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"There's no place on Earth quite like the Grand Canyon State."
These words open the official website of the Arizona Office of Tourism.1 And the site's stunning photographs bear out that statement: a golfer swings, with wind-shaped towers of rock in the background; colorful flowers spring improbably from the desert soil; people on horseback cross a rocky stream, straight from the set of a Western; the sun sets over the Grand Canyon.
Despite decades of explosive population growth, Arizona remains a rugged frontier, a place where things work a bit differently than they do elsewhere in the country. Where else can you find skyscrapers, lush lawns, arid terrain, and snow-topped mountains within striking distance of each other? What other state's Republican senator would defend the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in an election year? Even time, the great constant, works differently in Arizona: When most of the nation springs forward to daylight-savings time, Arizona stays on standard time.
Though the tourism website focuses more on golf schools than public schools, Arizona's charter school sector also stands out as an example of the state's exceptional qualities. Charter schools are independent public schools of choice designed and operated by educators, parents, community leaders, and educational entrepreneurs, and given broad flexibility and freedom from regulatory constraints in exchange for public accountability for student achievement. Like the Grand Canyon, the first thing you notice is the sheer scale. With nearly 500 charter schools enrolling more than 73,000 students in the 2003-2004 school year, Arizona has the most charter schools in the nation and is second only to its next-door neighbor, California, in enrollment (see Figure 1).2
As a proportion of the state's overall population of schools and students, though, Arizona's charter school movement is second to none. Nearly one out of every four public schools in Arizona is a charter school. Because charter schools tend to be small, the percentage of students attending them is not as large -- about 7.5 percent. In most states, only 1 percent or 2 percent of public school students go to charter schools. Though the students enrolled in charter schools differ in some ways from the state's overall student population, the schools largely enroll a cross-section of Arizona's children (see Figure 7).
The scale of Arizona's charter sector is no accident. The state's lawmakers deliberately fashioned a charter statute that opened the doors wide. It is common for state charter laws to constrain the spread of charter schools by such means as placing caps on the number of schools, limiting who can obtain a charter, or giving local school boards veto power over charter proposals. Not so in Arizona. The state can have as many charter schools as chartering authorities are willing to approve. Virtually any kind of applicant, even a for-profit company, can seek a charter there. Charter seekers can ask their local school boards for approval, but they can also approach the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools (ASBCS), which was the first agency in the nation created specifically to authorize charter schools and is still one of only a handful of such agencies.
The ASBCS, most of whose members are appointed by the governor,3 has been at the forefront of the sector's expansion, chartering nearly three-quarters of Arizona's operating charter schools. The law may have opened the door, but it has been ASBCS that has ushered applicants in, approving 76 percent of the applications it received between 1994 and 2002.4
As a consequence, the board now oversees a large and far-flung collection of schools. If the board were a school district, it would rank among the nation's largest, in terms of number of schools; only New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago have more schools.5 The board's charges are located throughout the state, and overseeing them would be a challenge even for a large army of district personnel. Yet ASBCS manages the system with a staff of only eight employees and one contract certified public accountant.
To some observers, the resulting situation is an accountability nightmare: Licenses to run public schools being handed out freely, with little follow-up oversight to see how well the schools are performing. To others, the Arizona model is an exciting experiment on the forefront of education reform: providing lots of options for parents, allowing schools to chart their own courses with few restrictions, and letting the market sort out winners and losers. To still others, the reality is more complex: Changes now under way aim at taming Arizona's "Wild West" system, they say, and the old stories no longer apply.
A decade into the Arizona experience, this report aims to shed some light on what has really happened on this wild frontier of charter school policy. It reviews the unique Arizona law and its evolution over time, examines the outcomes charter schools have attained, and profiles some of the high and low points of chartering in Arizona. It analyzes the potential risks and rewards inherent in the Arizona model. It delves into some of the pressing challenges facing chartering in the state, and concludes with some recommendations for the future.
Among our principal findings:
Promising outcomes. Many Arizona charter schools are performing very well. In 2003-2004, 40.4 percent of charter schools participating in the state accountability system were "highly performing" or "excelling," compared with 26.6 percent of district schools.6 These figures do not include the many charter schools that are too small to receive state labels. But the larger charter schools, at least, include a large share of high-performers. Annual growth in student achievement is also higher, on average, in charter elementary schools.7 High percentages of charter school parents and teachers express satisfaction with their schools.8
"Brush fires" on the frontier. At the same time, Arizona has seen some serious problems at individual charter schools, ranging from egregious financial misconduct to illegal religious instruction to discrimination against children with disabilities. In a practice that is now prohibited, some districts essentially sold charters to schools far outside their own boundaries, collecting fees while doing little to oversee the schools. Yet few charters have been revoked in the state. As of December 2003, seven charters had been revoked, 36 schools had voluntarily surrendered or closed under threat of revocation, and three revocations were pending.9
Lack of information. The lack of a transparent information system about charter schools makes it impossible to know how widespread the alleged unsavory practices have been in the state's charter schools. Though ASBCS is developing better systems, there is no way to obtain detailed school-by-school information. Far too many charter schools are not rated in the state's accountability system because of their small size; the resulting information vacuum makes it impossible to draw conclusions about performance in the charter sector.
Signs of impact and response. Researchers have begun to document the fact that some districts are responding to chartering by marketing themselves to the community, seeking to improve their schools' performance, and offering new programs to retain current students and attract new ones.10
Challenges of oversight and accountability. Arizona's chartering program has evolved quite a bit over the course of 10 years. Problems at individual charter schools have prompted the Arizona legislature to amend the law over time. More significantly, the state's primary authorizer, ASBCS, is in the midst of making numerous policy changes designed to improve oversight and accountability. Views on these changes differ within Arizona. Some believe they will help the state avoid the kind of "brush fires" it has endured in the past; others see the reforms as adding to the paperwork and regulatory burden on schools without improving performance.
Challenges of cohesion. With such a large and far-flung charter sector, charter advocates in Arizona have struggled to build a cohesive movement with real strength in state politics or the capacity to provide comprehensive assistance to schools.
Here are several recommendations to help Arizona's chartering program address its challenges while maintaining a relatively open system with strong autonomy for the schools:
Be tough but smart about oversight. While the bodies overseeing charter schools in Arizona should strive to minimize administrative burdens on schools and oversight agencies, they must place a greater emphasis on what matters most -- academics and bottom-line compliance issues. With so many charters being overseen by a small agency, it is of paramount importance that oversight resources be concentrated primarily on problem areas, rather than across-the-board requirements. Frequent, unannounced, and random spot checks should be employed as a deterrent to financial misconduct, discrimination, and other basic types of mismanagement that have plagued some of Arizona's charter schools in the past.
Use information aggressively as a tool for accountability. Not much useful data is available about individual charter schools in Arizona. A much richer database of performance information needs to be available online, along with access to schools' audits and compliance records.
Close poorly performing schools. With a relatively open "front end," it becomes especially important to have a clear, rigorous, and workable process for closing schools that are not performing well. Charter school authorizers in Arizona need to forge through potentially bitter politics and embrace their authority by revoking the charters of schools that are failing academically or violating basic tenets of public schooling, such as open access and proper handling of public funds. The Legislature needs to make clear that authorizers have the power to do that, and do it without facing endless and expensive litigation.
Provide resources for high-quality authorizing. All of these recommendations require that authorizers, and in particular ASBCS, have sufficient resources to carry out their work. It may also make sense for the state to diversify its authorizing to some degree. Having more than one prominent authorizer would allow different approaches to oversight to emerge and, in conjunction with better transparency regarding school performance, to be put to the test.
Focus on creating a support system to improve and expand the supply of high-quality charter schools. Those concerned about the long-term success of chartering in Arizona should focus energy on supply-generating strategies, such as replicating successful charter schools, tapping existing community and cultural organizations to start new schools, and building the capacity of organizations in the state to support charter schools.
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