AUTONOMY

Neal Dickert Jr.

Level of autonomy is certainly one of the key issues in the charter school debate, as increased autonomy is what makes a charter school different from a regular public school. Often, the level of autonomy granted is the central factor in comparing various charter school legislation and activity. However, autonomy occurs in various areas of charter school activity, and what is often so interesting about it is the many ways in which states have dealt with different aspects of it in their charter school legislation. This section will provide a cross-sectional view of how the eleven states who currently have charter school laws deal with various issues of autonomy.
The first key aspect of measuring autonomy is perhaps the most visible and the most symbolic of a state's law. This characteristic is whether a charter school in a particular state is a legally autonomous entity or subsumed under the control of other bodies. States whose laws are typically considered more autonomous tend to allow their schools to be legally autonomous; whereas those less autonomous states more frequently place charter schools under the authority of some board, usually the local school board (Bierlein and Mulholland, April, 1995). In fact, Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Minnesota all allow charter schools to be, in most cases, legally autonomous entities, often structured as non-profit corporations. The only state that has significant established charter school activity but still puts the charter school under the authority of the local school board is Colorado. But, almost all of the states with fairly minimal activity allow the local board to have control over charter schools. Georgia, Kansas, New Mexico, and Wisconsin all do so. In the typical category of lower autonomy legislation, the only state that is questionable is Hawaii. In Hawaii, the issue of legally autonomous schools is being considered by the Attorney General (Mulholland and Bierlein, April, 1995). For Hawaii to grant legal autonomy would be an unprecedented event, as its law is one of the most restrictive, allowing only conversions to charter schools from existing public schools.
Another significant element of legislation which is an issue of school autonomy is the system employed to waive requirements. Here again, there seem to be two main options. Either the legislation offers a blanket exemption, in which a charter school is automatically free from all or most state and/or district regulations, or it offers a sort of line-item waiver in which certain requirements are removed as specified in the charter proposal or as requested by a charter applicant. Obviously, the first of these two options appears to offer a much greater amount of autonomy to charter schools, as it essentially allows charter applicants to make up their own rules; whereas the other option only lets charter applicants ask for permission to ignore certain rules. Arizona, California, Wisconsin, and Minnesota are the states whose laws offer blanket exemptions. Massachusetts and Hawaii also offer options near blanket exemptions, and Georgia allows those exemptions specified in the charter. Colorado, Missouri, Kansas, Michigan, and New Mexico have more stringent laws, requiring waivers for every exemption requested (Millot, 1994, Bierlein and Mulholland, April, 1995).
In short, each of these states deal with the issue of exemption differently, and, a blanket exemption does seem to grant much more autonomy than the line-item exemption option. However, it is important to note that, even in a state where the applicant is applying under blanket exemption, the state may still be reluctant to disregard state regulations. The real difference between the two programs is essentially symbolic, as the two methods are basically a statement of user-friendliness. Both programs could allow the exact same charter school to exist by exempting certain regulations or deny the same school by asserting the necessity of other regulations, but it seems to be the case that blanket exemption laws encourage applicants more than the more restrictive item-by-item waiver systems because of their freer form and decreased bureaucracy.
Yet another significant issue in the realm of autonomy is admissions requirements. It must first be mentioned that the states of New Mexico, Hawaii, and Georgia essentially remove themselves from this issue, because their laws only allow conversion to charter schools from existing schools, thus leaving the constituency if the schools exactly the same. Their admissions standards remain identical. However, in states providing for school choice, admissions requirements are very controversial and diverse. The most common system of admissions is to ban any form of discrimination based upon athletic or intellectual ability, race, etc. Then, if there are too many applicants at a school, there will be a lottery to decide who will attends the school within the specified geographic area of eligibility. Massachusetts probably grants the most amount of autonomy in terms of admission, allowing for selection based upon certain minimum academic standards. On the other hand, California is much more restricted in who its schools can admit and refuse.
Can charter schools hire uncertified teachers? This issue also enters into an evaluation of the operational autonomy of a charter school. Minnesota, Missouri, Wisconsin, and, in almost all cases, Michigan are the states which rest fairly resolute on this issue, not granting individual applicants the ability to choose whether they will hire uncertified teachers. In most other cases, depending upon their exemption style, the other states offer the possibility of negotiating an exemption from this requirement according to the procedures outlined in their legislation. For example, in New Mexico, unless the requirement that only certified teachers be hired were waived by the board, a charter school would be expected to comply with that rule. On the other hand, in Massachusetts, a charter school, in applying, would be free to design its own system for the hiring of teachers. If the school were approved, the school would follow that hiring procedure, but it would never have to ask for a waiver of that requirement.
Other issues of school/teacher relations illustrating the amount of autonomy granted by states' legislation include whether charter schools are subject to collective bargaining agreements, whether they have the right to hire and fire teachers, and whether charter school teachers remain in the state retirement system. A comparison of these additional issues gives an idea of how much autonomy states really tend to grant in employee/employer relations. While almost all states keep its charter school teachers within the retirement system (Michigan and Minnesota are uncertain.), these other aspects of employment vary greatly. Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado, for example, offer a great deal of autonomy to individual schools in teacher relations, Massachusetts granting schools significant autonomy in all of these areas. On the other hand, Wisconsin and Kansas offer almost no degree of autonomy in any of the areas of teacher/school relations. Georgia, Arizona, California, Michigan, and New Mexico all offer the possibility of negotiating autonomy on employment issues (Millot, 1994).
One of the most important areas of charter school activity in which autonomy is a vital issue is the area of funding, and the approaches vary extremely from state to state. This section will simply look at which states are and are not autonomous for their operations funding, or the federal and state funds upon which they operate. Arizona (although the amount depends upon whether locally sponsored or state sponsored), California, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Minnesota are all autonomous in this respect. Colorado is guaranteed to obtain at least eighty percent of operation funds, and Hawaii is generally autonomous, despite the fact that it may receive only the average per pupil amount received by the department of education. In Georgia, Kansas, and Wisconsin, the charter designates the amount of funding. And, in New Mexico, appropriate administrative costs can be withheld at the district level before it reaches the schools (Bierlein and Mulholland, April, 1995).
While the above-mentioned areas of charter school autonomy focus on the operation of the schools, it is also very important to consider the amount of autonomy granted in the application process, specifically, what sort of groups, etc. may submit a proposal to form a charter school. In this area, there are large disparities between states, evidence of their often completely different charter school goals. For example, Georgia, Hawaii, and New Mexico only allow existing public schools to convert to charter status. Thus, there is very little autonomy in these states as to who can start a charter school. These highly restrictive laws are completely different from the much more accessible, less restrictive laws of virtually all of the other states. Arizona allows for any public or private group, or individual to organize a charter school proposal. California is similar in saying that anyone can circulate a petition to establish a charter school (Bierlein and Mulholland, April, 1995). It even allows such schools as home schools to obtain charters. Colorado, Michigan, and Wisconsin also allow for essentially any group or individual to propose a charter school, although Wisconsin also allows for a local school board to establish charter schools. Minnesota, in keeping with its strict adherence to teacher certification, only allows certified teachers to organize charter schools. Massachusetts requires at least two certified teachers or at least ten parents, or any other individuals or groups. Finally, Kansas allows for essentially anyone to organize a charter school, including school district employees and educational services contractors. Thus, it becomes apparent that there is a very wide range of what types of schools can be established as charter schools in different states (Millot, 1994 and Bierlein and Mulholland, April, 1995).
The above areas are some of the most significant in terms of charter school autonomy. From the high correlation between the number of schools established and level of autonomy, it seems evident that degree of autonomy functions as a major incentive in the establishment of charter schools in the United States.

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