Administration's New Message to Charter Schools: Quality Not Quantity

When the Christie administration last week announced it approved just four new charter schools out of nearly 60 applicants, it came with a message of quality over quantity from Gov. Chris Christie’s top education officials.

But there were clearly a few factors in play, from the politics of the upcoming legislative election to the changing rules in the department itself. For example, two of the approvals announced last week were part of larger networks of schools that are gaining favored status with the state.

Nevertheless, for anyone thinking the movement is slowing, 25 more schools are still slated to open next fall, the biggest new class yet. And there may be more to come.

Politics Matter

There was no doubt that Gov. Chris Christie was hearing grumbles from his Republican base. Many of his suburban legislators either voted for or abstained on new controls on charter schools being trumpeted by Democrats.

Christie himself had long been a lightning rod for the debate over charter schools, making their expansion a centerpiece of his education platform. When his administration last spring approved 23 new schools -- by far the largest group ever -- he went into Newark to announce the news schools himself.

But even before that, resentment was growing in the suburbs about the sudden advent of the charter schools in their midst, drawing dollars from their cash-strapped districts.

And as the months passed, Christie and his acting education commissioner, Chris Cerf, began to back off and publicly questioned whether charter schools were needed in relatively well-performing districts. Christie even said so in one of his national speeches in Iowa, before he started openly flirting with a run for the White House.

In the end, none of the half-dozen high-profile applications for suburban charter schools were approved, including those for Mandarin and Hebrew language schools. The one arguably suburban approval is a school in Cherry Hill that was predicated on drawing students from neighboring Lawnside, a low-income community, officials said.

Process Matters

With the backlash came some revising of the state Department of Education's application process as well. Starting this summer, Cerf has clearly sent a signal that he wanted to increase both the staffing of his charter school office and the rigor of its process.

To that end, he brought in a national charter association to help lead the application review, and Cerf and department officials said the strength and capacity of applicants' academic programs and their organizations would matter first and foremost. The fact that just nine of the 23 charters approved last spring were able to open this fall was a cautionary tale.

'The first bar was the quality of the programs, their capacity and their ability to meet the timelines for opening," said Carly Bolger, director of the department's charter school office. "These four were pretty obvious for us in terms of being the strongest."

"There was a pretty sizable gulf between what a lot of them said on paper and what they could show when they came in," she said in an interview this weekend.

But others weren't so pleased.

"We're happy that good schools were approved, but I question a review process that couldn't find more than 4 out of 60 applicants," said Jeanne Allen, director of the Center for Education Reform, a pro-charter group in Washington, D.C. that assisted some applicants.

"I think they were being cautious, but maybe too cautious when there are tens of thousands of children needing these opportunities," said Allen. "And it is inconsistent with the governor's philosophy and his drive for more options for children."

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