State education commissioner praised existing charter school application process last fall

In November, before Gov. Mike Dunleavy concluded that the state school board should be allowed to authorize charter schools, Education Commissioner Deena Bishop praised the current system in which school districts are central to the process.

One of Dunleavy’s major complaints about the bipartisan education bill he vetoed is that it did not allow the state school board—whose members serve at the pleasure of the governor—to create charter schools in local districts.

Dunleavy does not trust school boards and wants to bypass them. He trusts the state school board, which is controlled by Dunleavy supporters.

It was in January, after Dunleavy made the charter school power grab a personal priority, that Bishop testified about the importance of giving a new power to the state school board, at the expense of local school boards.

In doing so on January 20, Bishop distorted the exchange she had in a November interview with Paul Peterson, the Harvard researcher who co-authored the national charter school study about scores on the NAEP test.

“In speaking with the researcher, he shared that the most successful charter schools in the nation had state authorizing agencies as Alaska’s charters are designed. This bill simply expands the processes for approval at the state board level,” Bishop said on January 20.

The bill did not simply expand the process. It changed the process to give the governor more power.

In November, during her interview with Peterson on his Education Next podcast, Bishop defended the current system of authorizing charter schools and did not mention that there was a need for change.

Here is a link to that podcast.

“The state is the ultimate authorizer” for creating charter schools, but the process begins with a local school board, Bishop told Peterson.

Nearly all Alaska charter schools do not have transportation for students and most do not have school lunch programs and a variety of other services offered at other schools.

Bishop said that in the Mat-Su district and the Anchorage district, where she served as superintendent, it was usually a group of family members or staff members who started the process to create a charter school with a specific educational mission in mind.

“it was very transparent, the application process, and it’s quite rigorous. But we also had resources to help people fill those out. It’s a lot of data, a lot of information that you need to present. And we were willing and able to help folks put them in.”

“That procedure starts at the local level. Now if it isn’t approved at the local level, there is an appeal process for which I (as commissioner) can recommend to the state board that it should be approved. But the final approval and the accountability measures are all held with the state school board.”

“The missions are very varied, but what is looked for is an understanding and a tie to that mission, a tie to people who would govern in the academic policy committee, the commitment from the people designing it. But also processes for all of those things that we know a good school has,” she said, such as understanding state and federal laws and finances.

“Almost all of them have some type of parent commitment that is involved. Some charter schools have transportation, that’s what they’ve written into their charters,” he said.

“They don’t need to be everything for everybody, but their mission, specific to the children that are served, is very explicit in our application.”

Peterson liked what he heard about the charter school approval process in Alaska as described by the education commissioner.

“Well that is what we have found nationwide is the sign of a good arrangement, that if the state takes the responsibility for authorizing charter schools we find student performance higher generally speaking across the country,” he said.

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