ripples of innovationlaunching national charter schools week, and strengthening grassroots...

by Jon Schroeder

Ripples ofInnovation

Charter Schooling in Minnesota, the Nation’s First Charter School State

PrefaceIn the fall of 1992, shortly before Bill Clinton was elected president, the nation’s first public charter school openedin St. Paul, Minn. It was the first concrete iteration of a powerful, innovative idea—that public schools are definedby operating norms and public accountability rather than solely by who manages them.

Now, more than a decade later, Minnesota charter school expert Jon Schroeder tells the story of charter schoolingin the “Land of 10,000 Lakes.” He examines the successes, failures, lessons learned, and next steps for Minnesota’spublic charter schools. Because charter schooling has generally been successful in Minnesota, Schroeder’s paper isa useful resource for other states to improve weaker charter laws or pass new ones, as well as for states that arestruggling to successfully implement charter schooling initiatives.

Schroeder’s paper offers a concise and accessible overview for educators, policymakers, journalists, and anyone elsewith an interest in these dynamic new schools and the state policies that support them. It is the second in a seriesof state analyses following “Catching the Wave, Lessons from California’s Charter Schools,” which PPI released in2003 to examine charter schooling in California. During the remainder of this year, the 21st Century Schools Projectwill produce similar analyses about charter schooling in Arizona, New York City, Ohio, and Texas.

A generous grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation made it possible for the 21st Century Schools Projectto undertake this work. We are grateful to the Gates Foundation for their support of this project and their overallcommitment to educational improvement.

The Progressive Policy Institute has been an active proponent of public charter schools for more than a decade. Wesee public charters as the most productive marriage of choice and customization in public education to ensure highquality, publicly accessible, and publicly accountable schools. The 21st Century Schools Project at PPI works todevelop education policy and foster innovation to ensure that America's public schools are an engine of equalopportunity in the knowledge economy. Through research, publications and articles, and work with policymakersand practitioners, the Project supports initiatives to strengthen accountability, increase equity, improve teacherquality, and expand choice and innovation within public education.

The goals of the 21st Century Schools Project are a natural extension of the mission of the Progressive PolicyInstitute, which is to define and promote a new progressive politics for the 21st century. The Institute’s core philos-ophy stems from the belief that America is ill-served by an obsolete left-right debate that is out of step with thepowerful forces reshaping our society and economy. The Institute believes in adapting the progressive tradition inAmerican politics to the realities of the Information Age by moving beyond the liberal impulse to defend thebureaucratic status quo and the conservative bid to dismantle government. More information on the project andPPI is available at www.ppionline.org.

Andrew J. RotherhamDirector, 21st Century Schools Project

Progressive Policy InstituteApril 2004

Cover photo courtesy of Corbis

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Thirteen years ago this spring, Minnesota’sState Legislature began a revolution in theorganization and governance of public

education that has now spread to 41 states and theDistrict of Columbia. The idea behind this revolutionwas simple: grant parents, teachers, and others inthe community the opportunity to start and run newpublic schools outside the direct control of localschool districts.

These new public schools were to be authorizedfor a specified term and granted a “charter” thatwould define academic and other goals and set theparameters for their operation. They would be lessregulated, but would have to abide by the underlyingprinciples of public education: open to all, publiclyfunded, no discrimination, no tuition, no teachingreligion. They would be judged on the results theyachieved. They would be schools of choice.

The ripples of innovation following thisMinnesota-born idea spread quickly across thecountry, with about 3,000 charter schools now inoperation serving some 750,000 students. Thesignificance of this idea was also recognized in 2000when Minnesota’s charter law received theprestigious Innovations in American GovernmentAward from the Kennedy School of Governmentat Harvard University. This annual award salutesoutstanding examples of creative problem solvingin the public sector.

The nation’s first charter school—CityAcademy—opened in St. Paul in the fall of 1992. Adozen years later, Minnesota has 88 charter schoolsin operation, with as many as 40 more expected toopen in the next two years. If anything, chartering

new public schools is on an accelerating track inMinnesota—contrary to trends being observed in anumber of other states. The idea remainscontroversial, however, particularly in a state that isfacing severe fiscal pressures and continuedopposition to the charter idea from powerfulprotectors of the status quo.

Along the way, Minnesota has provided morethan its share of leadership to the nation’s charterschool movement and more than its share ofnational leaders. In addition to launching the idea,the original author, former State Senator EmberReichgott Junge, has testified and assistedpolicymakers in crafting legislation in a numberof other states. So have two other sources of theoriginal thinking behind this idea: Ted Kolderie,senior associate at the Center for Policy Studies,and Joe Nathan, director of the Center forSchool Change and the Minnesota Charter SchoolResource Center at the University of Minnesota.

More recently, Kolderie and Joe Graba,former dean of the Graduate School of Educationat Hamline University, have created Education/Evolving, a national initiative that is focusing onthe rationale and the state policy infrastructurefor new school development. Their colleague,Bob Wedl, a former Minnesota commissioner ofEducation, is directing a parallel consortium ofMinnesota’s diverse charter school authorizers thatis also likely to benefit their fellow authorizersand policymakers well beyond the state.

Minnesota’s earlier leadership also includedthe legislation introduced in 1991 by its formerU.S. senator, Dave Durenberger, to create a

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federal grant program for charter schools. Withbipartisan cosponsorship from Senator JosephLieberman and strong support from PresidentBill Clinton, this legislation was adopted in 1994.By the end of 2004, it will have provided morethan $1.2 billion in start-up funding for charterschools nationally.

From 1996 to 2003, Minnesota was also hometo the Charter Friends National Network(CFNN), a project of the Center for Policy Studiesthat linked and supported more than 70 state-levelcharter support organizations. The CFNN playeda major role on federal policy development,starting new state charter support organizations,launching National Charter Schools Week, andstrengthening grassroots involvement in the U.S.Department of Education’s National CharterSchools Conference. And CFNN is now intransition to a more permanent, Washington-basednational charter school leadership organization.

Finally, Minnesota has produced a numberof leading charter school founder/directors

who are known and respected nationally. Theyinclude Milo Cutter, founder of City Academy;Bob DeBoer, director of New Visions charterschool in Minneapolis; Tess Tiernan, directorof Skills for Tomorrow in St. Paul; and Dougand Dee Thomas, who, with others, co-foundedMinnesota New Country School and its nationalscale-up organization, EdVisions Schools. Theyand dozens of other charter school leaders areably served by Steve Dess, director of theMinnesota Association of Charter Schools, who,since 1997, has built one of the nation’s strongestand most effective state-level charter advocacyand support organizations.

All these individuals and organizations havegiven leadership and inspiration to the state’scharter movement for more than a decade.Minnesotans can be proud that they—and manyof their colleagues—have made significantcontributions to the growth and success of charterschools nationally as well.

—Jon Schroeder, April 2004


This report traces the origins, evolution andimpact of Minnesota’s pioneering charterschool law—on its own schools, students,

and communities and on the development of charterlaws in many other states. It notes that, unlike whatis now happening elsewhere, new schools are nowbeing chartered at an accelerating pace in Minnesota.And because Minnesota has been chartering schoolsfor more than a decade, the report found that manyfundamental pieces of the infrastructure needed tomaintain and accelerate that expansion are now inplace.

This is happening at a time when Minnesotafaces several critical challenges, including huge gapsin achievement levels and graduation rates amongdifferent demographic groups in an increasinglydiverse school-age population. Those gaps willbecome even more evident under the testing andreporting requirements of the federal No Child LeftBehind Act (NCLB) of 2001. In addition, like moststates, Minnesota faces tight budgets and strongresistance to authorizing new spending—creatingheightened competition for available resources andintense resistance to creating new public schoolsfrom established interests intent on protecting thestatus quo.

Minnesota’s charter school movement hasexperience, assets, and new perspectives it can drawupon to overcome this resistance and help giveleadership to a new generation of policy initiativesand ideas—not just in Minnesota, but elsewhere inthe country as well. Minnesota’s next generation ofnational leadership on charter schools and charteringcan draw upon:

! Strong policy leadership—both from bipartisanpolicymakers and key education reformers and

leaders in and outside the traditional publiceducation system.

! New insights about the essential role that creatingnew schools must play—at least on par withimproving existing schools—in addressing thechallenges now facing American public education.

! A consistent context of expanding public schoolchoice and choices—creating the “supply side”for school improvement and a favorable policyenvironment for bringing new school choiceoptions to scale.

! Expanding opportunities for organizations otherthan local school boards to authorize andoversee new public schools—withdrawing thehistoric “exclusive franchise” of public schooldistricts.

! New options and new opportunities for teachers,including establishing teacher cooperatives andother professional practice arrangements.

! Direct relationships between new public schoolsand the state, resulting in a significant degreeof autonomy and a realistic goal of having publicfunding—all of it—follow students.

! Reasonably equitable funding for charter schools,relative to district schools, including state andfederal funds for planning, start-up, operations,and facilities.

! A growing infrastructure of private-sectorfinancial support and technical assistance,advocacy, and administrative support.

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! An emphasis on using new schools to establish,redefine, and strengthen communities,particularly in the state’s growing immigrantpopulation and other communities of color.

This report also makes seven broadrecommendations—addressed to Minnesota’seducation and public policy leadership. Althougheach state is different, these recommendationsinclude important lessons that are just as relevantfor policy discussions now going on in other states.They include:

! Re-articulate a clear and convincing rationalefor chartering—as a mechanism to addressserious shortcomings in our current educationsystem—by creating many new andsubstantially different public schools ofchoice.

! Continue to expand the boundaries that havehistorically defined “public schools,” whilepreserving and honoring the most essential coreelements of “public education.”

! Use charters and chartering to more strategicallyand proactively address huge gaps in studentachievement levels among racial and otherdemographic groups, while also contributing toracial and ethnic integration.

! Better document the successes of individualcharter schools in meeting the studentachievement and teacher quality goals of NCLB,while also documenting fulfillment of theunique mission and attributes of each charterschool.

! Use charters to test new and creative strategiesto expand choice and choices—while alsorespecting today’s fiscal realities.

! Continue to strengthen the capacity of a diversearray of sponsors to provide appropriateoversight, and promote more responsive andcost-effective ways to provide functionshistorically performed by district central officeadministrators and by unions.

! Broaden and deepen private-sector financialsupport and partnerships that can expandavailable resources, and proactively seek greaternon-financial contributions from communitypartners for creating and replicating high qualitynew schools.

This is not an agenda for the complacent or faintof heart. Nor is this a time to presume Minnesota’shistoric education policy leadership and innovation canrun on past success—or even on current momentum.Maintaining Minnesota’s historic position ofleadership—and meeting the state’s new educationalchallenges and opportunities—now requires movingchartering to a new level as a proactive strategy forchanging and improving public education.

Thirteen years ago this spring, Minnesotansmade a huge contribution to addressing their ownand the nation’s educational challenges by passingAmerica’s first charter school law. Minnesota’seducation and policy leaders have a new obligationin 2004—to make sure the revolution they began in1991 is retooled and reinvigorated, to addresschallenges that now face us as a state and nation,and to realize exciting new opportunities that nowlie ahead.


Except for the law that is their foundation,each Minnesota charter school is unique.However, to gain a necessary composite

picture, it may be helpful to describe Minnesota’scharter sector in a series of snapshots that trace itsgrowth and impact over time.

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Minnesota currently has 88 operating charterschools with another 26 so far approved to open in2004. The current schools serve approximately14,100 students, or fewer than 2 percent ofMinnesota’s public school enrollment. Of the 114schools now open or approved, about 70 percentare in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, including29 charters in St. Paul, 23 in Minneapolis, and 26 in

Twin Cities’ suburbs. The remaining 36 Minnesotacharter schools are scattered throughout the restof the state.

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While charter schools serve fewer than 2percent of the state’s overall public school students,there are districts where the market share for charterschools is much greater and clearly being felt. InMinneapolis and St. Paul, for example, charters nowserve approximately 7.2 percent and 9.3 percent ofthe districts’ public school enrollments, respectively.Minneapolis district leaders have been particularlyconscious of the growing competition from charters(see sidebar on Page 37), as well as other publicschool choice options available to its students.

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Charter Schools and Chartering in Minnesota

Minneapolis or St. Paul

45.6%

Twin Cities suburbs 22.8%

Rest of state 31.6%

SOURCE: Minnesota Department of Education, Minnesota Association of Charter Schools

Student Enrollment Concentration in MN Charters


Other Minnesota districts with highconcentrations of charter students include Duluth,with four charters and about 9.3 percent of thedistrict’s public school enrollment; Bemidji, withthree charters and about 7 percent of district publicschool enrollment; and Northfield, with threecharters and 6.5 percent of district public schoolenrollment.

Low income students and students withLow income students and students withLow income students and students withLow income students and students withLow income students and students withdisabilitiesdisabilitiesdisabilitiesdisabilitiesdisabilities

Minnesota’s charter schools disproportionatelyserve lower-income students. Statewide, approxi-mately 54.1 percent of charter school students arelow income, compared to an overall statewide aver-age of 27.5 percent. Sixty-nine of Minnesota’s 88currently operating charters are above that state-wide average. The concentration of low-income stu-dents in charters is particularly evident in Minneapolisand St. Paul (see bar graph below).

Minnesota charters appear to be serving acomparable share of students with disabilities relativeto the 12.2 percent of district school enrollment. Morethan one-half of the currently operating charters servea higher percentage of special education students thando district schools as a whole. And about 20 percentserve more than double the statewide average.

Several Minnesota charter schools considerserving students with disabilities a primary part of theirmission, including the Metro Deaf School in St. Pauland the New Visions School in Minneapolis. MetroDeaf, which has been a pre-K-8 school, will be openinga sister high school, Minnesota North Star Academy,in 2004. Founders of New Visions, also a K-8 school,are now in the early stages of planning a charter highschool. The Fraser School—a well-established privateschool that has served generations of students withdisabilities—has recently been approved to open a newK-4 charter school, the Fraser Academy.

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Existing data sources have not done detailedanalyses of how well the state’s charter schools andchartering are doing at the school level or statewide.Evaluation is complicated because many charterschools are small and new, and Minnesota hashistorically lagged behind other states in establishingeasily compared standards.

As measured by the state’s tests and NCLB,Minnesota charter schools have done superbly, so-so,and not so well. Last year, 43 of the state’s 88 charterschools made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) underNCLB, 12 did not, and the remaining 33 were too smallor new to show results. Performance of charter schools

Student D emographics

0 20 40 60 80 100

Saint Paul Charters

Saint Paul Public Schools

Minneapolis Charters

Minneapolis Public Schools

Statewide Charters

Statewide Non-Charters

0 20 40 60 80 100

Saint Paul Charters

Saint Paul Public Schools

Minneapolis Charters

Minneapolis Public Schools

Statewide Charters

Statewide Non-Charters

Percent of Student Population Participatingin Free and Reduced Price Meal Programs

Percent of Student PopulationRepresenting Communities of Color

+10 %

+11 %

+12 %

+33 %+28 %

SOURCE: Minnesota Association of Charter Schools, Minnesota Department of Education


in St. Paul and Minneapolis is mixed, but severalschools are outperforming district peers on variousmeasures while serving high concentrations of low-income students and students of color. Elsewherein the state, about one-half of charters outperformthe state average, despite more disadvantagedstudent populations. And schools are showing betterresults the longer they have been in operation. Inaddition, Minnesota sponsors have proven effectiveat achieving the law’s accountability goals by shuttingdown charter schools that are not achieving results(see Pages 28-29).

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Minnesota’s charters also serve adisproportionate share of students of color.Statewide, approximately 52.9 percent of charterenrollees are students of color, compared to anoverall statewide average of 18.9 percent. Almostone-half of the charters located in Minneapolis andSt. Paul are what might be called “culturallycentered.” They include charters created by andpredominantly serving students in the Twin Cities’African-American, Hispanic/Latino, Hmong,American-Indian, and East African communities.

Many of these schools have a high percentageof English Language Learners (ELL). In fact, about20 percent of Minnesota’s charters are above thestatewide average of 6.2 percent of their studentswho are ELL. And more than one-half the studentsin 10 Minnesota charter schools are ELL (see sidebaron Page 13).

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The 114 charters now open or approved haveat least 14 different grade configurations, althoughthere is an overall tendency to include more gradesin a single school than is common in most largerdistrict schools. For example, 11 of Minnesota’s

operating or approved charters are K-12 schools.And there are more K-7, 8, or 9 schools than eitherlower elementary or middle school configurations.About one-half of Minnesota’s non-K-12 chartersare elementary, K-8, or middle schools, and one-half are senior high schools or combined junior/senior high schools.

The most common grade configuration is thegrade 9-12 high school (35 charters), although thereare also 13 grade 6-12 or 7-12 combined junior/senior high schools. The fact that Minnesota has asmany charter high schools as it does is partly afunction of need and demand for alternatives tolarge, traditional district high schools. It also reflectsthe relatively generous funding for charter operationsand facilities, compared to many other states.

The growing number of charter high schools isalso creating demand for sports and otherextracurricular programs. In some cases, chartersare creating extracurricular programs of their own.And a few charters have agreements with schooldistricts to allow students to play on teams in thehigh school in whose attendance area they live.However, other districts deny charter students theopportunity to participate in their extracurricularactivities. The lack of uniform opportunities hashelped make the case for legislation to require notonly that districts allow charter school students toparticipate in district-sponsored extracurricularactivities, but also for the students’ charter schoolto pay the direct and indirect costs of thatparticipation.

Most charter elementary schools are either K-6/7 (17 schools) or K-8/9 (17 schools). In a numberof cases, Minnesota charter schools have startedsmaller and added grades over time, sometimesbeginning with as few as two or three grades. Severalcharters that started as K-6 or K-8 schools haveadded middle- or high-school grades under strongpressure from parents who like the smallerenvironment or other attributes of the school.


Finally, some Minnesota charters are emergingthat extend beyond the traditional K-12 grade range.For example, Volunteers of America/Minnesota hasgranted a charter to the Early Literacy Academy inMinneapolis, which will serve students from agethree to grade three. This school will draw on bothpreschool and K-12 funding streams to provide amore seamless literacy and school readinesscurriculum to preschool students, who will thenattend the same school through the third grade.

At the other end of the grade range, the SaintPaul College—a community/technical college—hassponsored the Minnesota Academy for Technology.Located near the college’s campus in downtown St.Paul, the charter makes it possible for students tohave a more seamless learning opportunity thatextends beyond high school to eventually include atwo-year associate’s degree.

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A high percentage of Minnesota’s earliercharters were intended to serve the diverse and often

at-risk student populations in Minneapolis and St. Paul.And, as noted above, many of these urban charterspredominately serve low-income students and studentsof color and have higher than average concentrationsof ELL and special education students.

At the same time, there is a more recent trendtoward opening more charters in the Twin Cities suburbsand elsewhere in the state that are intended to serve abroader cross section of students. Of the schoolscurrently approved to open in 2004, almost 40 percentare in suburban communities—compared to only 15percent of the schools operating in the 2003-04 schoolyear. Smaller high schools serving a broad cross sectionof students with a rigorous, college-bound curriculumhave also opened in the last several years in severalcommunities outside the Twin Cities, includingNorthfield, Hutchinson, Bemidji, and Duluth.

Along with this broader focus, Minnesota’s charterschools have a growing diversity of missions andlearning programs. A dozen charters have adapted theproject-based learning model first used at the MinnesotaNew Country School in Henderson. Several otherschools, including the new Minnesota Internship Centerand Liberty High Schools that opened in 2003, also

require extensive hands-on and community-basedlearning.

Although Minnesota has lagged behind otherstates in opening online schools, it does haveseveral charters that make extensive use oftechnology, including Cyber Village Academy(CVA) in St. Paul. Students at CVA are at homethree days a week—taking their courses online—and physically at the school two days each week.Other online schools chartered so far haveincluded Blue Sky Academy, which opened in 2003,and Hopkins Online Academy, which reverted toa smaller district program because of problemsqualifying for an adequate level of state funding.

Another school district, Chisago Lakes, hasalso converted a pre-existing distance learningprogram into a district-sponsored charter, the TRIO

9-12 32.1%

K-12 10.1%

K6-12 or 7-12 11.9%K-7, K-8

or K-9 17.4%

K-5 or K-6 18.3%

K-3 or K-4 4.6%

4-9 (middle schools)

5.5%


Grade Configurations of MN Charter Schools


Many Americans have a somewhat dated image of Minnesota and its now 5 millionresidents—perhaps created by some combination of the movie “Fargo,” Garrison Keillor’s“Lake Wobegon,” or Michael Landon’s version of “Little House on the Prairie.” The reality,however, is that Minnesotans are an increasingly diverse group of folks. This is not “yourGrandmother’s Minnesota.” Or is it?

Statistically, the state remains overwhelmingly populated by whites and Northern Europeans,and settled by people who have been here for at least several generations. But, beginning witha huge wave of refugees from Southeast Asia in the mid-1970s, Minnesota is becoming a statestrongly influenced by a new wave of immigrants and refugees. There are hundreds of thousandsof “New Minnesotans” including families from the Horn of Africa, Hmong families originallyfrom the hill country of Laos, and others newly arrived from the former Soviet Union, Bosnia,Mexico, and Central and South America.

The impact of Minnesota’s increasing diversity is greatest on the state’s schools, andparticularly in Minneapolis and St. Paul. But the impact is now also being felt in certain TwinCities suburbs and even smaller cities and towns where agribusinesses have been attractinghundreds of immigrant workers and their families. One quarter of the school-age populationin Worthington—a community of 11,300 in Southwestern Minnesota—are now children ofNew Minnesotans from Latin America, East Africa, and Southeast Asia. St. Paul has the nation’shighest concentration of Hmong students. Despite its reputation for cold winters, Minnesotais now home to more than 50,000 Somali people—more than any other state.

Like past waves of immigrants, these New Minnesotans place a high value on education.And many of them have not been satisfied with either the environment or the results theirchildren have experienced in traditional district public schools. So, in addition to longer-established African American and Native American communities, these New Minnesotans arecreating new charter public schools.

Among them are the Twin Cities International Elementary School and Minnesota InternationalMiddle School—serving a total of more than 450 students. More than 90 percent of thesestudents are from war-torn Somalia. Now in their third year of operation, these two schoolshave recently co-located to a newly renovated 88,000 square foot facility near downtownMinneapolis. A yet-to-be opened charter high school will be on the second floor.

In these schools, certified ELL and other teachers work closely with paraprofessionals andSomali elders. The shared leadership in the schools includes a Somali co-director and Somaliboard members. This is a school in which these New Minnesotans clearly have pride and enjoyacceptance and ownership.

Minnesota now has about 20 what might be called ethnocentric charter schools, withmore on the way. They include charters predominantly serving students in the African-American,Hispanic/Latino, Hmong, American-Indian, and East African communities. Among the state’s mostrecently approved charters will be a Spanish language immersion elementary school inWorthington, the first of what could be a new wave of similar schools serving recent immigrantstudents in smaller cities and towns outside the Twin Cities metro area.

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Wolf Creek Distance Learning Charter School. AndMinnesota Transitions School in Minneapolis hascreated an online high school program for its highlydiverse student population. No national online modelshave been chartered yet in Minnesota, although WilliamBennett’s K-12 has a contract to run a statewide onlineprogram with the tiny Houston School District in thesoutheastern corner of the state.

All of these online schools face regulatory barriersand current state funding limitations on the number ofpreviously private- and home-schooled students whomay enroll. Several charter schools that use project-based learning or other hands-on learning experiencesin the community have also run into problemsdocumenting their students’ attendance to thesatisfaction of audits done by the state Department ofEducation.

At the other end of the spectrum, Minnesotahas a growing number of traditional-looking “backto basics” schools, including a half-dozen charteredby a new nonprofit sponsor, Friends of Ascension,that are scheduled to open in the fall of 2004. Amajority of these schools use the Core Knowledgecurriculum and will be located in suburbancommunities that previously have not had charteroptions. Several other urban charters—serving highpopulations of students who are predominantly lowincome or recent immigrants—also make use ofDirect Instruction, Core Knowledge, and othersimilar learning models. Core Knowledge schoolsin Minnesota benefit from the availability of anational partnership and technical assistanceresource center for the Core Knowledge programthat is run by the Minnesota Humanities Commission.

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Minnesota charters are relatively small inenrollment, even relative to charter schools

nationally, with an average about 160 students ineach school. Enrollments range from 26 to just under1,000 students, with 42 percent of the schoolsenrolling fewer than 100 students and only 19percent having more than 200 students. Only threeMinnesota charter schools have more than 500students.

Not surprisingly, a number of operationalchallenges have arisen because of the relativelysmall size of most Minnesota charter schools. Theyinclude special education funding and regulations,pupil transportation, facilities financing, and teacherlicensure rules that are generally designed aroundlarger schools and districts.

Virtually all of Minnesota’s charters arefounded and run by teachers, parents, or othercommunity members and do not make use ofoutside for- or nonprofit management companies.One exception is the state’s second largest charter,the multi-campus Duluth Public School Academy,which is managed by Edison Schools. Othercontracts between Edison Schools and two TwinCities charters—originally managed by Learn Now—were recently terminated by the boards of theschools, who decided to hire their own schoolleadership. Designs for Learning, a Minnesota-basedfirm that did whole-school management for severalyears, now has more limited contracts with chartersto provide a menu of administrative services suchas accounting, payroll, and fringe benefitsmanagement.

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Minnesota charters have created new andexpanded opportunities for school leadership forteachers and administrators, including adisproportionate number of women school leadersand school leaders of color. Approximately 56percent of the directors or principals of Minnesota


charter schools are women and about 24 percent ofcharter schools are led by persons of color,including 60 percent of the charters in Minneapolisand 35 percent in St. Paul. Approximately 350Minnesota charter school teachers are now servingon charter school boards and over one-half of theboards have a teacher majority.

The strong role of teachers in the managementand governance of charters in Minnesota reflects aunique provision in the state’s charter law that—absent a state waiver—has required that licensedteachers in the school constitute a majority of themembers of their charter school board by the endof the school’s third year of operation. About onedozen Minnesota charters are also affiliated withEdVisions Schools. The EdVisions model includesteacher cooperatives or other ways of establishinga teacher professional practice, like thosetraditionally owned and run by lawyers, doctors,

accountants, and other professionals (see sidebaron Page 16).

Minnesota’s charter law requires that all charterschool teachers be certified. But in smaller highschools and schools using interdisciplinary learningmethods, concerns have arisen about the ability ofteachers to meet the “highly qualified teacher”requirements of NCLB. These requirements appearto insist that all teachers demonstrate competenciesin specific subject areas that they presumably teachone at a time. In response to these concerns, charteradvocates—and allies in alternative programs andsmaller rural districts—have been working with theState Board of Teaching to create a new type ofteacher license. This license would recognizecompetencies that are required to teach acrosssubject areas and/or make extensive use oftechnology, project-based, or other non-traditionalteaching/learning methods.


Charter school skeptics often ask, “What’s really different about these schools anyway?” Whenthey do, a good place to take them is any of a dozen charters in Minnesota where the teachers areorganized as professionals—more like a law firm or medical practice than your typical “teacher asworker” public school.

The oldest of these teacher-run charters is Minnesota New Country School (MNCS) inHenderson. Opened in the fall of 1994, MNCS serves approximately 120 students in grades 7-12.The nonprofit MNCS contracts with the EdVisions Cooperative that has members who work innine other schools in Minnesota and Wisconsin. The teachers—who prefer to be called “advisors”—each work with 15-20 students across grade levels under a curriculum that is project-based. Theadvisors also share administrative and support functions needed to keep the school and its facilityup and running.

Advisors with MNCS are convinced that the incentive structure is better under theirprofessional practice model, leading to their increased willingness to keep up to date with research-based learning, theories, and discussions. This type of management arrangement also allows teachersto block off more time to develop and improve their professional development plans. The MNCSadvisors review themselves in the fall, at mid-year, and at the end of the year, so professionaldevelopment plans are never idle. In addition, each advisor’s plan includes professional, school, andpersonal goals. Each advisor is also able to create joint goals with other staff members.

At MNCS, the teacher cooperative allows the advisors to consistently strengthen theirknowledge about how to make sound management decisions and increase accountability. Aprofessional practice arrangement has also improved the advisors’ time-management, they say,mainly because decisions are made at the source. If something in the curriculum or culture is notworking, the MNCS advisors can address the problem within 24 hours, eliminating the bureaucraticred tape of working through superiors who are not familiar with day-to-day happenings at theschool.

The teachers at MNCS also believe their management arrangement has led to higher-performingstudents. On a daily basis, students observe teachers working together to learn from theirexperience and to make the school a better place. Advisors also say that because ownership allowsthem more time to stay up-to-date with the latest research and development, they are able tomore consistently improve the learning program—with resulting improvements in studentachievement. The MNCS’s teachers believe that their ability to make changes to the learning programat a rapid pace has also been a factor in inspiring student performance.

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This series of snapshots helps produce acomposite picture of a growing andchanging collection of charter schools in

Minnesota that is beginning to make its presenceknown. The graph below documents growth trendsover time and the accelerating rate of growth thatMinnesota chartering is now on. It is a pattern thatis likely to continue into the future. The strengthof Minnesota’s charter law is the most importantfactor in the state’s charter school growth. Thatlaw and related policies include relatively equitablefunding for charters and separate funding streamsfor start-up and facilities. In addition, at least sevenother factors help explain this optimism about thefuture of charters and chartering in Minnesota.

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Because charters have historically beenconsidered part of Minnesota’s broader strategy ofexpanding public school choices, they have enjoyedconsistent bipartisan support. The initial leadership

behind expanding school choices came from aDemocratic governor, Rudy Perpich, in the earlyand mid-1980s. The chief authors of Minnesota’spioneering charter legislation were also bothDemocrats, State Sen. Ember Reichgott Junge andState Rep. Becky Kelso. That was critical sinceDemocrats controlled both houses of the MinnesotaLegislature at the time. During the 1990s, bothPresident Bill Clinton and Secretary of EducationRichard Riley made visits to Minnesota charterschools, helping to bolster and demonstrate thisbipartisan support.

Minnesota’s legislature is currently divided alongparty lines, with a Republican House of Representativesand Democratic Senate. Arguably, the Legislature’sstrongest charter advocate is veteran Republican StateRep. Alice Seagren, who chairs the House EducationFinance Committee. There is predictable partisantension around other education issues. But keyDemocrats, including Steve Kelley, chair of the SenateEducation Policy Committee, and Mindy Greiling,Carlos Mariani, and other ranking Democrats on the

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SchoolsOperating

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SOURCE: Minnesota Department of Education, Center for Education Reform,Office of the Minnesota State Legislative Auditor, & Minnesota Association of Charter Schools

Growth in Schools Operating Over Time

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House Education Policy and Finance Committees, areall charter supporters.

Then-Gov. Arne Carlson, a moderate Republi-can, signed the first charter law and became a strongsupporter of charter schools during his eight yearsin office, from 1991 to 1998. Minnesota’s currentgovernor, Tim Pawlenty, a conservative Republicanelected in 2002, is also a strong charter supporter,as is his commis-sioner of educa-tion, Cheri Yecke.The Pawlenty ad-ministration hasproposed a pack-age of charter-friendly initiativesin the 2004 legislative session. Under Yecke’s lead-ership, the State Department of Education has alsocreated the Office of Choice and Innovation, di-rected by veteran education reformist MorganBrown. This office is intended to give leadership tothe department’s role in support of charters andother public school choice options.

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Minnesota’s various public school choice pro-grams also enjoy broad support from the state’s gen-eral public, according to a February 2003 statewidepoll commissioned by the Center for School Changeat the University of Minnesota. This survey foundthat 75 percent of Minnesotans believe the state’sfamilies should have the right to select among vari-ous public schools. More specifically, 80 percentsupport the state’s Post-Secondary Options program,with 12 percent opposed; 56 percent supportinterdistrict open enrollment, with 32 percent op-posed; and 52 percent support the state’s charterschool law, with 21 percent opposed.

The lower support for charters corresponds tolower levels of awareness of this public school

choice option. However, by a margin of more thantwo-to-one, the same poll found that Minnesotansapprove key concepts behind the charter idea, in-cluding school-level authority over hiring and fir-ing of employees, the opportunity for groups ofparents or teachers to start new public schools, andthe opportunity for new public schools to focus onspecific themes. The poll found support for charters

and other publicschool choice op-tions strongestamong state resi-dents under age50 and parentswith school-agedchildren.

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The charter idea in Minnesota originated with arelatively small group of state policy leaders andeducation reformers. In recent years, however, amuch larger and broader group of stakeholders forthe charter movement has emerged. Of course, thelargest group of stakeholders is the schools them-selves—including their parents, students, teachers,board members, and other community supporters.In a number of cases, grassroots community orga-nizations and their most respected and influentialleaders have been behind the establishment of thesenew schools—particularly in immigrant and low-income communities and communities of color.

Parents of charter school students also nowhave a networking and advocacy organization calledParents Voice, Teachers Choice. Although in its in-fancy, this new organization intends to provide anopportunity for charter school parents to networkand find encouragement to become more involvedin their children’s education and in their schools.

What is arguably the most important group ofstakeholders—students attending charter schools—

“I never fit in at my former school. People were mean.Then I shadowed a friend here. I couldn’t believe it! What achange! I knew it would work better for me. And, it has!”

—Student at Avalon High School in St. Paul


also has a new vehicle for communicating witheach other and broader audiences through a state-wide, student-directed newspaper, Charter VisionMinnesota. This newspaper, totally written and ed-ited by students, comes out four times a year,including strategic periods before and duringthe annual legislative session, at key recruit-ment times, and during “National CharterSchools Week.” The first two issues have in-cluded dozens of articles written by studentsabout their schools and their experiences ascharter school students. The newspaper is dis-tributed statewide by mail to key stakeholdersand opinion leaders and through the charterschools in their respective communities.

Charter Vision Minnesota also provides themajority of the content for a unique newwebsite—www.charter vis ion.or g . This site,designed and maintained by a 2003 charterschool graduate, includes historical backgroundand more recent developments on Minnesota’scharter law, links to dozens of state andnational Internet resources, and a link todetailed profiles of all Minnesota charterschools. Responsibility for managing both theprint and electronic versions of Charter VisionMinnesota lies with an editorial board of 15-20charter school students from throughout the state.

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Another important set of charter schoolstakeholders is Minnesota’s growing cadre ofsponsors—more commonly known as “authorizers”in many other states. They include some of the state’smost prestigious private colleges and universities—Hamline University, the University of St. Thomas,Bethel College, Augsburg College, and others—aswell as a growing number of large and well-established nonprofits, including Volunteers of

America, Pillsbury United Communities, Project forPride in Living, the Metropolitan MinneapolisYMCA, Audubon Center of the North Woods, andthe Ordway Center for the Performing Arts.

Overall, Minnesota’s sponsors currently include29 school districts, 20 public and private collegesor universities, 13 nonprofit organizations, oneprivate foundation, and the Minnesota Departmentof Education. Sponsors that have granted the largestnumber of charters are the St. Paul School Board(15), the Minnesota Department of Education (12),Minneapolis School Board, (10), Volunteers ofAmerica/Minnesota (eight), Friends of Ascension(seven), and Hamline University (five).

Although many school district leaders remainskeptical, it is important to note that almost 10percent of the state’s traditional school districts—with about 30 percent of the state’s public schoolstudents—have sponsored charter schools.Several—including Northfield, Faribault, Hopkins,

SchoolDistricts44.6%

Colleges and universities 30.8%

Nonprofits and foundations 23.1%

State agencies 1.5%


Percentage of MN Charter School Sponsors*

*For all approved schools


Chisago Lakes, and Waseca—are doing so proactivelyto add new choices and new opportunities forstudents in their districts (see sidebar on Page 37).

The Minnesota Rural Education Association(MREA)—historically the most progressive of thestate’s mainline education organizations—has alsojoined forces with charter school supporters oncommon interests around teacher quality,technology, and other issues relating to the viabilityof smaller public schools. The MREA has also beenan active participant in the Minnesota Charter SchoolForum and its Teacher Quality Working Group.

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Understanding and appreciating the vital roleof sponsors has been one of the most important“lessons learned” in the 13 years since Minnesotapassed the nation’s first charter school law. As notedabove, Minnesota has an unusually large numberand variety of sponsors, raising natural questionsabout quality control as well as capacity and long-term commitment. One obvious response might betraditional prescriptive efforts by the Legislature andstate education officials to regulate sponsors througha complex array of prescriptive requirements.

So far, overregulation has not happened inMinnesota, in part because of voluntary efforts bysponsors to connect, learn from each other, andimprove the job they do in approving and overseeingcharter schools. Most significant has been creationof an informal Charter School Sponsor Consortium,a project of Education/Evolving, a joint ventureof the Center for Policy Studies and HamlineUniversity.

The Charter School Sponsor Consortium, headedby former state education commissioner Bob Wedl,now includes a dozen sponsors, mainly private collegesand nonprofits. The Consortium recently completed acomprehensive resource guide for sponsors. It also

conducted a day-long strand of sponsor-relatedworkshops at the state charter association’s winterconference and is planning a number of follow-upworkshops, networking, and other meetings over thenext year. The goal of this activity—which coulddevelop into a state charter sponsors association—isto make charter sponsoring and oversight in Minnesotaequal to the critical role it plays. The SponsorConsortium is also committed to making chartersponsors truly self-improving as new challenges andnew opportunities emerge.

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Minnesota is fortunate to have a number ofhigh-caliber organizations available to advise andassist charter founders and operators. They includethe Minnesota Association of Charter Schools(MACS) and the Minnesota Charter School ResourceCenter and its parent, the Center for School Changeat the University of Minnesota. With a substantialinfusion of out-of-state philanthropic support, bothorganizations now offer a variety of technicalassistance and support services.

For the last five years, MACS has also enjoyedsubstantial dues income from virtually all the state’scharter schools. This combination of income sourcesnow finances major initiatives on leadership andgovernance, curriculum and assessment, facilitiesfinancing, operations, and management. And, withfinancial support from the State Department ofEducation, MACS has also launched a separate SpecialEducation Project that provides administrative andtechnical assistance and support to a significant numberof the state’s charters.

Other nonprofit organizations assisting withschool start-up funding and technical assistanceinclude SchoolStart and EdVisions Schools. Bothhave received significant financial support fromnational foundations. In addition, dozens of for-


profit businesses are now offering start-up andadministrative support services to Minnesota charterschools. A number of these businesses support thecharter movement financially through associatememberships in the state charter school association.

In addition to technical assistance, a significantamount of public and private financial support is alsoavailable to Minnesota charters. Since 1995, Minnesotahas received approximately $39 million in federal charterschool funding, 95 percent of which is passed through

to schools. Virtually all the state’s charters havebenefited from this program, which, in recent years,has provided as much as $450,000 in start-up andimplementation funding to schools for two to threeyears. In addition, the Legislature created a state-fundedstart-up aid program, which has provided an additional$500 per student to new schools during their first twoyears of operation. Total appropriations for thisprogram in Fiscal Years 2002 and 2003 were about $5.9million. As part of a larger deficit reduction package,

this program was suspended for new schools fortwo years in 2003. But charter advocates are hopingto see funding restored beginning in 2005.

Finally, several major national foundations—including the Walton Family Foundation and theBill & Melinda Gates Foundation—have madealmost $11 million in grants to four nonprofitorganizations to help fund new Minnesotacharter schools: the MACS ($1.92 million forplanning, start-up, and expansion grants); theCenter for School Change ($3 million for itsStar Schools Program to help launch five newcharter high schools in St. Paul); SchoolStart($1.63 million for start-up grants and other start-up and ongoing assistance to new schools); andEdVisions Schools ($4.4 million for planningand start-up grants and other assistance for 15new schools in Minnesota and Wisconsin).EdVisions Schools also received an additional$4.5 million grant to replicate its project-basedlearning and teacher cooperative model in 20new schools throughout the country. In additionto pass-through grants for schools, both the statecharter association and SchoolStart have alsoreceived general operating grants from theWalton Family Foundation.

A connected and united movementA connected and united movementA connected and united movementA connected and united movementA connected and united movement

The growing number of schools,sponsors, and other stakeholders around theMinnesota charter school movement is a huge,

Public education in Minnesota now includes a rangeof educational choices authorized and run outside thetraditional control of school districts, school boards,and superintendents. So what continues to qualify theseoptions as “public education?”

In the case of the state’s Post-Secondary EnrollmentOptions program, juniors and seniors in public andprivate high schools make arrangements to attend acollege or university, with their tuition paid by the state.

Other Minnesota choice programs, however,generally involve a charter or contract with a publicschool district. Even when charters are sponsored by aprivate university or nonprofit organization, they mustbe approved by the State Department of Education. Asis true for traditional districts, the State Departmentof Education monitors enrollments, finances, teacherqualifications, special education compliance, and otherrequirements placed on all public schools in Minnesota.

These schools are also publicly funded. State lawprohibits discrimination in admitting students andrequires that charters admit students by lottery if theyare oversubscribed. They also must not charge tuitionor teach religion, and they must meet the same standardsand take the same tests as all other public schools inthe state.

These are the key principles and values that havehistorically defined public education in America—notwho hires the teachers or who owns the buildings. And,by insisting that chartering, Post-Secondary EnrollmentOptions, and other earlier Minnesota school choiceprograms are part of an expanding definition of “publiceducation,” they have retained broad bipartisan supportamong state legislators and other policymakers.

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positive set of assets. But it is also a challengefor al l these charter stakeholders to stayconnected, informed, and united. This isparticularly important in the legislative arena,where charters continue to face opposition fromkey organizations and leaders in the districtsector.

To encourage good communication andcollaboration, leaders of the Minnesota chartermovement agreed in 2003 to create an informalnetworking opportunity, the Minnesota CharterSchool Forum. The Forum includes more than30 leaders of organizations that support charterschools, including groups that both support andoppose broader school choice strategies.

The Forum meets monthly during thelegislative session and, when needed, develops

position statements and coordinated strategy toadvance common positions. It also uses periodicelectronic communications to inform a largernumber of key stakeholders. During the 2003legislative session, the Forum proved its valueby serving as a major information and coordinatingresource in successful efforts to quickly defeat aproposed moratorium on future charter schooldevelopment in the state.

The Forum does not lobby directly, butincludes among its regular participants severalorganizations that engage professional lobbyists,including MACS—which expanded its capacitythis year to communicate with and, whennecessary, mobilize charter school leaders,parents, teachers, and students through phoneoutreach and regular email and faxed updates.


Minnesota’s school choice initiatives wereborn of the notion that public educationshould not be the exclusive domain of

a government monopoly. To withdraw whatMinnesota charter pioneer Ted Kolderie dubbed the“exclusive franchise” school districts held on publiceducation, two important opportunities were needed.First, individuals and communities must have theright to start and run new public schools outsidethe traditional district framework. And, second,parents need the right to choose the public schooltheir students attend, with the money generated bythose students following them to whatever publicschool they choose.

The emphasis on creating new schools andadditional school choices has gained even greaterpopularity within this public interest rationale offeredby charter supporters. They include educationreformers like Joe Graba, a former teachers unionleader and Democratic state legislator. Graba makesa strong case that the degree of improvement nowbeing demanded of public education cannot beachieved by relying only on changing the schoolswe have now. To meet those needs, Graba argues,many more and substantially different schools mustalso be created new.

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Charter schools in Minnesota are consideredone of a number of strategies—put in place bystate policymakers over two decades—to expandpublic school choices for students, parents, andteachers and to broaden the state’s definition of“public education.”

Ahead of passage of Minnesota’s pioneeringcharter law, Minnesota’s Legislature first enactedthe Post-Secondary Enrollment Options programin 1985 that allows high school juniors and seniorsto attend college at state expense. In 1988, theLegislature authorized the nation’s first statewideinterdistrict open enrollment program, which wasphased-in for all school districts in 1989 and 1990.

Minnesota students may also choose from anumber of contract, alternative, and second-chance schools and programs run outsidetraditional district control that were authorizedbeginning in the mid-1970s and significantlyexpanded in the late 1980s. More than 180,000students attend these alternative programs at anygiven point in time—or about 21.5 percent of thestate’s public school enrollment.

Particularly in Minneapolis and St. Paul—originally in response to desegregation courtorders—students have also been offered numerousmagnet, emersion, and other voluntary choices, bothwithin their districts and in several, newly createdinterdistrict schools. More recently, settlement of alawsuit brought by the Minneapolis NAACP chapteragainst the Minneapolis School District and the statecreated new opportunities for more than onethousand Minneapolis students of color to attendsuburban public schools.

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Minnesota’s pioneer charter law traces its ori-gins to the 1988 Itasca Seminar, organized by theMinneapolis Foundation, that brought together key

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Minnesota Charter School Law


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Minnesota’s charter school law has been amended every year since its adoption in 1991. Current majorprovisions include:

Eligible sponsorsEligible sponsorsEligible sponsorsEligible sponsorsEligible sponsors: School district boards, intermediate district boards, public and private colleges anduniversities, nonprofit organizations, and private foundations with more than $2.0 million in assets,state Commissioner of Education on appeal from districts.

Limits on charLimits on charLimits on charLimits on charLimits on charters or charters or charters or charters or charters or charteringteringteringteringtering: No limits on the number of charters granted; districts may notapprove charters to be located in other districts without the other district’s approval (does not applyto non-district sponsors).

Eligible applicantsEligible applicantsEligible applicantsEligible applicantsEligible applicants: New schools, public and private conversions; 60 percent of teachers in existingschools must support conversions.

FFFFForm of school organization,orm of school organization,orm of school organization,orm of school organization,orm of school organization, g g g g gooooovvvvvernanceernanceernanceernanceernance: Charters are treated as independent Local Education Agencies(LEAs); they must be organized as nonprofits or cooperatives; licensed teachers working in the schoolmust constitute a majority of the charter school governing board by the end of the third year ofoperation, unless a waiver is granted by the state Department of Education; boards are subject to stateopen meeting law.

TTTTTerm lengtherm lengtherm lengtherm lengtherm length: Up to three years.

WWWWWaivaivaivaivaiversersersersers: Schools receive a blanket waiver of state education laws and regulations, as opposed to havingto seek waivers one at a time. However, charters are required to comply with civil rights and specialeducation laws and requirements.

ContractingContractingContractingContractingContracting: Charters may not be granted to a for-profit management company, but nonprofit boardsmay contract for management or other services with for-profit or nonprofit organizations.

TTTTTeacher licensureacher licensureacher licensureacher licensureacher licensureeeee ,,,,, other issues other issues other issues other issues other issues: All teachers must be licensed; teachers may organize and bargaincollectively, but, if they do, they are not part of the district master contract; district teachers aregranted leaves up to five years to work in charter schools; charter school teachers must be part of thestate public school teachers retirement system.

General operating fundingGeneral operating fundingGeneral operating fundingGeneral operating fundingGeneral operating funding: All funding flows directly from the state and does not pass through districts;charters receive the average per pupil general revenue amount paid to districts; they are also eligible toreceive virtually all other categorical aids and grants; the one major exception is the local portion ofexcess levy referenda revenues approved by district voters.

TTTTTransporransporransporransporransportationtationtationtationtation: State transportation funding follows students to either the charter or district (charterschool’s choice); if funding goes to the district, the district must provide transportation to studentswithin the district’s boundaries.

Facilities assistanceFacilities assistanceFacilities assistanceFacilities assistanceFacilities assistance: Charters may rent (but not buy with state funds) their facilities; the state providesa separate stream of aid explicitly for facilities on a reimbursement basis, up to 90 percent of state-approved lease expenses up to $1,200 per student (may be up to $1,500 for school under long-termlease agreements that were in effect in 2003).

Special educationSpecial educationSpecial educationSpecial educationSpecial education: Charters are public schools and, as independent LEAs, are responsible for providingrequired special education services for eligible students; as an LEA, charters are allowed to bill back tothe district of residence of special education students most excess costs beyond special educationrevenues received by the charter from state and federal sources.

Entrance rEntrance rEntrance rEntrance rEntrance requirequirequirequirequirementsementsementsementsements: Charters may enroll students from anywhere in the state; all students whoapply for enrollment must be treated equally; a lottery must be held to choose students if more applythan there is space available.

* Adapted from the Center for Education reform’s annual rating of state charter school laws and Minnesota’s charter law—Chapter 124D.10 and124D.11—as most recently amended in 2003.


business leaders, educators, and policymakers toexplore ways of improving the state’s publicschools. One of the speakers was the late AlbertShanker, then president of the American Federa-tion of Teachers. Shanker repeated the proposal hehad made to the National Press Club in Washing-ton, D.C., earlier that year—that groups of teachersbe given the opportunity to start and run what hecalled “charter schools.” Sy Fliegel, another speaker,also discussed his work in East Harlem, where dra-matic improvements occurred when students were

allowed to choose schools that were smaller andmore autonomous.

Members of a Citizens League Committeewere in the audience who, already aware ofShanker’s proposal, had been working through thesummer on the outline of a charter school pro-posal. Also present were State Sen. EmberReichgott Junge and State Rep. Ken Nelson, whohad previously authored Minnesota’s inter-districtopen enrollment law. The Citizens League reportappeared late that year, and was picked up in a

Sixty-five different organizations have granted charters in Minnesota, more than one-half of which areprivate colleges, nonprofit organizations, or private foundations. The range and diversity of charteringorganizations is unique among the states with charter laws and has important qualitative and politicalimplications for the rest of the country.

It is important to note that all but a handful of these non-public sponsoring organizations havegranted just one or two charters. And, as is noted elsewhere, all of these charters must be approved bythe state Department of Education before the schools may open.

But it is also clear that a growing number of charter schools in Minnesota are being authorized andmonitored by organizations that have a very different perspective and much value to add.

Several of the post-secondary sponsors—including Hamline University, Concordia University, BethelCollege, Augsburg College, and the University of St. Thomas—clearly see chartering as an importantextension of their missions. They all have assigned experienced faculty and administrators to managetheir chartering role. Some see their charters as R&D and teacher education opportunities for theirfaculties and students. Others see their role in chartering ethnocentric charters as an extension of theirpre-existing outreach to various communities of recent immigrants and other “New Minnesotans.”

A number of the nonprofit sponsors see chartering as an extension of their work in support ofchildren and families—especially in the inner cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. They include the MetropolitanMinneapolis YMCA, Pillsbury United Communities, Volunteers of America, and Project for Pride in Living.Several of these organizations provide “wrap-around” services to their schools, including after-schoolcare, mentoring, tutoring and adult literacy, and parenting education.

Three of these sponsors are especially worth watching for the value they add to the state’s charterapproval and oversight process: Volunteers of America, Friends of Ascension, and Hamline University. Allthree have granted a number of charters and are beginning to specialize in particular types of schools.And all have at least part-time staff assigned to manage their role in chartering.

At the same time, Minnesota sponsors are very different organizations, with very different philosophiesabout educational needs and what should be done to address them. As a result, they offer contrastingmodels and rich opportunities for reflection and evaluation.

Higher Education and Nonprofit SponsorsHigher Education and Nonprofit SponsorsHigher Education and Nonprofit SponsorsHigher Education and Nonprofit SponsorsHigher Education and Nonprofit SponsorsMinnesota’s Unique Contribution


bill introduced by Reichgott Junge and Nelson inthe 1989 Minnesota Legislature.

Though the bill passed the Senate as part ofthe omnibus education bills in 1989, 1990, and 1991,it could not gain sufficient votes to pass the stateHouse of Representatives. Finally, in 1991, a House-Senate conference committee reached agreement ona much-weakened compromise. And, after survivinga House floor fight by just one vote, the nation’sfirst charter school law was adopted as part of alarger omnibus education bill and signed into lawby then-Gov. Arne Carlson.

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Minnesota’s initial charter law had some strongelements and several critical flaws. Its chief assetswere its degree of freedom from state laws andregulations and the schools’ relative autonomy fromdistricts. Each school was to be treated as anindependent Local Education Agency (LEA), hiringits own teachers and having total control of its funds,which were to flow directly from the state.

To gain sufficient House support, however,three critical compromises were made in the leg-islative conference committee: Only local schooldistricts could grant charters, only eight charterscould be granted anywhere in the state, and thegoverning board of each school had to consistof a majority of licensed teachers working in thatschool.

This latter provision is unique in the country.And, although originally an unsuccessful effort toquell teachers union opposition, it has helped cre-ate new opportunities for leadership and new man-agement models involving teachers in a number ofMinnesota charter schools. In recent years, how-ever, it has also come under criticism as a limitingfactor in creating the kind of strong and diversegoverning boards that any healthy nonprofit organi-zation requires.

The limitations on sponsorship and the eight-school cap were particularly discouraging. But chartersupporters immediately went to work developingschool proposals. The first approved was BluffviewMontessori in Winona in December 1991. And thefirst opened was City Academy in St. Paul in the fallof 1992. Other charters were soon approved in ruralSt. Louis County, Stillwater, and Minneapolis.During the first year, district boards also deniedcharter proposals in Northfield and St. Cloud.

A continuous stream of improvements inA continuous stream of improvements inA continuous stream of improvements inA continuous stream of improvements inA continuous stream of improvements inthe law began almost immediatelythe law began almost immediatelythe law began almost immediatelythe law began almost immediatelythe law began almost immediately

The volume of early interest and districtopposition led to two important changes in the 1993Legislature: An increase in the limit on charters to20 and an opportunity to appeal district decisions todeny charter proposals to the State Board ofEducation, if two local board members support theproposal. If approved on appeal, the state boardthen became the chartering authority. The 1993Legislature also allowed conversion of existingdistrict schools to charters, if 90 percent of theteachers agreed.

The graph on Page 17 documents an initialround of charter approvals and openings in the firstseveral years after the law took effect. By 1995,however, it was becoming clear that additionalchanges in the law, as well as expanded start-up andother technical assistance, were needed ifMinnesota’s charter schools were to be more thanan interesting side show in Minnesota’s broaderstrategies for school change and improvement.

In response, charter pioneer Ted Kolderie andothers convened a meeting of about 50 state chartersupporters in December of 1996. Charter schooladvocates were invited from four other states:Howard Fuller (Wisconsin), Eric Premack(California), Linda Brown (Massachusetts), and KenCampbell (Washington, D.C.).


These four charter advocates described so-callednon-governmental “charter friends” organizations theyhad helped establish in their respective states to providetechnical assistance, advocacy, and other support forcharter schools and their state’s charter law.

This meeting represented a significant turningpoint. Leaders of Minnesota’s charter schoolmovement realized they needed to strengthen itslaw and significantly expand its technical assistanceand advocacy capacity—in effect learning lessons

from other states that had followedMinnesota’s lead in passing the nation’sfirst charter school law. The response wasa second major wave of changes andimprovements in the charter law andsignificant expansion in technicalassistance capacity—initially throughexpansion of Minnesota Association ofCharter Schools and the Center for SchoolChange at the University of Minnesota,but later through a number of otherorganizations, (see Pages 20-21).

On the legislative front, key supporterslike Sen. Ember Reichgott Junge and Gov.Arne Carlson gave new leadership to whathas become a pattern of continuousevaluation, change, and overall improvementin Minnesota’s charter law over time. Themost important changes have included:

! A gradual increase (to 20, then 35,then 40) and, in 1997, elimination of thestatutory cap on the number of chartersthat could be granted.

! Significant expansion in chartersponsors, adding the State Board ofEducation on appeal (1993), public post-secondary institutions (1995), privatecolleges and universities (1997),intermediate school districts (1998), andlarger nonprofit organizations andfoundations (2000). The previousrequirement for two affirmative votes onthe district board—to be able to appealto the state board—was also removed.

One of Minnesota’s most important contributions tothe charter idea nationally is its Building Lease Aid Program.Adopted in 1996, this program now provides as much as$1,500 per student per year for charter schools to coverup to 90 percent of their eligible lease expenses. Duringthe last four years, the average per-pupil lease aid paymenthas been about $1,100. In 2003, as part of overall statedeficit reduction, the maximum payment for new schoolsand newly negotiated leases was reduced to $1,200 perstudent. But the $1,500 maximum payment still applies toschools that had long-term leases in effect at that time.

This additional cash flow for charter facilities has senta strong signal to the financial community that chartersare an acceptable risk for tax-exempt bonds and otherforms of long-term facilities financing. At present, about adozen Minnesota charters have now accessed tax-exemptrevenue bonds to build or buy facilities.

Because Minnesota law prohibits charter schools fromusing state funds directly to buy buildings, these bond saleshave required creation of separate nonprofit corporationsthat actually own the buildings and lease them to affiliatedschools. The schools’ lease aid payments are then used topay rent to the building corporations, which use thosefunds to pay off the bonds.

Even with last year’s reduction in the maximumpayment, Minnesota’s lease aid appropriations are about$17.1 million in the current fiscal year, rising to $21 millionin 2005. This level of spending is expected to increase in2006 and beyond, with as many as 40 new schools expectedto open in the next two years.

Not surpris ingly, b iennia l state appropriat ionsearmarked for lease aid are a vulnerable target for charterschool opponents. To address concerns about risingappropriations, some charter school advocates have urgedrepeal of the state’s current prohibition on charter schoolsusing public funds to buy buildings. For many charterschools, being able to gain equity in a building could reducethe state’s facilities costs over time. And removing thecurrent ban on direct ownership would eliminate the needfor and cost of parallel nonprofit building corporations.

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! Significant efforts to provide funding equityfor charters relative to district schools by addingtransportation revenue (1995), extra aid forlow-income students (1996), per pupilfacilities and start-up aid (1997, with increasesin subsequent years), and some integration aidand voter-approved revenues (1999). The totalappropriation for Minnesota’s lease aidprogram for Fiscal Year 2004 is about $17.1million, rising to $21 million in FY 2005. Thispioneering program provides schools up to$1,200 per student per year to cover up to 90percent of their eligible lease expenses (seesidebar on Page 27). Overall, charter schools inMinnesota are receiving an estimated $120million in the 2003-04 school year in acombination of local, state, and federalrevenues—or an average of about $8,500 perstudent—for planning, start-up, operations, andfacilities.

! Additional flexibility in governance by allowinga state waiver of the teacher majority requirementfor charter boards (1999) and increasedopportunities for existing schools to convert tocharter status by dropping the teacher approvalrequirement from 90 percent to 60 percent (1999).

While most of the changes in Minnesota’scharter law have been positive, the state’s charteradvocates have also had to be on constant guardagainst efforts by opponents to weaken thelegislation and curtail growth in the number ofschools and overall enrollment.

In both 1997 and 1998, for example, the StateHouse of Representatives approved legislationprohibiting or limiting contracts with for-profitmanagement companies. However, the StateSenate and then-Gov. Arne Carlson forced theHouse to back down in conference committee.Three years later, tough negotiating produced

acceptable compromises on efforts to add new andmore prescriptive reporting and other oversightand accountability requirements to the law.

More recently, charter advocates had to rallytheir forces in 2003 to beat back an attempt in theState Senate to impose a multi-year moratoriumon new charter development. Also in 2003, and inthe face of a $4.2 billion state deficit, charters hadto accept cuts in state building lease aid andsuspension of state start-up aid for at least twoyears.

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The graph on Page 17 documents growth in thenumber of charters operating in Minnesota each yearsince 1991, with projections for the next two years.

In addition to growing awareness, interest, anddemand, this accelerating rate of growth can beattributed to several parallel changes in the state’spolicy environment, including expansion in non-district chartering authority—particularly the additionof private college and nonprofit sponsors.Minnesota’s facilities aid program and the additionof several streams of operating revenue previouslyavailable only to district schools have also beencritical factors in the more recent growth. Finally,there has been an increasing amount of state, federal,and private sector start-up assistance and a growingcadre of technical assistance and supportorganizations and resources available to assist newcharter developers (see Pages 20-21).

Closures have occurred mainly because ofClosures have occurred mainly because ofClosures have occurred mainly because ofClosures have occurred mainly because ofClosures have occurred mainly because ofgovernance and management issuesgovernance and management issuesgovernance and management issuesgovernance and management issuesgovernance and management issues

In addition to the 88 Minnesota charter schoolsnow open, 17 have been closed. This represents16.2 percent of the 105 charters that have openedsince 1991. Three other charters have been


approved, but never opened. About one-third ofthe schools that have been closed did so voluntarily,while the others were closed by their sponsorsduring or at the end of what are up to three-yearterms. In most cases, the closures were due toadministrative, governance, or financial problems,although academic shortcomings were often justbelow the surface (see table on Page 28).

The pace of closures has dropped significantlyin the last two years after a peak of 12 closuresin 2000 and 2001. That led to no net growth inthe number of charters operating that year. Thestring of closures also raised serious concernsin the Legislature and elsewhere about thecapacity of charter schools to competentlymanage their affairs. One outcome of thatconcern has been increase of technicalassistance and management training for charterdevelopers and operators. Another has beencloser scrutiny of school finances, governance,and administration by charter school sponsors.One indicator of the impact of these initiativesis that the number of charter schools in whatstate law defines as “Statutory Operating Debt”has declined from 20 charter schools in 2001,to seven in 2002, and just two in 2003.

It should also be noted that the state’s charterschool leadership—particularly the MinnesotaAssociation of Charter Schools—has supportedvirtually all of the closure decisions and hasworked closely with both the boards of the schoolsand the sponsors to ensure the smoothest possibletransition of students, staff, and programs to othereducational settings.

In recent years, there has also been a modesttrend toward changing sponsors from one organi-zation to another—when a sponsor is no longerinterested in performing its duties, or the schoolwishes to affiliate with an organization it feels willbetter support its mission. Overall, 11 such switchesin sponsorship have now occurred, with more likely

this spring and summer. These changes must be ap-proved by the State Department of Education. Thisyear, the State Department itself was forced to as-sume sponsorship for several schools whose spon-sors did not wish to continue in that role. This is in-tended to be temporary, although the State Depart-ment is also the permanent sponsor for nine chartersit has granted on appeal.

Law has been strengthened and defendedLaw has been strengthened and defendedLaw has been strengthened and defendedLaw has been strengthened and defendedLaw has been strengthened and defendeddespite status quo oppositiondespite status quo oppositiondespite status quo oppositiondespite status quo oppositiondespite status quo opposition

Minnesota’s mainline education interest groups—the teachers unions, schools boards, and administratorsassociations—opposed adoption of Minnesota’s charterlaw in 1991 and have opposed its strengthening overtime. They have acted largely behind the scenes,however, and without the kind of high-profile killeramendments, lawsuits, targeting of pro-charterlegislators in the media, direct involvement in election

* For all approved schools

SchoolDistricts42.8%

Colleges and universities 24.8%

Nonprofits and foundations 23.4%

State agencies 9.0%


Percentage of MN Charter Schools by Sponsor Type*


campaigns or other similar tactics that have been usedby charter opponents in other states.

When they do testify in the Legislature, opposi-tion lobbyists generally begin their statements with,“We support charter schools, but …” They then goon to urge caution in further expanding the number ofcharters in the absence of more substantial evidenceof their success.

The main concerns raised by charter opponents,of course, continue to revolve around the movementof money that fol-lows studentsfrom one schoolchoice to another.This is disruptiveto districts and,understandably,something theywould rather not have to plan for or deal with.

But because chartering has been done in Min-nesota in the context of broader public schoolchoice options, it has become increasingly difficultfor districts to make the case that money shouldnot be following student choices. Districts have cre-ated alternative programs for students who are notsucceeding in traditional district schools. Districtsthemselves are now also aggressively recruiting stu-dents from each other under the state’s interdistrictopen enrollment program. A growing number ofthem are offering online learning options that canenroll students statewide. And, as noted above, al-most 10 percent of Minnesota school districts—enrolling about 30 percent of the state’s publicschool students—have now granted charters them-selves.

Implications of the eImplications of the eImplications of the eImplications of the eImplications of the evolution of Minnesota’volution of Minnesota’volution of Minnesota’volution of Minnesota’volution of Minnesota’ssssslaw for other stateslaw for other stateslaw for other stateslaw for other stateslaw for other states

During the last 13 years, Minnesota has bothinspired and benefited from policy development

around charters in other states. Of course, 39 statesand Congress, legislating for the District ofColumbia, have now followed Minnesota’s initialleadership by enacting charter laws of their own.But Minnesota has also borrowed heavily from morerecently enacted state laws in making several of thechanges outlined above—including conversionprovisions in California, university sponsorship inMichigan, and the state board appeal option inColorado.

One impor-tant tactical lessonfrom Minnesotamay be the poten-tial for strengthen-ing a state’s char-ter law over time.Charter advocates

in states initially passing laws often have to make ahard choice between accepting a relatively weak lawor postponing their fight for another day. In Minne-sota, a law with serious weaknesses has been incre-mentally strengthened—as the constituency for theidea has grown and made itself felt in the legislativeprocess, as hard evidence of problems with certainprovisions of the law has emerged, and as myths andconcerns raised earlier have been dispelled.

It has generally helped the charter cause that thestrengthening amendments have been included in theannual “omnibus” education bills that are put togetherin conference committees. This makes it difficult forinterest groups to urge legislators to vote “no” onfinal floor passage since they would also be putting atrisk funding and other provisions they support.

Every state is different, but Minnesota may bedemonstrating that the charter idea is powerful enoughto help sell itself over time, if given the opportunity.Minnesota’s experience also provides hope that policydevelopment around charters can be self-improving—given vigilance of an active and growing volume ofstakeholder and political support.

“My mom is proud. She now sees what I can do!”—Student at High School for the

Recording Arts in St. Paul


This report was not intended to produceoriginal research on student achievementgains and other outcomes, either for

Minnesota charter schools and students or forchartering as a broader strategy for educationalchange and improvement. And, unfortunately,existing data sources have not done detailed analysesof how well the state’s charters and chartering aredoing at achieving school-level or state-level goals.

One factor in this lack of analysis is thatMinnesota has historically lagged behind other statesin establishing uniform and easily measured,comparable standards and related testingrequirements. That is changing now, with federalNo Child Left Behind (NCLB) requirements andrepeal—in 2003—of the state’s controversial andless measurable or comparable “Profiles ofLearning.” The Profiles were criticized on a numberof fronts for being overly bureaucratic andburdensome for teachers, and not specific andmeasurable enough in telling students what theyneed to know.

In their place, the state is now introducing newstandards for math, reading, and other subjects that aresimilar to how other states measure and report studentachievement. They should, if tests are properly aligned,make it easier to measure and compare progress in thefuture. All public schools in the state are nowscrambling to adapt curriculum to the new math andreading standards. New or adapted state tests will followand be used to determine if Minnesota schools andstudents are making the degree of annual progresstoward proficiency required to avoid the consequencesspelled out in NCLB.

In the meantime, the indicator getting the mostattention is whether schools did or did not make

Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) using testing datathat has previously been available. A quick analysisof those designations finds that as of mid-February2004, 12 Minnesota charters did not make AYP lastyear. This tally also shows that 43 Minnesota chartersmade AYP, with the balance apparently too small ortoo new to be judged.

“Snapshot testing”“Snapshot testing”“Snapshot testing”“Snapshot testing”“Snapshot testing” has made sc has made sc has made sc has made sc has made school-lehool-lehool-lehool-lehool-levelvelvelvelvelrrrrreporeporeporeporeporting and comparting and comparting and comparting and comparting and comparisons diffisons diffisons diffisons diffisons difficulticulticulticulticult

Prior to passage of NCLB, Minnesota’seducation accountability system included readingand math tests administered each year to all thirdand fifth graders. Fifth and tenth graders have alsobeen required to take statewide writing tests. Andbasic skill tests—in reading and math—have beenadministered to all students in the eighth grade. Toqualify for high school graduation, students musttake the eighth grade reading and math tests (andthe 10th grade writing test) until they pass. As publicschools, charter schools have been required toparticipate in the same standardized tests.

Historically, these state-mandated tests havebeen reported as “snapshots” of a school’sperformance in a given year. The reading scores oflast year’s third graders, for example, are comparedto this year’s third graders. There has been nostatewide requirement or mechanism to documentgains in the performance of individual students,teachers, or schools over time.

From an analytical standpoint, that is problematicfor new schools, very small schools, and schoolswith highly mobile student populations. At best, itprovides an incomplete accounting of an individualschool’s performance. Used inappropriately, such

Evaluating CharEvaluating CharEvaluating CharEvaluating CharEvaluating Charters and Charters and Charters and Charters and Charters and Charteringteringteringteringtering“Success” Depends on How You Define It and on Who Is Asked


testing and test reporting can mislabel schools anddivert energy from developing needed and betterways of both improving student achievement andholding schools accountable.

So,So,So,So,So, ho ho ho ho how arw arw arw arw are Minnesota ce Minnesota ce Minnesota ce Minnesota ce Minnesota charharharharharter scter scter scter scter schoolshoolshoolshoolshoolsdoing? It depends on whicdoing? It depends on whicdoing? It depends on whicdoing? It depends on whicdoing? It depends on which sch sch sch sch schools andhools andhools andhools andhools andwho’who’who’who’who’s asks asks asks asks askededededed

One set of evidence, of course, is themarketplace—the growing number of schools andgrowing number of families choosing them. Someschools have waiting lists. Others have been forcedto add sections or grade levels in response tostudent/parent demand.

Another set of anecdotal evidence is thegrowing recognition given Minnesota charters bytheir educational colleagues and peers. TwelveMinnesota charter schools have now gainedaccreditation from the North Central Association/Commission on Accreditation and SchoolImprovement. And in 2003, Community of PeaceCharter Academy in St. Paul received a prestigiousNational Schools of Character Award from theNational Character Education Partnership.

Not surprisingly, Minnesota charter schoolshave done superbly, average, and poorly—asmeasured by the state’s tests and the evolvingdefinitions of what is needed to meet NCLBrequirements for Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP)toward proficiency for all students. Also notsurprisingly, achievement gains as determined bythese measures tend to reflect how long individualschools have been in operation and the demographicsof their students.

As noted above, Minnesota’s charter schoolsare highly diverse—in their size, missions, learningmethods, and student populations. A majority ofMinnesota’s 88 charter schools have opened in thelast four years. The small average size of Minnesotacharter schools also means that sample sizes are

often too small to support valid statisticalcomparisons for individual schools or studentsubgroups. As a whole, they serve populations thatare more urban, lower income and higher in theirpercentages of students of color. And a number ofthe schools disproportionately serve EnglishLanguage Learners (ELL) and students with specialneeds.

Despite these demographic realities, a recentanalysis of 2003 state test data by the MinnesotaAssociation of Charter Schools (MACS) found that:

! In Minneapolis, three of the eight chartersreporting third grade reading scoresoutperformed the districtwide average: HarvestPrep Academy, Minnesota Transitions, and theWoodson Institute for Student Excellence. Allthree serve very high concentrations of low-income students and students of color.

! Harvest Prep also significantly outperformed thedistrictwide average on the third grade math test.For fifth graders, two Minneapolis-sponsoredcharters—Cyber Village Academy and HarvestPrep—outperformed the district average on thestate’s reading test.

! In the Twin Cities suburbs and rest of the state,about one-half the charters are outperformingthe statewide averages in reading in both thethird and fifth grades, despite higher thanaverage percentages of low-income students,students of color, and special educationstudents.

! In St. Paul, none of the city’s charters out-performed the districtwide average in 2003 oneither the state’s third or fifth grade math orreading tests. However, by the time studentstake the eighth grade basic skills test, the resultsdo show gains, with a better showing against


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SOURCE: Minnesota Department of Education

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Regular listeners to Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” may have the mistaken impressionthat there is a less urgent need to change and improve public education in Minnesota. At least inmythical Lake Webegon, “all children are above average.” Aside from the statistical impossibility of sucha claim, “tain’t so.”

It is true that, using aggregate and average testing and other student performance data, Minnesotacontinues to look very good when compared to other states. Students score well on the NationalAssessment of Educational Progress tests, as well as the ACT, SAT, Advanced Placement, and InternationalBaccalaureate tests, all taken by students who are headed for college.

But one of Minnesota’s no longer well-kept secrets is that the state has huge and unacceptable gapsin achievement levels and high school graduate rates among its increasingly diverse communities.

According to the Center on Education Policy, the state has the largest achievement differencebetween African-American and white students among the 19 states that require graduation exams. TheCenter notes that 78 percent of Minnesota’s white students passed the math portion of the state’seighth-grade basis skills test on the first try, compared with 33 percent of the black students. And therate at which black students pass the reading portion of the eighth grade basic skills test lags 38percentage points behind white students.

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The Minnesota Minority Education Partnership (MMEP) recently issued a report further documentingthese gaps across a number of different racial and ethnic groups in the state. The graphs above showthe differences among students of various racial groups on the state’s third grade standardized testsfor both reading and math.

In math, for example, 63 percent of white students in the state exhibited either “superiorperformance beyond grade level” or “solid grade level skills,” while the percentage totals in those twocategories for American Indian students was 36 percent, 44 percent for Asian/Pacific Islander students,29 percent for Hispanics, and 27 percent for black students. For third grade reading, the percentages ofstudents in these two top categories was 66 percent for white students, 42 percent for AmericanIndians, 28 percent for Asian/Pacific Islanders, and 29 percent for both Hispanic and black students.

The MMEP report documents similar gaps in high school completion and college attendance rates.In 2001, for example, the Minnesota Department of Education found 39 percent of black studentsgraduated in four years, compared to 43 percent of American Indian students, 47 percent of Hispanicstudents, 68 percent of Asian students, and 83 percent of whites.

The MMEP argues that the urgency to address these disparities is growing as the percentage of thestate’s population in lower-performing demographic groups continues to grow. And the MMEP notesthat—with huge percentage increases in non-white populations now living in selected suburbs andrural communities—these gaps in student achievement are no longer a concern only in Minneapolisand St. Paul.

ThirThirThirThirThird Grade Minnesota Comprd Grade Minnesota Comprd Grade Minnesota Comprd Grade Minnesota Comprd Grade Minnesota Comprehensivehensivehensivehensivehensive e e e e Assessment Reading Assessment Reading Assessment Reading Assessment Reading Assessment Reading AchieAchieAchieAchieAchievvvvvement Leement Leement Leement Leement Levvvvvelselselselselsin 2003 by Ethnicityin 2003 by Ethnicityin 2003 by Ethnicityin 2003 by Ethnicityin 2003 by Ethnicity

SOURCE: Minnesota Department of Education


citywide averages—especially in math, wherethree of four charters in St. Paul reported testdata outperformed the districtwide average in2003. Those three schools were Twin CitiesAcademy, Community of Peace, and HigherGround Academy.

! Community of Peace had particularly strongresults in math, ranking among the top 20 schoolsin the state in gains in math scores between thefifth and eighth grades. No other school on thetop 20 list had such a high concentration oflow-income students.

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With some exceptions, like Community of Peaceand Harvest Prep Academy, these snapshot testresults document achievement gaps that are notsignificantly different from gaps in the districtschools—especially in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Butbecause of the newness, mobility, and demographicsof many of the charters in the two central cities,the results also beg for the kind of “value-addedassessment” that can track changes on an annual

basis for the same groups of students and forindividual students.

That kind of test reporting is more common inthe Minneapolis School District. But another set ofanalyses of Minneapolis charters—using tests thedistrict administers to both its own schools anddistrict-granted charters—also demonstrates theneed for independent reporting of comparativetesting data.

In late 2003, Minneapolis district leadersreported that a slightly higher share of its ownstudents made a year’s progress on the district’s mathand reading tests than did students attending district-sponsored charter schools. Two weeks later,however, the pro-charter Center for School Changereanalyzed the data and concluded that a majorityof district-sponsored charters actually recordedhigher shares of students making a year’s progressthan did the district as a whole. The Center foundthat students in six of the nine district-sponsoredcharters made more progress in reading, math, orboth than did the district as a whole. Five of theseven district-sponsored charters that had two yearsof test results also showed more progress thandistrict schools in the share of students making atleast a year’s progress in reading or math over atwo-year period.


It would be naïve and inaccurate to claim that charter schools do not remain a burr under thesaddle of most school boards, district administrators, and teachers union leaders in Minnesota.Losing an exclusive franchise and claim on students and the money they bring with them, is not aneasy thing to accept.

Nevertheless, it is important to note that, since 1992, almost 10 percent of Minnesota’sschool districts—with about 30 percent of all state’s enrollment—have granted a total of 62charters. Many of these charters have been renewed and most are still operating. And, in a fewplaces around the state, chartering is now being done proactively by districts—to add new choicesand new opportunities for students, families, and teachers.

One of the more proactive districts is Northfield, a well-educated college community just 45miles south of Minneapolis. The Northfield school board has now granted three charters, includingan innovative new high school—ARTech—that opened last fall. Just 15 miles away in Faribault,Superintendent Keith Dixon has become a near folk hero in the charter school movement withhis positive and professional approach in chartering a former district elementary school in nearbyNerstrand. Dixon also points with pride to a still-unused provision his board negotiated in thedistrict’s master contract, allowing district school teachers to set up charter-like schools withinexisting district buildings.

Another 20 miles southwest of Faribault, the district board and administrators in Wasecahave proactively chartered a new elementary school that will offer a new choice to the district’sstudents, including students from a growing number of Hispanic families living in the community.And in suburban Minneapolis, the Hopkins School District—arguably one of the state’s best—isopening a new arts high school this fall in partnership with local artists and a highly regardedcommunity theater group.

Perhaps of greatest interest is discussion now going on in Minneapolis about how to dealwith natural enrollment decline and competition from charters and other choice options that hasleft the state’s largest district with an estimated 800 empty classrooms. Part of InterimSuperintendent Dave Jennings’ solution to the dilemma is an active program of chartering—bothnew schools and conversions of existing schools.

In February 2004, the Minneapolis School Board postponed a decision on Jennings’recommendations, as well as his plan to close and reconfigure a number of existing districtschools. Meanwhile, the board is in the early stages of a search process designed to hire a permanentreplacement for Jennings by sometime later this summer or fall.

Minneapolis is clearly a school district at a major crossroads in its history, in part because ofchoices made by what will soon be 10 percent of its students to attend charter schools. Oneobvious answer is for the district to ask parents and students why they have made that choice andthen proactively create new charter schools that respond.

District CharDistrict CharDistrict CharDistrict CharDistrict Chartering:tering:tering:tering:tering: Choice Can Be f Choice Can Be f Choice Can Be f Choice Can Be f Choice Can Be for School Boaror School Boaror School Boaror School Boaror School Boards,ds,ds,ds,ds, TTTTToooooooooo


Besides including the kind of value-addedassessment that tracks long-term individualstudent and school gains, any meaningful

comparisons of existing data will need to factor inother characteristics of schools including their age,student demographics and mobility, types of learningprograms, and management and governance models.

Only then will meaningful comparisons andconclusions be possible. Until then, making grosscomparisons of averages of charter and district schooltest results may satisfy journalistic curiosity and beuseful to advocates for one type of school over another.But they will not be of much value to eitherpolicymakers trying to evaluate the effectiveness of astate charter law or to leaders of individual charterschools trying to figure out what is working in theindividual classroom, what is not working, and why.

At least that is the argument made by public policyveteran and charter pioneer Ted Kolderie in a recentpaper written for Education/Evolving and publishedas commentary in Education Week in September 2003.Instead, Kolderie argues that policymakers should beseparately evaluating chartering as a strategy foreducation change and improvement. To that end,Kolderie lays out a framework for evaluating charteringthat Education/Evolving has now translated into amodel Request for Proposals (RFP) for states,sponsors, researchers, and others.

One framework for such an evaluation is to usethe state’s original goals that were articulated in thelegislation that authorized chartering of new publicschools in the first place. Using that framework, hereare the six goals in Minnesota’s original charter law,along with at least preliminary indicators of whetherthose goals are, in fact, being achieved.

Goal #1: Improve student learningGoal #1: Improve student learningGoal #1: Improve student learningGoal #1: Improve student learningGoal #1: Improve student learning

This is a critical question, of course, that is partlyaddressed above in the context of existing state andfederal testing and accountability requirements; or incases like Minneapolis, based on tests required bysponsors. Using these standard measures, results todate are clearly mixed and inconclusive, with studentdemographics and newness of most schools playing abigger factor in testing results than whether schoolsare chartered or not.

One readily available source for evaluating thisgoal should be the annual progress reports that allcharter schools are required to file each year with theirsponsors and the state Department of Education. Thesereports are supposed to cite progress made on academicand non-academic goals set down in each school’scharter agreement with its sponsor. Presumably, eachschool should be required to quantify these goals anddetermine what tests or other instruments are used tomeasure progress toward achieving them.

Another source of data could be surveys takenof parents, students, teachers, and other stakeholderson how satisfied they are with the school and itsprogress toward achieving student learning and otherimportant goals. One rare source of this kind ofstakeholder opinion is the Minneapolis School District,which reported in November 2003 that 97 percent ofparents of Minneapolis charter school students weresatisfied with their schools. This was significantly higherthan satisfaction rates for district school parents,particularly when demographics were factored in.The biggest parental concerns about district schools,especially for parents of students of color, centeredaround poor discipline and growing gaps in student

Needed:Needed:Needed:Needed:Needed: Ne Ne Ne Ne New w w w w WWWWWaaaaays of Evaluating not Jys of Evaluating not Jys of Evaluating not Jys of Evaluating not Jys of Evaluating not JustustustustustSchools, but the Law and Its ImplementationSchools, but the Law and Its ImplementationSchools, but the Law and Its ImplementationSchools, but the Law and Its ImplementationSchools, but the Law and Its Implementation


achievement levels. The survey found that theseconcerns are being addressed more successfully inMinneapolis charter schools than in Minneapolis districtschools.

The findings in the Minneapolis survey were con-sistent with less scientific conclusions in a report on“school culture” issued in mid-2003 by St. Paul-basedEducation/Evolving. The report was the product of aseries of visits and conversations with students, par-ents, teachers, and others in 10 Minnesota charterschools.

The report found that most of the students andparents inter-viewed placehighest valueon a numberof characteris-tics of theirschools thatmight begrouped un-der a commonheading of“positive school culture.” These characteristics includesmall school and class size; familiarity and regular con-tact between students, teachers and other adults; indi-vidualized instructional methods; the school’s missionor focus; more flexibility in scheduling; pacing of stu-dent learning; an increased role for teachers in school-level decisionmaking; and, overall, a more positive andwelcoming environment for students and their fami-lies.

Students attending these 10 charter schools—all in the Twin Cities area—generally come fromlarger district schools and reflect their racial, in-come, and language diversity. One significant fac-tor in the positive evaluation of their new charterschool environment is a sense of order, discipline,and safety. The Education/Evolving report cited anumber of positive outcomes they attributed to thestudents’ views about positive school culture, in-

cluding better student and teacher attitudes, increasedstudent motivation, a greater feeling of safety, bet-ter behavior, and higher attendance.

Goal #2:Goal #2:Goal #2:Goal #2:Goal #2: Incr Incr Incr Incr Increase learning opporease learning opporease learning opporease learning opporease learning opportunitiestunitiestunitiestunitiestunitiesfor pupilsfor pupilsfor pupilsfor pupilsfor pupils

The fact that more than 100 new public schoolshave been created under Minnesota’s charter law isclear evidence that this goal is being met. That isparticularly true in areas where charter schools areconcentrated—for example, in Minneapolis and St.

Paul wheremore than 50new schoolchoices havebeen created.Other com-munities thathave, relativeto their size,b e n e f i t e dfrom this goal

include Duluth, Bemidji, Northfield, LeSueur-Henderson, and Faribault.

The availability of these new choices has alsostimulated districts to offer students and familiesadditional choices in district schools. The St. PaulSchool District, for example, cited growing compe-tition from charters as a key reason for adding aHmong language and culture program to its PhalenLake Elementary School. The Minneapolis districthas begun offering more K-8 schools, citing thepositive response of parents in the city to chartersthat offer that option. And shortly after Minnesotapassed its charter legislation, parents in the ForestLake school district proposed a Montessori charterand the district then decided to open one itself.(See sidebar on Page 37 for the impact of charterand other competition on district public schools inMinneapolis.)

“Cyber Village Academy is like the real world. In the realword you can move ahead if you want, or take more time tolearn something if you need to. You have to meet due dates, butpeople don’t tell you when to do your work. We also learn timemanagement. You need that for the real world, too.”

—Student at Cyber Village Academy in St. Paul


“Teachers get to know you more here. There’smore freedom because there’s more trust.”

—Student at Avalon High School in St. Paul

Goal #3: Encourage the use of different,Goal #3: Encourage the use of different,Goal #3: Encourage the use of different,Goal #3: Encourage the use of different,Goal #3: Encourage the use of different,innoinnoinnoinnoinnovative teacvative teacvative teacvative teacvative teaching methodshing methodshing methodshing methodshing methods

Beyond the number of choices, are charters offer-ing choices that are different? And, how different? Oneclear answer is thatcharters are offer-ing smaller-scaleoptions to studentsand families thathave historicallyhad to pay tuition inprivate schools toget school and class sizes comparable to those theyare now accessing for free. Charters are also offeringmore families the opportunity to enroll their studentsin the same school for longer periods of time—withmore K-12, 6/7-12, and K-8 options available in char-ters than are generally available, especially in largeurban districts.

Higher degrees of parent and communityinvolvement are also significant differences in manycharter schools, particularly those serving lower-income families and families of color, and in recentimmigrant and refugee communities. Although thecultures are very different, a stronger role for parentsand the broader community is also evident in severalcharter schools in smaller rural communities, includingthose in Echo, Lafayette, Nerstrand, and Emily.

Of course, there are also a number of charterschools that do look and act very differently frommost current district public schools. For example, agrowing number of charters are offering what is oftendescribed by parents as “back to basics” curriculum—particularly in reading and math. A few charters aremaking extensive use of online learning, including CyberVillage Academy, Minnesota Transitions, and a formerdistrict program now-turned-charter in Chisago Lakes.Metro Deaf School—and its new high school nowunder development—also offers a distinct alternativefor students who have heretofore had to choose be-

tween attending residential schools away from theirfamilies or being mainstreamed with students that donot have hearing impairments. And, a number of char-ters, including the 12 affiliated with EdVisions Schools,are using project-based learning. In its purest form,

these schools offera very different kindof environment out-side the traditionalcourse/curriculumapproach to teach-ing and learning.

Goal #4: Require the measurement ofGoal #4: Require the measurement ofGoal #4: Require the measurement ofGoal #4: Require the measurement ofGoal #4: Require the measurement oflearning outcomes and create different,learning outcomes and create different,learning outcomes and create different,learning outcomes and create different,learning outcomes and create different,innoinnoinnoinnoinnovative fvative fvative fvative fvative forms of measurorms of measurorms of measurorms of measurorms of measuring outcomesing outcomesing outcomesing outcomesing outcomes

Just by their existence, charters have fundamentallychanged the focus of accountability and its emphasison setting goals and measuring and monitoring progresstoward achieving them. It is also significant that 17 ofthe 105 charters that have opened to date in Minnesotahave been closed. Although most of these closureswere fueled by management and governance problems,lack of progress in improving student achievementhas often been just below the surface. Closingschools—particularly at this pace for reasons relatingto their performance—is in and of itself a new andhealthy form of accountability.

It is important to note that, since Minnesota’s char-ter law was first adopted in 1991, policymakers, jour-nalists, and others have placed a much greater empha-sis on measuring student academic outcomes usingstandardized tests, rather than on measures unique tothe mission and goals of each school. That reality hasno doubt stifled at least some of the energy and com-mitment needed to “create different and innovativeforms of measuring outcomes,” as prescribed by thestate’s charter law. Nevertheless, that mandate remainsin force. And, if charters are to ever have any hope ofaltering public policies in this regard, their leaders and


supporters will need to place a much higher priorityon creating additional ways of measuring learner out-comes, as well as explaining in understandable termswhy they are superior measures of what is actuallygoing on in their schools.

Goal #5: Es tab l i sh new forms ofGoa l #5: Es tab l i sh new forms ofGoa l #5: Es tab l i sh new forms ofGoa l #5: Es tab l i sh new forms ofGoa l #5: Es tab l i sh new forms ofaccountability faccountability faccountability faccountability faccountability for scor scor scor scor schoolshoolshoolshoolshools

Beyond testing methodology that is better alignedwith the unique mission, goals, and student populationof each school, charter schools have also had theopportunity to design new governance mechanismsfor holding school leaders and teachers accountable.And, with its diverse array of sponsors, Minnesota isin an ideal position to establish new forms of oversightand accountability that can be used to monitor schoolperformance, intervene if necessary, and ultimatelydetermine whether a school’s charter should berenewed or revoked.

The existence of a fixed-term contract that has tobe periodically evaluated and renewed represents asignificant change in school-level accountability forpublic schools in Minnesota. Several long-term Min-nesota charters have now gone through that renewalprocess three or even four times. In addition to thefixed-term contract, Minnesota charters are also re-quired to submit an annual report to the state and theirsponsors. Properly done, this report can also providean important context for reviewing and assessingprogress on school-level goals.

Finally, the fact that all charter schools are schoolsof choice adds an extra degree of accountability forsatisfying parents and students. Several of the charterschools that have closed in Minnesota did so becausethey could not attract enough students to remain fi-nancially viable. This exposure to the marketplace hasbeen even more demanding for Minnesota chartersbecause of the scrutiny they have been given by someelements of the media—in some cases fueled by crit-ics and opponents of the charter idea itself.

Goal #6: Create new professionalGoal #6: Create new professionalGoal #6: Create new professionalGoal #6: Create new professionalGoal #6: Create new professionalopporopporopporopporopportunities ftunities ftunities ftunities ftunities for teacor teacor teacor teacor teacherherherherhersssss

Finally, as noted earlier, Minnesota has a uniquestatutory provision that, absent a waiver, a majority ofthe governing board of the state’s charter schools mustbe licensed teachers working in the school. While thereare differences over the wisdom of this requirement,there is no question that it has helped produce newprofessional opportunities for hundreds of charterschool teachers all across the state. Some 350 charterschool teachers, for example, are now sitting on thegoverning boards of Minnesota charter schools. Inmany other schools, there are flatter and more partici-patory internal management arrangements. Someschools have “lead teachers” rather than principals.Others have divided the management function betweena lead teacher or academic administrator and a nonprofitexecutive or business manager.

In the Minnesota charters affiliated withEdVisions Schools, the charter opportunity has gonefurther by allowing teachers to form cooperativesor other types of professional practice arrangementsthat have been more prevalent in professions suchas law, medicine, accounting, and architecture. Nowteachers can also organize their own professionalpractices, employ administrators who report to them,share financial rewards, and accept and exercise anew level of authority and responsibility for theirprofessional lives.

It is interesting to note that, although it ispermissible, teachers in none of the more than 100charters that have opened in Minnesota since 1992have organized and bargained collectively as their ownlocal union. That is not to say that all Minnesota chartershave been ideal employers. And it is not to argue thatthe option to organize and bargain collectively shouldnot exist nor ever be used. But, it does suggest a workenvironment in many charters that is fundamentallydifferent from those found in most districts and districtschools.


For two decades now, Minnesotans have beenleading the nation in making decisions andtaking actions to advance a broad strategy

of expanding choice and choices within publiceducation. Beginning in the 1980s, the state openednew choices to parents and students through Post-Secondary Enrollment Options, interdistrict openenrollment, and the creation of new “secondchance” alternative schools. In 1991, theMinnesota legislature created a new option byenacting the nation’s first charter school law. Sincethen it has continued to expand opportunities tocreate or sponsor charter schools and openednew revenue streams to Minnesota charterschools. In addition to making Minnesota a nationalleader in charter school and public school choiceoptions, this public authority and support has alsoattracted private sector philanthropy from outsidethe state and promoted incrased non-governmental capacity to support non-districtpublic schools.

Now, in 2004, Minnesotans stand at a criticalcrossroads—both in addressing their owneducational challenges and opportunities, and inproviding inspiration and leadership to the rest ofthe country.

Minnesotans could remain on their currentcourse—viewing chartering as a useful, butsomewhat peripheral, element of efforts to changeand improve existing public schools. AndMinnesotans could continue to respond to andsupport what appears to be a moderate stream ofgood ideas put forward by educators and othersproposing new charter schools. Or Minnesotans

could become much more strategic and pro-activein identifying gaps in the educational environmentsthe state now has—and then use chartering to createmany more and significantly different schools fromscratch.

The second of these two options is clearly thepreferred and necessary route for moving chartersand chartering to a new level. Exercising that optionwill require action on a number of fronts—bothinvolving public policy initiatives and private sectorsupport.

A start on that action agenda—for Minnesotapolicymakers, and education and public policyleaders—is grouped under the following seven broadrecommendations. And, while these recommendationsare primarily intended for audiences withinMinnesota, they—like previous initiatives that havetheir origins here—should have relevance and valueto other states as well.

! First, articulate a clear and convincingrationale for chartering—as a mechanismto address serious gaps in the capacity ofour current educational system to serve theneeds of an increasingly diverse studentpopulation—by creating many more newand different public schools of choice.

This strategy for change needs to be at least onpar with parallel strategies to change and improvethe schools we now have. This is not to say thatparallel effort—now largely focused onimplementation of NCLB—should not go forward.It is to say that it is neither wise nor responsible to

FuturFuturFuturFuturFuture Ripples:e Ripples:e Ripples:e Ripples:e Ripples: The Next Generation of Minnesota’The Next Generation of Minnesota’The Next Generation of Minnesota’The Next Generation of Minnesota’The Next Generation of Minnesota’sssssNational Leadership on CharNational Leadership on CharNational Leadership on CharNational Leadership on CharNational Leadership on Charter Schools and Charter Schools and Charter Schools and Charter Schools and Charter Schools and CharteringteringteringteringteringSeven Broad Recommendations to Address the Challenges and Opportunities NowFacing Education and Public Policy Leadership—both in Minnesota and Nationally


pin all of our hopes and expectations for necessarychange and improvement on strategies that dependso heavily on changing existing schools.

The “new schools strategy” must also bearticulated in ways to ensure that state leadershipand policy support for charters and chartering cantranscend changes in the state’s political and policyleadership. Fortunately, that should be possible sincechartering should enjoy the philosophical supportof those on the conservative side of the politicalspectrum, while providing new and better optionsfor many students and families that have traditionallysupported liberal policymakers and elected officials.Maintaining this broad bipartisan coalition of supportis critical in overcoming strong, entrencheddefenders of the status quo.

Finally, this broader context for the importanceof chartering must be used to a much greater extentin responding to the question, “How are charter schoolsdoing?” This question must now be modified to ask,“How is chartering doing—as a mechanism for getting thenew, different, and better schools it must now have?”

! Second, continue to expand the boundariesthat have historically defined “publiceducation,” while preserving its mostessential core elements.

Minnesotans have a deep, historic commitmentto public education. But over time, the definitionof “public education” in Minnesota has consciouslyand systematically been expanded. It now includes:

● Juniors and seniors in public and privatehigh schools attending public and privateuniversities at state expense.

● School districts contracting with private,nonprofit organizations to provide publiceducation to students not succeeding indistrict public schools.

● Private, nonprofit organizations beinggranted charters and receiving publicfunding to deliver public education on areasonably equal basis with districts.

● Private universities, nonprofit organizations,and foundations having the authority to grantcharters and provide ongoing oversight ofcharter public schools.

In the future, it is likely that this expansion inhow Minnesotans define public education willcontinue, with resulting implications for the rest ofthe country. And, done right, with broad bipartisansupport, this approach to improving education couldrepresent a major breakthrough in narrowingdifferences among those who have historicallysupported more traditional definitions of both publicand private school choice.

Whether that happens will depend on acontinued willingness by education policy leadersto focus on ends, rather than means. It will alsorequire a strong emphasis on creating high-qualitylearning environments that produce better results.And it will depend on maintaining a strongcommitment to creating and preserving access tohigh-quality learning opportunities for all Minnesotastudents.

! Third, use charters and chartering morestrategically and proactively to address hugegaps in student achievement levels amongracial and other demographic groups, andbetter serve the increasing diversity in thestate’s student population, while alsocontributing to racial and ethnic integration.

Minnesotans need to become much more com-fortable with the reality that their current educationsystem works quite well for large numbers of stu-dents, but is nowhere near adequate for many oth-


ers. It is simply not acceptable that Minnesota hasthe nation’s widest gap in achievement levels andgraduation rates between white students and stu-dents of color. This realization requires disciplineon the part of those seeking change in how theycharacterize the state’s public education system as awhole. And it requires an openness and much lessdefensive posture on the part of historic defendersof traditional public education—to admit to defi-ciencies and to have an open mind about support-ing new and different options.

Overall, it requires Minnesotans to be muchmore strategicand proactivein identifyinggaps or defi-ciencies thatnow exist andin filling thosegaps by creat-ing many morenew schools. For a state that has historically lookedinward for solutions to its failings, this must alsoinclude replication of proven, successful schoolmodels developed in other states. And it must in-clude making more effective use of new educa-tional technologies and teaching and learning meth-ods that engage and motivate students who are noweither failing in or have already left the current sys-tem.

One way to make Minnesota more strategic andproactive in chartering new schools is new, single-purpose nonprofit sponsoring organizations. Thesenew nonprofit sponsors would have no othermission than to grant charters and oversee charterschools. They would also specialize in specific typesof schools or specific, unmet student needs. Andthey would be proactive—requesting proposals andseeking out the best models available to addressthe priority needs they identify—both nationally andfrom within the state.

Among the existing new school strategies thatneed both encouragement and caution is creationof new schools by and largely for students of aparticular racial, ethnic, immigrant, or refugee com-munity. Minnesota now has a number of these “eth-nocentric” charter schools started in and by thestate’s increasingly diverse collection of communi-ties: Hispanic/Latino, Southeast Asian/Hmong, EastAfrican/Somali, Native American, African Ameri-can, and others (see sidebar on Page 13). This trendis supported in part by an increasingly diverse collec-tion of charter school sponsors that serve these com-

munities, includingthe Lao Family Com-munity, Islamic Re-lief Wordwide,Pillsbury UnitedC o m m u n i t i e s ,Project for Pride inLiving, James FordBell Foundation,

Volunteers of America/Minnesota, and the YMCAof Greater Minneapolis.

Done right, these ethnocentric charter schoolsprovide both learning opportunities for students notdoing well in the current system and anempowerment mechanism for families andcommunities. They need to be judged on theirresults, particularly in producing better outcomesfor students who are low income, highly mobile,and English Language Learners. At the same time,charter school advocates need to be creative indesigning voluntary strategies that will encouragesharing social and cultural assets among communitiesand that will discourage permanent racial and ethnicisolation.

! Fourth, continue to strengthen the capacityof a diverse array of sponsors to provideappropriate oversight and promote moreresponsive, cost-effective ways of providing

“I like my school because it has better discipline. It’sstrict and there’s more work. But I like to work hard.”

—Student at Metro Deaf School In St. Paul


functions historically provided by centraldistrict office administrators and by unions.

While creating new and more proactivesponsoring organizations, Minnesota also needs tocontinue to strengthen the sponsors it already has.The Charter School Sponsor Collaborative createdby Education/Evolving offers a good base for thisactivity. It should now expand its membership toinclude more of the state’s 60 or so sponsors,including school districts. The Collaborative shouldalso broadly disseminate and encourage use of itsrecently produced resource guide for sponsors.

Short of traditional regulation, sponsors needto be encouraged and rewarded for upgrading theircommitment and capacity to charter along the linesrecommended by the Collaborative’s recentlypublished resource guide. One option is to limitparticipation in the Collaborative to those sponsorswho agree to abide by a common set of principlesor even standards the Collaborative develops. Inreturn, such sponsors might be given greaterdeference in the state’s approval process for newcharters. Or such sponsors might be able to accessadditional financial resources to support theirsponsoring activities.

There is no question that chartering is nowbeing subsidized by most of the state’s sponsors.That is a barrier to both expanding the number ofschools many sponsors charter and increasing theircapacity to carry out their multiple roles. Somecombination of federal, state, school, and privaterevenue sources must be made available to allsponsors in Minnesota who agree to some commonset of standards designed to improve the quality oftheir work.

At the same time, many more school districtsneed to see chartering as a strategic opportunity toexpand and strengthen the educational optionsavailable to their students. As a start, pendinglegislation offering districts additional encouragement

to grant charters should be adopted. More districts—and their unions—should also develop models forselling administrative, financial, professionaldevelopment, and other services to charter schools.In all cases, this must be done without recreatingthe bureaucracy and prescriptive compliance-oriented oversight of traditional districts.

! Fifth, better document the successes ofindividual charter schools in meeting thestudent achievement goals of No Child LeftBehind, as well as the unique mission andattributes of each charter school.

It is no secret that many charter—and non-charter—educators in Minnesota have seriousreservations about what they view as a “one-size-fits-all” approach to academic accountability that ispresumed in NCLB. They are particularly concernedabout the uniform and relatively limited measuresused to determine adequte annual progress towardstudent proficiency over the next decade.

Yet, because the NCLB goals are unlikely tochange, charter school operators and sponsors mustbe more proactive about developing academic goalsand appropriate measures of how they are doing toachieve them, to provide a more complete pictureof each charter school’s performance. Obviously,the state’s standards for core subject areas must beincluded in this process. However, charters can alsoserve as models for developing new goals for theknowledge and skills students should be acquiring andmeasuring progress toward achieving those goals.

! Sixth, use charters to test new and creativestrategies for both expanding choice andchoices—while also living within today’sfiscal realities.

Charter school advocates must continue tochallenge the notion that both urban and rural learning


sites must be larger than research demonstrates theyshould be to serve the academic and other relatedinterests of students. At the same time, making smallschools—especially small high schools—realisticallyviable will require much more than evidence that theywork well for students. Minnesota should lead thenation in developing and implementing financing andother policies that reverse what is now more than 70years of policies designed to promote both largerschools and larger school districts. The following areamong the policy initiatives needed to assure theviability of small public schools.

● Design creative, flexible, and affordableways of financing school facilities.

This includes a continued strong commitmentto funding Minnesota’s pioneering building leaseaid program, coupled with removal of the currentprohibition on charter schools owning buildings.Charter schools should also be able to accessfinancing at rates comparable to the GeneralObligation bond rates available to school districts—perhaps through state-supported loan guarantee andloan pooling arrangements. And charter schoolsshould be assured priority treatment in accessingexcess building capacity in the district sector.

In the long term, charters should be viewed asan R&D opportunity for testing more flexible andaffordable ways of financing facilities for all publicschools. Ideally, such financing should be flexibleenough to follow students to the growing numberof choices being made available to them. It shouldalso support a variety of sites for teaching andlearning, including multi-use facilities and schoolsthat benefit from co-locations and partnerships withother organizations. And it should not discouragecreation of less capital-intensive schools that placea much greater emphasis on technology and onlearning that takes place away from traditional schoolsites.

● Design creative and flexible ways ofarranging and financing pupiltransportation.

One of the realities of offering more choiceand choices is that it inevitably costs more to transportstudents to numerous, often smaller school sites.One of the realities facing Minnesota is that itsstrong commitment to school choice requires agreater state financial commitment to gettingstudents to and from school and related activities.That is true both for charters and for districts whenthey offer a significant number of choices amongtheir own schools.

Beyond money, however, education policyleaders in both the charter and district sectorsshould work together to develop new approachesto financing and organizing pupil transportation.This might include using public transportationsystems where available and age-appropriate forstudents, subsidizing parents and other adults totransport students, and collaborating withemployers, district and private schools, highereducation institutions, and other commondestinations. Safety of students must beparamount in exploring these or other options.But the affordability and feasibility of numerous,smaller school choices depends on both adequatefinancing and on finding new and more cost-effective ways of transporting students to andfrom those schools.

● Create new partnerships with districtsand the community in organizing andfinancing extracurricular activities.

Small high schools will inevitably struggle toprovide the range of extracurricular activities thattheir students will demand. In the short term, itseems reasonable that charter school students beallowed to participate on sports teams and in other


extracurricular activities sponsored by their “homedistrict” high school. Legislative proposals to ensureall such opportunity should be adopted, along witha requirement that the charter schools and studentspay whatever fees and per-student subsidies are paidby district students and by the resident district.

Greater availability of small high schools mayrequire fundamental changes in how extracurricularactivities are organized and funded in the long run.Options worth serious study include organizingthese activities on a geographic or community basis.Such arrangements would also include strongerpartnerships with Community Education, city andcounty park and recreation departments, and non-school sports, arts, and other youth-servingorganizations and activities.

● Create new models for financing andsupporting educational services forstudents with special needs.

As public schools, charters have an obligationto accept all students that enroll. And, in manystates—including Minnesota—they have the sameobligations as districts to comply with theIndividuals with Disabilities Education Act andother federal and state legislation pertaining tospecial education and students with disabilities.Minnesota charters have been able to takeadvantage of a pre-existing law that allowsdistricts (including charters) to bill the district ofresidence special education services that exceedrevenues received for that student.

This law has been essential to charters as aform of “catastrophic insurance protection”against individual high-cost cases that couldotherwise bankrupt them. Ultimately, however, itmay be that this backup financial protection is bestprovided by the state, rather than districts. Legislationencouraging the creation of state-level risk poolsfor this purpose is now pending in Congress.

Once that legislation is adopted, Minnesotacharters and districts should work together to explorestate-level options to the current district bill-backfor excess special education costs. And in the longterm, the state’s charter schools should be viewedas a laboratory for designing and testing new andmore effective ways of serving special educationstudents—within a context of both historic legalobligations and protections and today’s context ofexpanded parental options and choice.

● Match teacher qualifications andtraining with new and different typesof learning.

Unlike a number of states, Minnesota’s charterschool law requires that all teachers in charterschools be certified. In addition, NCLB requiresthat charter and all other public school teachers be“highly qualified.” With this requirement, NCLBplaces a very high premium on being able todemonstrate competency in a core subject—likemath, English, social studies, or science. Thepresumption, of course, is that students must alwaysbe taught one subject at a time and that contentknowledge can only be transferred directly fromteacher to student.

This requirement is problematic for charter highschools—and other small high schools—that havesmaller numbers of students and that use project-based learning, Web-based curriculum, or otherinterdisciplinary approaches to teaching and learning.To address common concerns, Minnesota chartershave joined with district alternative high schoolsand small rural school districts to propose a newtype of endorsement for teachers working ineducational programs where students are not taughtone subject at a time. As this discussion goes forward,Minnesota education officials and teacher traininginstitutions and programs should continue to workwith charter and other small school leaders to create


new kinds of teaching credentials that are bothrigorous and also relevant to different and effectivemodels of teaching and learning.

! Seventh, broaden and deepen private-sectorfinancial and other partnerships thatsupport charter schools, and proactively seekgreater non-financial support fromcommunity partners for creating andreplicating high-quality new schools.

Minnesota charter schools have beenfortunate in receiving the generous support oftwo major national foundations—the WaltonFamily Foundation and Bill & Melinda GatesFoundation. These two funders have supported anumber of individual charter schools, as well asseveral organizations that provide technicalassistance and other infrastructure for Minnesota’scharter school movement. And a number ofMinnesota charter schools have also received atleast some assistance from local businesses andfoundations—for their launch and ongoing support.

But to achieve the ambitious goals spelledout in this report, a much higher degree of private-sector support for charters and chartering willnow be needed. Minnesota corporations andfoundations, in particular, have a huge stake inmoving new schools and chartering to the center

of the state’s mix of education improvementstrategies.

To be strategic, non-governmental fundersshould work closely with the state’s education policyleadership to identify gaps in funding and help closethem. Among the current gaps are initial pre-charterplanning, financial support for existing and proposedsponsors, and documentation and replication ofschool models that have demonstrated success. Acareful examination of funding options may findthat the most strategic uses of available privatesector funds include capacity-building initiatives thataddress common needs of a number of schoolssimultaneously, or funding networks of schools thatshare a common mission or that can share what theyare doing well with other charter or district schools.

Private sector support and involvement incharter schools should not be limited to financialsupport. Assisting with facilities, making surplusfurnishings or equipment available, and providinginternship and other hands-on learning opportunitiesare all valuable contributions that can be made byboth established businesses and nonprofitorganizations in the community. And as noted earlier,one huge gap in Minnesota’s private-sector role ineducation is hands-on assistance in defining desirededucational outcomes and the measures schools andothers should use to determine if they are beingachieved.


This report includes a number of findingsand recommendations that will inevitablybe of most immediate interest and value to

Minnesota’s education and policy leadership. Thestate that first made chartering possible is at a criticalcrossroads in the evolution of this innovative andpromising idea.

Minnesotans now have the opportunity tobecome much more strategic and proactive in usingchartering to create the number of new and differentlearning environments the state needs. Seizing thatopportunity will require a second generation ofpolicy leadership with ideas and commitment justas bold as the first.

ConclusionConclusionConclusionConclusionConclusion

But the challenges that Minnesota now facesare not unique. Neither are the opportunities.Virtually all states face growing gaps in academicachievement within an increasingly diverse studentpopulation. No state or community can afford tostand still in this competitive and global economy.

The first generation of policy developmentaround charters and chartering was a constantstream of give and take—as states learned fromand expanded upon the initiatives of others.Minnesota was both a source and beneficiary ofmuch of that exchange. This report is intendedto keep that ripple of good ideas going—andgrowing.


ResourcesResourcesResourcesResourcesResources

The information and observations contained in this paper draw heavily on the author’s own knowledge and, viainterviews, that of other Minnesota education policy leaders and observers. The statistical and other information on Minnesota’scharter schools and sponsors is drawn from several data bases and websites maintained by the Minnesota Association ofCharter Schools and Minnesota Department of Education. In addition, a number of print, electronic and other sources wereused in developing this report. They included:

ReporReporReporReporReports and other documentsts and other documentsts and other documentsts and other documentsts and other documents# “Alternative-Education Programs: The ‘Quiet Giant’ in Minnesota Public Education,” Education/Evolving,

June 2003.# “Center for School Change Public School Choice Poll,” Center for School Change, University of Minnesota,

February, 2003.# “Charter School Closures: The Opportunity for Accountability,” Center for Education Reform, October

2002.# “Charter School Financial Accountability,” Office of the Legislative Auditor, State of Minnesota, June, 2003.# “Charter School Laws Across the States: Ranking Scorecard and Legislative Profiles,” Center for Education

Reform, February 2004.# “Evaluating Chartering: A case for assessing separately the institutional innovation,” Education/Evolving,

October 2003.# Junge, Ember Reichgott, “Honoring Minnesota’s Innovative Charter School Law and the People Who

Created It,” unpublished paper used as part of Minnesota’s application for the Harvard Innovations inGovernment Award, October 2000.

# Kolderie, Ted, “Charter Schools: The states begin to withdraw the exclusive,” Public Services RedesignProject, October 1993.

# “Minnesota Charter Schools Snapshot,” Minnesota Association of Charter Schools, February 2004.# “Minnesota’s Charter Schools, An evaluation report prepared for the Minnesota Department of Children,

Families and Learning,” January 2003.# “Minnesota Education Yearbook, the status of preK-12 education in Minnesota,” Office of Educational

Accountability, University of Minnesota, 2004.# Minnesota Session Laws, Revisor of Statutes, State of Minnesota, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003.# Minnesota Statutes, Chapter 124: 124D.10 and 124D.11, 2003.# “Positive School Culture: Students and their families help answer the question: ‘How are Minnestoa’s

Chartered schools doing?’” Education/Evolving, September 2003.


# “Profiles of Minnesota Charter Schools,” Center for School Change, Minnesota Association of Charter Schools,EdVisions Schools, September 2003.

# “Seizing the Charter Opportunity: A report on expanding the support system for charter schooldevelopment in Minnesota,” Charter Friends National Network, December 1996.

# “Sponsoring Chartered Schools: A Resource Guide for Minnesota Chartering Agencies,” Education/Evolving, February 2004.

# “State of Students of Color 2004: Building Alliances for Student Success,” Minnesota Minority EducationPartnership, February 2004.

# Jennings, David, “Sustained Success for Minnesota Public Schools: A plan for improving programs forstudents,” an unpublished paper presented to the School Board of Minnesota Public Schools, February10, 2004.

Published arPublished arPublished arPublished arPublished articticticticticleslesleslesles# “Achievement gap: Coalition has good suggestions,” Editorial, Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul), February

22, 2004.# Armstrong, Liz Schevtchuk, “Minnesota Lawmakers Renew Efforts to Allow Creation of Charter

Schools,” Education Week, April 3, 1991.# “Auditor’s report raises red flags, No Child Left Behind Impact in Minnesota,” Editorial, St.Paul Pioneer

Press, Mar 2, 2004.# Bowman, Darcia Harris, “Charter School Openings Lowest in Six Years,” Education Week, February 18,

2004.# Brandt, Steve, “New test data analysis favors charter schools; Expert draws opposite conclusion,” Star

Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul), December 22, 2003.# Christiansen, Nicole, “Charter School comes to Waseca,” Mankato Free Press, February 3, 2004.# “Community of Peace Academy Wins National Character Education Award,” Minnesota Association of

Charter Schools, November/December 2003.# “District to take bold approach to defining the future of all schools,” Press Release, Minneapolis Public

Schools, November 3, 2003.# “East African Cultures and American Public Education Find Common Ground at International Schools,”

Minnesota Association of Charter Schools, Winter 2004.# “The Hmong in St. Paul: Journey to Thailand,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, February 22, 2004.# Johnson, Denise, “Closing the gap,” Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul), February 22, 2004.# Johnson, Robert C., “Minnesota Desegregation Plan Gets High Marks, Will Go On,” Education Week,

January 28, 2004.# “The Mall of Somalia, Minneapolis’s Own Slice of Mogadishu,” City Pages, February 18, 2004.# “Minneapolis public schools release findings of survey,” Press Release, Minneapolis Public Schools,

November 18, 2003.# “Minnesota Backs Nation’s First ‘Choice’ System,” Education Week, May 4, 1988.# Olson, Lynn, “Nation’s First Charter School Clears a Key Hurdle,” Education Week, November 27,

1991.


# Shah, Allie, “Academics, discipline seen as Minneapolis schools’ hurdles,” Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St.Paul), November 20, 2003.

# Shah, Allie, “Minneapolis schools prepare to compete for students,” Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul),November 4, 2003.

# Snider, William, “In Nation’s First Open-Enrollment State, the Action Begins,” Education Week, March15, 1989.

# Snider, William, “Minnesota to Pilot Test ‘Learner Outcomes’ System,” Education Week, May 31, 1989.# Snider, William, “Perpich: An ‘Out-front’ Message in New Interstate Leadership Job,” Education Week,

October 19, 1988.# Soenarie, Angelique, “Minnesota Schools: Minority enrollment grows,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, February

14, 2004.# “Student achievement is a statewide concern,” Editorial, St. Paul Pioneer Press, February 11, 2004.# Wallin, Rebecca, “Minnesota must meet college preparation and completion challenges to compete in

the global economy,” Minnesota Journal, January 27, 2004.# Webb, Tom, “Web gives easy access to test data,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, January 30, 2004.# Wehrwein, Austin, “Critics Assailing Minnesota Choice Plan,” Education Week, October 23, 1985.# Wehrwein, Austin, “Minnesota Senate Defeats Perpich’s Choice Proposal,” Education Week, May 1,

1985.# Welsh, John, “Charter Schools mark a record,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, December 29, 2003.

WWWWWebsitesebsitesebsitesebsitesebsites# Center for Education Reform: http://www.edform.com.# Charter School Leadership Council: http://www.cslc.us.# Education/Evolving: http://www.educationevolving.org.# EdVisions Schools: http://www.edvisions.coop.# Minnesota Association of Charter Schools: http://www.mncharterschools.org.# Minnesota Charter School Resource Center: http://www.hhh.umn.edu/centers/school-change/handobok/ntccsp.htm.# Minnesota Department of Education: http://www.education.state.mn.us/ and http://www.schoolresults.org.# National Charter School Alliance: http://www.charterfriends.org.# SchoolStart: http://www.schoolstart.org.# U.S. Department of Education: http://www.ed.gov and http://www.uscharterschools.org.

About the AuthorJon Schroeder is coordinator of Education/Evolving, a joint venture of the Center for Policy Studies and HamlineUniversity, both in St. Paul, Minn. He is also the founder and provides staff support for the Minnesota Charter SchoolForum, a coalition of more than 30 charter supporting organizations and leaders in Minnesota.

From 1996 to 2003, Jon was co-founder and director of Charter Friends National Network (CFNN), where he playeda major role in assisting state charter school organizations, federal policy development, and other charter schoolactivities nationally. He was also previously policy director in the office of former U.S. Senator Dave Durenberger,where he helped conceive and enact legislation that, in 1994, became the federal charter school grant program.

Prior to joining Senator Durenberger’s staff, Jon was publisher and editor of a weekly newspaper in west centralMinnesota and a research associate for the Twin Cities Citizens League. He is a Minnesota native and has a bache-lor’s degree in political science from Macalester College in St. Paul.

AcknowledgementsThe author is grateful for the advice, inspiration, and assistance in preparing this report from a number of individu-als and organizations including: Steve Dess, Scott Flemming, Rod Haenke, and Julie Cutler of the MinnesotaAssociation of Charter Schools; Ted Kolderie, Joe Graba, Bob Wedl, and Kim Farris-Berg of Education/Evolving; Dougand Dee Thomas and their colleagues at EdVisions Schools; Joe Nathan and his colleagues at the Center for SchoolChange and its Minnesota Charter School Resource Center; Morgan Brown and his colleagues at the MinnesotaDepartment of Education; former State Sen. Ember Reichgott Junge; and the directors, students, parents, teachers,and others associated with Minnesota’s more than 100 charter schools.

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