How Charter School Boards and Executives Can Avoid Train Wrecks and Raise School Performance
Dr. Brian L. Carpenter (Adapted from Brian’s soon to be published third book by the same title)

According to the Center for Education Reform, as of 2009–less than two decades after the chartered school opened its doors–657 schools have closed. Computed as a percentage of the total charters ever authorized, that’s about 12 percent, thereby unfortunately demonstrating that where charter schools are concerned, unlike Apollo 13, failure is an option.

When a charter school fails, the charter is revoked or not renewed. Given the negative press that follows, the resulting doubt in the larger community about charters, and disruption in the lives of children and families, charter school failures are like train wrecks.

In contrast, there are hundreds of ultra-high performing charter schools decimating the blackwhite achievement gap, reducing the high-school dropout rate, and readying disadvantaged kids for college. Schools such as KIPP Academies, Yes Prep, Achievement First, Uncommon Schools, Amistad, American Indian Public Charter School, etc., accomplish all these things and more. So how can we produce more ultrahigh performing charter schools and fewer train wrecks?

Part of the answer is to study how ultra-high performing schools create a culture of high student achievement. Besides visiting exemplar schools (something I strongly recommend), charter school boards and executives can distill what works from excellent books such as, Sweating the Small Stuff by David Whitman (2008), and No Excuses by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom (2003). There’s no shortage, in fact, of literature on what it takes to build an ultra‐high performing school.

But there is another approach, though curiously, far less written about or researched.  This approach is to examine the reasons why charter schools have failed. At first glance, this may seem a bit odd or morbid, but when you think about it, studying failure makes perfect sense. If not to prevent similar recurrences, why else does the NTSB spend so much time and money investigating actual train wrecks?

Here I also have to admit a personal fascination with charter school failure ever since the California Charter Academy, a for‐profit charter management company, collapsed overnight in 2004. So much so, that I devoted my dissertation in 2008 to studying the boards of failed charter schools across the country. (Free at www.BrianLCarpenter.com.)

Not satisfied to stop there, I continue following cases of charter school failures in the news, and sometimes faltering schools retain me to provide consultation. I find that every school failure is unique, yet common errors definitely exist.

The idea for a short book on the topic began to percolate in my thinking in 2009 after reading Jim Collins’s excellent new book on how to avoid corporate decline, How The Mighty Fall. (Like his other books, this one is fantastically insightful.) Here then, is a brief monograph adapted from my new book, explaining six dimensions that help elucidate charter school train failures, along with parallel thoughts on how boards and executives can raise school performance. For each dimension of failure, I provide a real life example‐‐not to ridicule anyone, but simply so we can learn from the mistakes of others.

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