NACSA Conference Remarks for Plenary Session

On October 2015, Scott Pearson delivered remarks at the National Association of Charter School Authorizers Conference. Read the remarks below or download a copy

NACSA Conference Remarks for Plenary Session Tuesday October 20, 2015

• Over the past 20 years our role - authorizing – is gradually becoming a recognized profession and NACSA deserves a lot of credit for this. And that progress will continue in a dozen different ways in the future: consortia of smaller authorizers, like we see in California, will appear all over the country; hallmarks of good authorizing, like accountability frameworks, will be ubiquitous; graduate schools will begin to offer a master’s or certificate programs in authorizing; and the skills of authorizing will be in increasing demand at traditional school districts, not only to staff their charter school offices, but to drive their portfolio strategy.

• I also think we’ll also see some large school districts embracing a decentralized portfolio strategy that - some time in the next fifteen years an experienced charter school authorizer’s leader will be named as the superintendent of a large school district. Because that’ll be the best person to drive the district's decentralized strategy.

• I also predict we have to close more low-performing schools. Our closure rate is just 3.7%. That's far too low. Raise your hand if you can name a school that you know should be closed but hasn't. Developing a tougher mindset has to be part of our strategy, it ensures we will continue to hold our schools to higher standards. Over the next 15 years we will have help, we’ll have more in-house expertise, we’ll have more lessons learned under our belt, and best practices to follow. This is going to make us better and better at our work - creating better accountability systems and tightening our processes so schools can't win procedural challenges. Also, many of our states will enact stronger laws, including default closure laws, that will help us do our work. All in all, I predict that stronger authorizing and better laws, including default closure, will bring the closure rate to greater than 5%.

• Thirdly I predict - in the next 15 years we’ll see 2,500 new public charter schools, serving nearly 2 million more students, and bringing the national market share to close to 10%. As these numbers grow, we could see the number of school districts with a charter market share of greater than 30% rise from a dozen to nearly 50%. I really don't see our growth slowing because public charter schools are wildly popular with parents as witnessed by the long waiting lists. And, as their quality continues to outpace the traditional schools, they’ll make good on their promise to provide a quality public education to students and families.

• And my last prediction - In cities with large market shares the issues that have always been present in our movement become unavoidable. In these cities charters must serve all students as they do now, including students with disabilities. Their discipline policies will become a matter of general concern, as will enrollment and backfilling policies. And there will be insistent calls for better coordination - between authorizers and the school districts. All authorizers struggle with these issues. And I predict we are going to see all sorts of creative solutions out of these high share cities. This will be a time of great experimentation and innovation, and we will all benefit by watching, and learning from, each other.

• What’s important is that we find ways to tackle these unavoidable issues without over-regulating our schools, without stifling their ability to innovate, without crushing charters with demands that recreate the dysfunctions or “red tape” found in our district schools.

• So those are my four predictions - greater professionalization of our field, better ability to close the worst schools, continued charter growth, and that growth forcing creative solutions to longstanding issues.

• I’m looking forward to the future, it's going to be an interesting time for charter school authorizing!