our work and our Principles & Standards for Quality Charter School Authorizing, which were developed with funding from the U.S. Department of Education and are considered the most comprehensive and detailed authorizing standards in the country. Our standards have been publicly developed, reviewed, criticized, tested and modified for more than ten years. Numerous states have embraced our standards in law and in practice. Unlike the Annenberg report, the names of our board members and the individuals who contributed to the development of our standards are printed clearly on the front cover of our Principles & Standards. Almost all of those individuals actually work in this field.

More importantly, when put into practice, our standards enhance accountability in order to strengthen school quality and honor the autonomy charter schools need to innovate, while protecting the rights of students and the interests of the public. We need more states to set truly high standards for their authorizers, through mechanisms like endorsing our own Principles & Standards. We welcome all allies in our effort to promote high expectations for authorizers, but a new set of deeply flawed recommendations is not helpful. And while we appreciate Annenberg’s interest in this important topic, its report leaves much to be desired and makes little progress toward our shared goal: for all children to have the opportunity to attend great schools that prepare them for success in life.”