This year marks the 20th birthday of Idaho’s public charter school program. To commemorate this anniversary, and to share the history around it, Bluum has just released Shackled Education Pioneers: Idaho’s Public Charter Schools at 20.
When launched back in 1998 the legislative intent of the state’s charter school program was “to serve as learning laboratories with hope that successes could potentially be applied throughout the larger public education system.”
Like in other states, the political compromises required to pass the original charter law minimized the actual space for innovation. Worse, Idaho’s charter law has been modified almost annually and many of those changes have reduced even further the ability of public charters to really operate much differently from traditional public schools.
The Office of Performance Evaluations (OPE) reported to the Idaho Legislature in March 2013 that “the charter school laws have been amended 84 times since 1998.” Further changes to the state charter school law were applied in 2013 and each year thereafter.
In 2017 House Bill 279 was signed into law by Gov. Butch Otter that streamlined the procedures for opening new charter schools by simplifying the process, compressing the timeline and clarifying expectations for schools and authorizers, while at the same time maintaining standards for new charter petitions.
The fact remains, and quite ironically, Idaho’s charter schools have become the most regulated public schools in the state over the last 20 years. Public charters are required to follow the majority of the federal and state issued rules and regulations that apply to traditional public district schools, and like traditional district schools, charters must operate within the parameters of more than 25 distinct funding silos that prescribe how schools must spend their money.
Unlike traditional district schools, charter schools must also comply with the oversight of charter school authorizers. In Idaho, public school districts and the Idaho Public Charter School Commission serve as charter authorizers. State law also allows public colleges and universities, and private nonsectarian colleges and universities, to serve as authorizers, but none have chosen to do so. Every one of Idaho’s 52 charter schools have to have an authorizer, the entity that approves the school and determines, on the basis of performance, whether to extend or end a charter’s right to operate.
The 36 charter schools authorized by the state’s public charter school commission, for example, sign a performance certificate with the commission. This multi-page document details how charter schools will be held accountable for their academic, fiscal and compliance performance. That would be fair and meet the original intent of Idaho’s charter school law if things stopped there, but Idaho’s charter schools are getting very few of the operational flexibilities from state rules and regulations for this extra level of performance accountability.
Idaho’s charter school law has, not surprisingly, forced the state’s charter schools to look and operate a lot like traditional district schools, but with fewer taxpayer dollars. Under Idaho law charter schools receive all state and federal dollars afforded traditional public school districts. Charters do not, however, have access to any local levy or bond dollars. As a result they receive about $1,491 per pupil less on average than traditional district schools.
After 20 years of effort, it is time to revisit the big ideas behind charter schools in Idaho. How can we return to the charter idea of accountability for performance in exchange for true operational flexibilities and the right to be different in uses of money, time, technology and non-certified staffing? Idaho’s system of education needs this engine of reform, and the state’s families and children want it.
Despite the many challenges and constraints, Idaho’s charter schools have earned the right to the operational flexibilities that defined the intent of the original charter school law.
Annually, some of Idaho’s highest-performing public schools are public charter schools. Recent public opinion polls from Idaho Education News show most Idahoans support public charter schools and would like to see more of them. In 2017, there were somewhere between 6,500 and 11,000 students who wanted to attend a public charter school, but were on waitlists. If the 22,000 or so students enrolled in Idaho’s charters were all in one school district, it would be the third largest district in the state after West Ada and Boise school districts.
What could Idaho’s public charter school sector deliver in the next 20 years if it was given some operational flexibilities back? The history, growth and success of public charters in Idaho says it is past time to find out.
Written by Terry Ryan, the CEO of the Boise-based education nonprofit Bluum and the Idaho Charter School Network.
