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Amid mounting criticisms that charter schools do not serve the neediest students, the state’s charter school authorizers are making a push to approve more charter schools that make those children a priority.

This week, the Board of Regents gave its stamp of approval to several schools that describe their mission as serving high-needs students, such as children with special needs, who are homeless, or who are over-age for their grade.

The schools include a school run by the Children’s Aid Society, which plans to serve students in the high-poverty South Bronx neighborhood of Morrisania. That school was authorized by  the State University of New York earlier this year, along with several other schools that will target their recruitment and services to high-needs students.

SUNY also approved two ROADS charter schools, which say they will enroll students who are over-aged but lack the credits needed to graduate. Those join several other recently approved or opened schools that SUNY selected for their commitments to underserved children.

Cynthia Proctor, a SUNY spokeswoman, said the new schools would still be held accountable for their academic performance, even though high-needs students tend to fall short more frequently on test scores and some other measures of success.

“It is important to understand that the two goals are not mutually exclusive,” she said. (more…)

As the city heads into summer, where exactly this fall’s crop of new charter schools will open remains in limbo. But that doesn’t mean more schools aren’t planned for the future.

Earlier this month, SUNY’s Charter Schools Institute approved a dozen charter schools to open in the city in the fall of 2012. Each of the new schools is planned for a specific school district within the city, but the institute’s announcement gives no indication of whether the schools will pursue public or private space.

The new schools include some unusual arrangements for the city, such as a partnership school with the Children’s Aid Society that will provide social services to students and a school that will reserve 30 percent of seats for students for English language learners. That school is set to open in Elmhurst, Queens, and has as a partner a nonprofit that works with Asian immigrants.

But the list mostly contains schools that replicate models already in place in the city. The sixth and seventh Carl Icahn charter schools are on the list, as are a second Family Life Academy Charter School and a second Manhattan Charter School. The Explore network has been given the green light for another school that would give preference to students zoned for a school the city wants to close; the first is supposed to open this fall, although the lawsuit filed by the UFT and NAACP has thrown that plan into question.

And the Success Charter Network, which already operates seven schools and is set to open two more this fall, had three new schools approved, all for Brooklyn. (more…)

For the first time, SUNY officials are looking to reinvent a struggling charter school with new leadership rather than shutting it down and sending its students elsewhere.

Rather than closing Harlem Day Charter School for its low test scores, the SUNY Charter School Institute is trying to find a new operator to replace the school’s board, administration and staff.

“The key element here is that really the only thing that would remain would be students,” said Jonas Chartock, the institute’s executive director. The idea is that the school’s 240 students would experience less disruption if their school was restructured rather than closed.

The call for applications that SUNY released today does not explicitly name Harlem Day. But that school’s charter is up for renewal this year and its enrollment numbers match those described in SUNY’s document. Harlem Day’s progress report grade this year ranked the school as the 11th poorest-performing elementary or middle school in the city.

Chartock said that when the board realized that its low test scores made its chances for renewal slim, board members said they would rescind their renewal application if SUNY was able to find another board to take over the school.

“I do think that’s an example that other boards can learn from,” Chartock said. (more…)

(Photo courtesy Chartock)

The executive director of the State University of New York’s charter authorizer, Jonas Chartock, is leaving to lead a New Orleans-based teacher training program as it expands around the country, SUNY officials announced today.

Beginning in January, Chartock will head up the “Leading Educators” project. The group currently runs a professional development program in New Orleans aimed at keeping strong teachers in the classroom by grooming them for leadership positions that don’t take them away from students.

UPDATE: Chartock just weighed in with more details on the program. He will be charged with expanding the program around the United States, though he said that the group hasn’t yet finalized the first school districts and charter school chains where the program will initially grow. The national expansion won’t necessarily mean replicating the New Orleans program exactly as it is now, Chartock said, and part of his job will be to adapt the model for teachers in other school systems.

The program in New Orleans is currently part of New Leaders for New Schools, the Manhattan-based group whose co-founder, Jon Schnur, served as an advisor to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, but will become an independent non-profit, Chartock said. The “Leading Educators” program is modeled after a similar teacher training program launched in the United Kingdom by Jay Altman, who now runs a charter network in New Orleans. (more…)

One of the state’s charter school authorizers is putting the brakes on a city directive that would force all charters to form parent associations.

Yesterday, the head of the city’s charter school office issued a memo to all charter school leaders in the city — even at schools the city did not authorize — saying that state law required them to form parent groups. The city would oversee schools’ compliance with the new requirement, the memo said.

Hours later, the director of the State University of New York’s Charter School Institute, Jonas Chartock, issued a memo of his own. It said that SUNY-authorized schools can ignore the city’s directive. (Chartock’s full letter to SUNY charter schools is below.)

Charter schools are exempt from the law that governs the rest of the state’s schools, Chartock said. And because the new parent association requirement is part of that broader law, it does not apply to charter schools, he said.

The confusion centers on the minute details of amendments to a law that were hastily written in late-night negotiations in May. (more…)

One of the most heralded parts of the new charter law forced charter schools to enroll more students with disabilities, learning English, and living in poverty.

But that will be trickier than it sounds.

The most immediate problem is access to data. The state’s two main charter school authorizers, the State University of New York’s Charter School Institute and the state education department, are tasked with setting enrollment targets that its charter schools must meet.

The crucial piece of information that SUNY needs to set its targets is how many needy students currently attend charter schools and neighborhing district schools. The law mandates that charter schools aim to enroll and retain needy students at “comparable” rates to other public schools in the district. (more…)

People who aim to open charter schools will now have to prove that they have support from their community. They’ll also need a plan to attract and retain needy students.

Those are the two biggest changes among a slew of new requirements for charter school applicants that officials at the State University of New York’s Charter School Institute say will focus their attention on schools’ plans to serve needier students. But the new chartering process also retains many elements of the old one, officials said today.

The new process is an addition born from the new state law that more than doubled the number of charter schools allowed in the state. Rather than simply applying for a charter, prospective school leaders must now respond to criteria issued by one of the state’s two main authorizers in the form of a Request for Proposals. SUNY’s draft documents are up for just over a week of public comment before being finalized early next month.

In addition to the new requirements, charter authorizers now have to rank applications based on a new criteria. But Charter School Institute director Jonas Chartock said that it is unlikely to fundamentally change the core commitments of its review process. The institute’s process has been nationally recognized for weeding out weak applications. (more…)