Designs for School-Site Reform: Charter Schools in New Mexico and Texas

Executive Summary

by Kathleen M. McGree, Sue E. Mutchler, and Gail R. Meister

Charter Schools: An Option in School-Site Reform

In 1991 only one state, Minnesota, had enacted charter school legislation. Since then, laws permitting the establishment of charter schools have been passed in a total of 25 states and the District of Columbia. The numbers of charter schools in Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Texas, as in the rest of the country, have also increased over the last few years.

While it is difficult to predict how and how much the movement will expand in these states, policymakers, practitioners, and researchers alike are increasingly interested in the movement’s progress nationally and the implications both for charter school participants and the public education system as a whole. In response to this need for information, the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) has conducted an investigation drawing from the best available research on education policy and practice.

Designs for School-Site Reform describes what early charter school organizers in New Mexico and Texas proposed to do to create better learning environments for students, better working conditions for teachers, and ultimately, more accountable and successful schools. It takes a careful look at the designs of these charter schools to determine the extent to which they represent models of school-site reform.

The paper is based on a systematic review of 24 approved charter school applications: four charter applications submitted in New Mexico in 1994, and 20 open-enrollment charter applications submitted in Texas in 1996. The review examines the proposed structures and programs in these charter schools against a framework for successful school site reform, First Things First, developed by Dr. James P. Connell of the Institute for Research and Reform in Education.

This paper highlights the extent to which charter school designs in these states incorporated features that research and practice suggest will lead to meaningful change and improved educational outcomes for students. The analysis is organized to reveal trends and patterns within each state. This approach gives policymakers, educators, and parents a way to identify some of the educationally significant elements of the school environments that characterize early charter school designs in New Mexico and Texas. Given the unique legislative context of each state, this information also furnishes policymakers with an early glimpse into how charter school legislation is translating into real schooling options for parents and students. Policymakers can begin to see how charter school designs address the particular educational needs of students in each state and how closely these designs match the intent of the law.

Overview of Charter School Designs in New Mexico and Texas

Charter schools differ from one another. Aside from differences springing from their unique missions and programs, a major source of difference is the boundaries set by their states’ charter school legislation. Texas’s “strong” law permits greater autonomy and freedom from regulation while New Mexico’s “weak” law permits less. Moreover, the legislation allows for the creation of only five charter schools in New Mexico, all of which are required to be existing public schools. In contrast, Texas’s law permits the creation of 20 “open-enrollment” charter schools along with additional charter schools of other types. Open-enrollment charter schools may be new schools sponsored by any public or private institution of higher education, nonprofit organization, or governmental entity.

A Framework for Successful School-Site Reform

How good are charter schools and how should their quality be measured? Many observers of the charter movement contend that it is too soon to evaluate or make definitive statements about the general quality or effectiveness of charter schools. That judgment especially holds where charter schools have been operating for less than three to five years, as is the case in the Southwestern Region.

This paper has adopted the First Things First framework for taking this look at charter schools. Assembled by the Institute for Research and Reform in Education (IRRE), with support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the framework consists of an interrelated set of elements or school conditions that bear most directly on students’ success—particularly students from economically disadvantaged communities. These elements are based on IRRE’s research of successful schools, educational reform initiatives, youth development, and organizational development in educational and noneducational settings. All the elements in the First Things First framework are under the direct control of schools. IRRE believes that they should be the priorities—“the first and primary focus”—of change efforts.

The Seven Critical Features of School-Site Reform

The elements in the framework constitute the critical features that IRRE believes are necessary and sufficient for successful school-site reform. The seven critical features are:

• lower student/adult ratios

• continuity of care

• high, clear, fair standards

• diverse and enriched opportunities to learn, perform, and be recognized

• collective responsibility for results

• instructional autonomy and supports

• flexible allocation of resources

IRRE stresses the interrelationship of these critical features.

Why apply the framework to charter schools? The main reason is the good match between assumptions about charter schools and the theory underlying the framework. Charter schools theoretically will:

(1) produce direct and improved outcomes for students and staff;

(2) allow school staff the flexibility and autonomy to make structural changes, implement instructional innovations, and allocate financial and human resources according to student needs;

(3) promote reform in exchange for the investment of only minimal financial resources; and

(4) provide greater professional opportunities for educators and encourage a sense of ownership and investment among school staff, parents, and students.

Moreover, charter schools' enhanced autonomy and flexibility represent an ideal setting for the implementation of whole-school reform. Therefore, charter school designs might be expected to incorporate the kind of research- and field-based best practices and integrated reforms that the First Things First framework embodies.

The First Things First framework was designed as a tool to help educators examine the conditions for students and adults that would constitute meaningful reform in any educational setting. The framework functions not as a specific model or program for school reform but as a guide for educators who are restructuring school conditions to achieve better results.

The Limitations of This Study

While applying the framework to charter school designs is appropriate, it is important to make explicit its limitations. One limitation is the framework's exclusion of components like parent and community involvement that are often central to charter schools. Other limitations are the constraints imposed by New Mexico's and Texas's charter school legislation and their application and approval processes. Readers should also bear in mind that the charter school organizers developed their applications without the First Things First framework or any other research- or practice-based information to consider in designing their schools. Finally, readers are reminded that no analysis of charter school applications will yield a complete and accurate picture of charter schools in the two states.

Findings from New Mexico and Texas Charter School Applications

Overall, the analysis finds that the seven critical features are distributed unevenly across charter schools in the two states. While some elements of the framework are common in charter school designs, other elements appear in none or only a few. Still others are more prevalent in one state than another. No single school design in New Mexico or Texas incorporates the entire set of critical features.

The two critical features of school reform found most frequently in the charter school designs are creating diverse and enriched opportunities for students to learn, and providing adults in the school with greater instructional autonomy and support. They embody the most widespread and generally accepted reform initiatives in public schools of the last decade—hands-on learning, teacher professionalism, and site-based management. They also represent the kinds of changes that are relatively easy to make. Neither feature requires fundamental restructuring nor the significant reallocation of human and financial resources, and information about implementation is readily available.

Features that require significant structural changes are less evident in charter school designs. For example, conditions that promote better relationships between students and adults—such as lower student/adult ratios and continuity of care—but that also require major change in school practice rarely appear in the designs of charter schools, especially in New Mexico

Likewise, few charter school designs show evidence of the altering conventional structures in order to provide students with continuous access to adult guidance and support. New Mexico has a higher proportion than Texas of schools planning to provide students with continuity of care, but in all it amounts to only seven charter schools in either state.

Least evident in New Mexico and Texas charter school designs is collective responsibility for adults. This critical feature requires relatively modest structural changes but demands a fundamental redefinition of roles for adults in schools. This feature, which encourages adults not only to hold themselves responsible for the performance of their students but also to hold each other accountable for improving student performance, is not clearly evident in any charter school design in either state.

What These Findings Mean for Practitioners and Policymakers

The outright absence or relatively weak presence in charter school designs of some features which the First Things First framework identifies as necessary and sufficient for improving student outcomes says something about the challenges facing not just charter schools but all schools attempting reform. The critical features that are less robust or missing altogether are the most difficult to implement for several reasons. They are less familiar to educators and the public, and they deviate the most from standard practice. For those reasons alone they are more likely to encounter resistance. But even if these difficulties are overcome, other and perhaps more significant difficulties remain. Implementation of these features demands reorganization of instructional time, space, and staff. Moreover, it requires a redefinition of roles, relationships, and responsibilities that asks educators collectively to make a deep personal and professional investment in their students' performance.

Seven Recommended Directions for Policymakers and Charter School Developers

If charter schools are to model school-site reform as well as catalyze the entire public education system, then they must be designed for optimal student success. Practitioners and policymakers both can contribute to ensuring that charter school designs incorporate best practice, such as the First Things First framework's critical features.

• Advocates have suggested that the success of charter schools is largely a function of autonomy: the more autonomy states grant charter schools, the better their chances for success. This inquiry shows that enhanced autonomy in New Mexico and Texas has not uniformly produced charter school designs with features that education research and practice suggest are necessary and sufficient for student success.

• Practitioners, first and foremost, must seek and use reliable information concerning school-site reform. They must also examine their own school-site designs to ensure that the designs incorporate the features that are most likely to have a direct and positive impact on student achievement.

• Policymakers have a responsibility to review and revise charter school legislation, guidelines, and procedures in their states. One aspect of this review is changing language or provisions that deter charter school organizers from exploring effective educational and administrative strategies. Specifically, policymakers might reexamine waiver policies to make sure they are sufficiently broad, review certification provisions to raise the proportion of degreed adults in charter school buildings, revisit assessment standards to ensure that they are keyed to multiple, authentic assessments, and (in New Mexico) reposition budgetary control and oversight to increase the authority of school-site personnel. Policymakers might also consider short-term rewards and sanctions for student performance in charter schools.

• Policymakers can adjust charter applications so they direct applicants' attention to the critical features advocated by IRRE. Additionally, the review of legislation, guidelines, and procedures introduces ways of encouraging charter school organizers to include sound educational practices in their school-site designs.

• Policymakers can make technical assistance and staff development available to charter school organizers, boards of trustees, and personnel. Professional development—and follow-up technical assistance—might particularly focus on such topics as team teaching, curricula and lessons keyed to particular state standards, data-driven instructional planning, and alternative assessment including methods for collectively calibrating and monitoring student work.

• Practitioners and policymakers can continue applying the First Things First framework—or any other comprehensive synthesis that is grounded in education research and practice—during the operational phase of charter schools. The framework can be used to assess actual conditions in charter schools and can guide ongoing efforts to refine and redesign them.

Occasional Papers on Charter Schools from the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL)

Since 1992, the charter schools movement has generated considerable political and popular debate in every region of the country.

The rapid expansion of the charter school movement is of particular interest in the nation’s Southwestern Region. By the fall of 1997, 28 charter school applications had been approved to serve students in three states—Louisiana, New Mexico, and Texas—and the numbers seemed likely to grow. Arkansas passed charter school legislation and the Oklahoma legislature has considered charter school proposals during at least two legislative sessions. As more charter schools open their doors, and more students, parents, and teachers share in the charter school experience, research at local, state, and federal levels has shifted in focus from policy to practice.

Since it is difficult to predict how and how much the charter school’s movement will expand, policymakers, practitioners, and researchers alike are tracking its progress. To meet their need for reliable information, SEDL investigated charter schools in the Southwestern Region, drawing upon the best available research on education policy and practice to provide a meaningful context for considering these issues.

SEDL presents its findings in three occasional papers. Each paper examines crucial aspects of the charter school movement as it has evolved in SEDL’s service area.

Redefining Education Governance: The Charter School Concept explores the roots of the charter school concept, especially in terms of shifts in authority and accountability. The paper examines how charter schools transfer authority and accountability from federal and state government to local and school-site leaders. It investigates how charter schools embody the educational and organizational values implicit in school reform initiatives since the early 1980s: innovation, autonomy, accountability, parental choice, teacher professionalism, efficiency, and systemwide improvement. Can the charter school concept merge these often competing values into a single education reform strategy while resolving long-standing tensions?

Kathleen M. McGree, 1995. 16 pages.

Variations on Autonomy: Charter School Laws in the Southwestern Region benchmarks a chief issue in charter schools: whether state laws permit organizers to create charter schools as self-governing institutions capable of authentic education reform. It analyzes legislation passed in Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico and Texas through a research-based framework designed to identify autonomous features in charter schools. Can charter schools in Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Texas manifest autonomy under these laws? Do state codes allow schools to act with authority and self-determination? SEDL’s study reveals not only significant variations in the overall degree of autonomy granted to charter schools across the Southwestern Region, but also subtle differences in the kinds of autonomy that the region’s charter schools are most likely to enjoy.

Kathleen M. McGree and Sue E. Mutchler, 1998. 52 pages.

Designs for School-Site Reform: Charter Schools in New Mexico and Texas concludes the series. The question is no longer which states grant charter schools the most autonomy and why, but rather how charter school organizers are building autonomy in school structures and programs. The paper describes what early charter school organizers in New Mexico and Texas proposed to create better learning environments for students, better working conditions for teachers, and ultimately, more accountable and successful schools. The paper then takes a careful look at whether these trail-blazing charter schools represent models of school-site reform.

Kathleen M. McGree, Sue E. Mutchler, and Gail R. Meister, 1998. 56 pages.

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Publications in this Series

This publication is based on work sponsored wholly, or in part, by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, under Contract #RJ96006801. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views of OERI, the Department, or any other agency of the U.S. Government. SEDL is an Equal Opportunity Affirmative Action employer.