Charter news isn't just the AFT report this week, though it doesn't get any better. The California Charter Academy, a private management organization, announced that it's abruptly closing 60 charter campuses in California, leaving some 10,000 students stranded days before the opening of school. Critics will doubtless chalk this up as one more example of charter operator incompetence - the CCA fell afoul of a state law cracking down on long-distance management of schools, as well as dwindling state aid to charters - but it's also a textbook case of poor charter sponsorship. In California, most charters are sponsored by local districts; why were they asleep at the switch as CCA imploded? As we've seen in other cases (see here), good sponsorship matters. A proactive and engaged authorizer willing to dish out tough love might have been able to forestall this catastrophe for students and parents. A sponsor in it to make money (as seems to have been the case for the California school systems that agreed to be non-resident sponsors for the CCA schools) is apt to have far laxer criteria.
"Charter Academy shuts 60 schools," by Erika Hayasaki, Los Angeles Times, August 16, 2004 (registration required)