Editorial: Round II needed in charter reform

Minnesota pioneered the charter school movement in 1991, which may explain why the growth of the state's taxpayer-backed independent schools has at times resembled the wild west of education reform.

Experimentation is seldom a clean or easy process, and the great promise of charter school innovation is a work in progress. From school to school, there have been more successes than failures, but too often charter advocates have been forced into a defensive crouch because of the screwups of a few of their brethren. The 2009 Legislature took a number of important steps to build more accountability into the charter system. The 2010 Legislature must continue that push, with an intense focus on stopping abuses in the expensive lease-aid program that provides rental assistance to charters.

Moratoriums and caps on new charter schools have been threatened before at the Capitol, and unless meaningful reform and oversight takes hold soon Minnesota should hit the pause button on charter school growth.

Minnesota charter schools -- created by law 19 years ago as an alternative to regular public schools -- are operated by their own boards and are independent from traditional school districts. They find their own sponsors, develop their own curriculum, hire teachers and are freed from some state regulations to try new, innovative approaches to learning. There are 153 charter schools with more than 32,000 students, making up a small but growing segment of public education in the state.

Despite the high stakes, a 2008 report from the legislative auditor revealed a troubling lack of oversight at some charters. Some sponsors were fully engaged with their schools, while others were unsure of their roles. In one incredible case, a sponsoring organization was unaware that its school failed to meet adequate yearly progress standards required by law.

The 2009 Legislature responded to the audit with a number of reforms, redefining the role of sponsors, clarifying oversight responsibilities and strengthening charter board governance. Even the strongest charter advocates agreed that the overhaul was needed, and there was hope that the accountability issues that had plagued the movement were in the past. They weren't.

A Star Tribune investigation published in November uncovered how some charters legally created affiliated, nonprofit building corporations to get around a state ban on charters buying or building facilities with public funds. Some of the affiliated nonprofits used high-cost junk bond financing -- repaid with lease-aid funds -- to build schools, sometimes diverting thousands of dollars in building funds to lawyers, consultants and school insiders. Department of Education officials and legislators later told the Editorial Board that they were not aware of the practice before the Star Tribune investigation.

To its credit, the Minnesota Association of Charter Schools has proposed a number of steps the state should take to reform the lease-aid program, which now pays charters more than $44 million a year. Last week a Senate subcommittee held the second of at least four hearings on lease-aid issues, and one legislative priority stood out in the testimony: The state must find new ways to encourage school districts to rent their buildings to charters. There's a glut of unused school buildings statewide, but rivalries between some traditional public schools and charters have prevented sensible, less expensive lease arrangements.

Some charters want the state to remove restrictions on building and owning school buildings, but until the potential for abuse and wasted tax dollars is removed the state should resist those proposals.

Charter schools are supposed to be centers for innovation in education -- not real estate development companies. And as we move toward the third decade of the charter experiment in Minnesota, the focus should be on student achievement, not adding new taxpayer-funded buildings to the growing inventory of empty public schools across the state.