Charter Authorizing 2.0: Advancing Equity and Access Through Quality Authorizing

Charter Authorizing 2.0 is CCAP’s bold statewide initiative to develop a new approach to charter school authorizing that furthers the goals of improving equity in and access to California’s more than 1,300 charter schools.

CA2.0 relies on core questions, measurable key performance indicators, and design principles to provide a framework for the state’s 337 charter authorizers to build efficient, transparent, and effective monitoring processes and tools for approval, oversight, and evaluation of charter schools. CA2.0 is funded by the Helen and Charles Schwab Foundation.

Our Toolkits

Charter authorizers play a demanding, ongoing and essential role in developing and maintaining high-quality charter schools in California. Too often, however, the regulations are vague or confusing. CCAP developed these Toolkits through our statewide initiative, Charter Authorizing 2.0 – Advancing Equity and Access through Quality Authorizing (CA2.0), to help cut through the confusion.

The goal of CA2.0 is to develop a system of processes and practices that focus on the core questions that charter authorizers must answer to ensure that the charter schools they oversee have the academic, financial, and organizational capacity to be successful for all students.

The first two toolkits focus on the Initial Charter Petition and Annual Reports. They provide district and county office of education authorizers with a comprehensive, understandable, step-by-step guide to charter authorizing and oversight. The toolkits include statutory requirements, best practices, templates, and resources to organize oversight activities.

CCAP developed the toolkits in collaboration with WestEd and a group of California district and county office authorizers to enable all authorizers, regardless of size, location, and finances, to achieve the highest standards of charter school authorizing.

The toolkits include a help tab for authorizers to ask questions as well as to provide feedback. We want to hear from you — both what works and what needs tweaking.