This document summarizes a discussion about accountability challenges for schools serving opportunity youth. It outlines fundamental considerations for authorizers, including clearly defining these student populations and establishing enrollment thresholds. While authorizers typically require consistent performance measures, some request additional school-designed measures aligned with the mission. Reasons for charter denial include lack of focus on challenges, reliance on anecdotes over progress, and insufficient capacity evidence. Schools are advised to proactively work with authorizers to negotiate distinct measures using comparable schools. The discussion addressed developing comprehensive definitions, quantifying school design, and involving stakeholders in negotiations.

1. A CONVERSATION
ABOUT ACCOUNTABILITY CHALLENGES
ASSOCIATED WITH AUTHORIZING SCHOOLS SERVING
OPPORTUNITY YOUTH
Leslie Talbot, Founder and Principal, Talbot Consulting
Vanessa Threatte, Executive Deputy Director for Best Practices and Partnerships,
SUNY Charter Schools Institute
Darren Woodruff, Chair, DC Public Charter School Board

2. Session Abstract
Session Purpose: To create a forum for open dialogue regarding challenges associated with
authorizing schools serving majority opportunity youth using approaches underway in NY and DC
The Fundamentals of Charter Authorization for Schools Serving Majority Opportunity Youth Populations:
1) It is crucial for schools serving opportunity youth to clearly define their student populations. For instance,
opportunity youth typically experience ongoing emergent conditions that include one or more of the following
life circumstances: court-involvement, chronic absenteeism, suspensions/expulsions, pregnant or parenting,
physical and/or cognitive disabilities, physical and/or mental health challenges, food and/or housing
insecurity; substance abuse, domestic violence, foster care, and are off-track to graduate high school in four
years. Several authorizers and state education agencies have established minimum enrollment thresholds to
designate schools serving opportunity youth based on a set of life circumstances and/or performance
indicators. For example, the DC Public Charter School Board has established a minimum enrollment threshold
of 60% accordingly.
2) Most authorizers will not establish alternative measures of student progress for schools serving opportunity
youth. Typically, charter school and student performance measures must be consistent with federal and state
regulations. Therefore, some authorizers may request or work collaboratively with schools serving majority
opportunity youth to establish enhanced or additional accountability measures. To guide this process, schools
serving majority opportunity youth may want to begin by developing their own definition of student success.
Next, use your definition of student success to establish academic and nonacademic accountability measures.
These enhanced or additional accountability measures should be model-aligned, mission-driven, and provide
unequivocal data on the school’s value-added. Then, identify and employ metrics to measure school and
student progress towards achieving these measures. In other words, it should tell an objective story about your
school and students. Lastly, create and disseminate frequent dashboards to inform program and practice, and
your authorizer. Communicate these results to key stakeholders, and in your annual report.
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3. Session Abstract, Cont’d.
3) Frequent reasons for charter proposal or renewal denial for schools serving majority opportunity youth
include:
• A lack of specificity or focus on strategies to address challenges faced by the target population;
• Heavy reliance on anecdotal information, rather than on student progress towards mastery of college
and career readiness skills;
• A lack of communicated knowledge and/or too little emphasis on student acquisition of in-demand skills
for local employment and 21st century jobs;
• Insufficient demonstration of capacity to address the learning challenges associated with opportunity
youth;
• Inability to quantify school design elements
• Little evidence that school stakeholders understand the local context, and have partnered with
community representatives and organizations that can support the school’s efforts.
4) Work collaboratively with your authorizer to negotiate enhanced or additional accountability measures early
during your first charter period. Do not wait until your first annual report. Once you have identified enhanced
or additional measures internally, establish growth targets for each. Identify a peer school that matches your
minimum opportunity youth (as defined above) enrollment threshold, and find a peer school with the same
enrollment characteristics to ensure an apples-to-apples comparison measure. Then connect with your
authorizer to negotiate the measures and metrics that will be used to demonstrate your school’s value-added.
Confirm a format for reporting this data in your annual report. Lastly, your school’s most prominent key
stakeholders should participate in these negotiations to alleviate any difficulties faced during the process. For
example, you may want to include the board chair, school leader, parent/student, local employer, and juvenile
justice and/or community-based organization representative.
Additional information was gleaned from notes taken during the session’s Q&A and can be found in the Key
Takeaways section.
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4. Brief Introductions
■ Leslie Talbot, Founder and Principal, Talbot Consulting
■ Vanessa Threatte, Executive Deputy Director for Best
Practices and Partnerships, SUNY Charter Schools Institute
■ Darren Woodruff, Chair, DC Public Charter School Board
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5. Session Purpose
■ To create a forum for open dialogue
■ To hear briefly about the NY and DC approach
■ Keep in mind:
– In most states (including NY and DC) we’re not talking about alternative measures,
but instead enhanced or additional accountability measures
– Every state does not operate under the same policy conditions or constraints
■ Ideas Welcomed and Shared Post-Forum:
– Process recommendations for authorization methods
– Content recommendations for enhanced accountability measures
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6. Session Agenda
■ Authorizers: Brief presentation of current work
■ Pre-Forum questions: Posed and answered
■ Live questions/comments: Receive and respond
■ Key take-aways: A summary of our conversation
■ Evaluation: Please complete the session evaluation
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7. The largest higher education authorizer and 7th largest authorizer overall in the US
■ 185 schools enrolling approximately 85,700 students
■ Enrollment > that of every NYS district except NYC
■ 9 schools in our portfolio have been named Blue Ribbon Schools
■ 3 schools in our portfolio exclusively serve opportunity youth
SUNY Authorized Charter Schools’ SY2016-17 Performance Data:
■ 83% outperformed their district of location in reading and writing
■ 88% outperformed their district of location in mathematics
■ SWD’s increased ELA and math proficiency by 5% compared to 1.4% and 1.7%
respectively statewide
■ ELL’s increased ELA proficiency by 6% and math proficiency by 7% compared to a 1.2%
and 0.5% increase respectively statewide
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8. State
Public
Charter
Schools
State
Public
Charter
Schools
All 30% 29% 27% 27%
Black/African American 22% 24% 19% 23%
Hispanic/Latino 29% 29% 26% 24%
White/Caucasian 82% 77% 75% 73%
At-Risk 16% 18% 14% 17%
Economically Disadvantaged 24% 24% 21% 22%
English Learner 17% 14% 21% 15%
Special Education 6% 6% 7% 7%
Female 36% 35% 28% 28%
Male 24% 23% 26% 25%
2016-2017 PARCC Results by Subgroup for Public Charter Schools and State
ELA (4+) Math (4+)
Subgroup
• 120 PK-12 and adult public
charter schools operated by
66 nonprofits
• Enrollment = 43,429 students
• Alternative high schools = 6
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9. PRE-POSED QUESTIONS
Authorizers will respond to questions posed to audience participants via
email prior to the Forum
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10. Answering Your Questions
1. What are the most common reasons for transfer school charter proposal
denial?
2. What additional graduation measures might charter authorizers consider for
schools serving opportunity youth, and why?
3. How might charter schools work with authorizers to enhance/add to existing
college and career-readiness benchmarks that better reflect the realities of
our student populations?
4. How do we move towards a competency-based system that includes more
flexibility around diverse metrics to measure mastery?
5. What strategies might a charter school serving mostly over-age and under-
credited students pursue to prevent an automatic ESSA “focus” rating (due to
too few students graduating in four years)?
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11. Answering Your Questions
6. Given my authorizer is willing to consider additional measures for college and career-
readiness benchmarks, what strategies would you recommend we pursue to ensure
equitable weights are assigned across accountability measures?
7. Students entering high school 2-4 grade-levels behind may not meet college and career-
readiness benchmarks before they age-out of the public-school system. What measures
might an authorizer consider that are rigorous enough to ensure these students can
access multiple postsecondary opportunities?
8. Some states do not have a statewide policy for authorizing/holding accountable district
and chartered transfer schools. How can we help states move towards adopting uniform
policy change versus the one-school-at-a-time currently underway in many states?
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12. LIVE Q & A
Authorizers will take questions from the audience
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13. KEY TAKE-AWAYS
A Brief Summary of Our Discussion
(Write-up to be Provided Post-Forum)
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14. Key Take-Aways from Q&A
■ Establish a comprehensive definition of the student population.
■ The definition of school quality does not change because the majority population is defined as opportunity
youth.
■ Examples of enhanced or additional measures might include rates of court-involvement, pregnancy or
parenting, students with disabilities, students in foster care, social and emotional growth measures; career
readiness portfolio (such as an in-house evaluated portfolio with rubric and workforce development items);
and school culture (attendance, suspensions, and expulsions targets). Start with what you know is your
model’s value-added, and focus on student growth or documenting student progress over time.
■ Establish an enrollment threshold that designates your charter as an alternative or transfer school. Use this
information to identify a peer school from which you can establish a comparison measure.
■ Reasons for charter proposal or renewal denial include: lack of specificity or focus on and demonstrated
capacity to address the challenges of the target population; inability to quantify school design elements;
clear evidence that you’ve partnered with folks who can support your efforts and student population,
■ Keep in mind that authorizers are constantly learning from proposals. Provide well-documented evidence
regarding where else your proposed strategies have been used, the outcomes achieved, and how your
approach provides value for the student population. Be able to quantify your school design elements, and
align them to current economic realities (i.e., local labor projections). Do not negotiate with your authorizer
alone. Involve stakeholders for whom it is vital that these negotiations are successful.
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15. For More Information Contact:
Leslie Talbot, Founder & Principal
Talbot Consulting
leslie@talbotconsulting.com
Vanessa Threatte, Deputy Director for Best Practices & Partnerships
SUNY Charter Schools Institute
Vanessa.threatte@suny.edu
Darren Woodruff, Chair
DC Public Charter School Board
darren06@stanfordalumni.org
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