In an attempt to improve charter school authorizing nationally, The Learning Collective has been increasingly partnering with national charter school authorizing support organizations like NACSA and a number of state-level authorizers including Central Michigan University, Idaho Public Charter School Commission, Indiana Charter School Board, New York State Education Department, SUNY Charter Schools Institute and the Washington State Charter School Commission. Through this work a few things have become apparent.
There is incredible variety in the types of support that authorizers need … from learning the basics of authorizing to finding enough experienced school quality reviewers to developing strategic plans.
In our experience, the highest quality authorizers know the areas in which they need to improve and are actively working to make those improvements AND/OR acknowledge they do not yet know all of the areas in which they need to improve thus commit resources to identifying and then addressing those areas.