This week Partnership for Learning, along with UW’s Center on Reinventing Public Education, released “Examining Charters: How public charter schools can work in Washington state.” The report should be useful for voters as they decide whether to approve Initiative 1240, which would allow a limited number of public charter schools in Washington. (Our policy brief on I-1240 is available here.)

As the report points out,

Not even half of fourth and eighth graders were proficient on national reading and math tests in 2011. Despite having fewer low-income families than the national average, Washington state ranks 37th in the nation in high school completion.

Also, “57 percent of Washington students enrolling in community and technical colleges in 2009 required remedial coursework of some kind.”

What is to be done? “Although there are many examples of outstanding and innovative traditional public schools in Washington state, there is need for more high-quality options for our struggling students” — including public charter schools.

The report gives some history on charter schools, describes how they work, provides examples of specific charter schools in other states, and looks at studies of charter school results. It also offers some recommendations for implementation, based on lessons learned in states that have charters:

• Focus on developing a charter school ecosystem as much as on the components of the law,
• Focus on autonomy and accountability,
• Focus on high-quality authorizing,
• Pay attention to charter schools’ ongoing access to funding and facilities, and
• Consider incubators to develop and replicate high-quality schools.

As the report concludes,

By design public charter schools look quite different from each other. But there are some conditions that we know are likely to foster good charter schools. As we have seen across the nation, charters work best when they are funded equitably and given autonomy over school-level operations, but are also held accountable for results.