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Charter Authorizing 2.0 White Paper

California has more charter schools than any other state, enrolling about ten percent of our public school students — over 600,000  — in more than 1,300 schools. The state’s 337 charter authorizers — school districts and county office of education — are fundamental to the success of these schools. They are responsible for providing oversight to advance quality, equity, and access through approving or denying charter petitions; providing academic, organizational, and fiscal oversight; and deciding whether to renew charters. All told, charter authorizers help ensure that charter schools successfully contribute to California’s public school system. Yet, they do this with little guidance or common standards of practice. This White Paper describes the collaborative work of the California Charter Authorizing Professionals (CCAP) with WestEd and a core working group and action teams to design a new approach to charter school authorizing that we call Charter Authorizing 2.0:  Advancing Equity and Access Through Quality Authorizing, known as CA2.0.  Our goal is to develop a system of processes and practices that focuses on the core questions that charter authorizers must answer through their oversight of charter schools — relying on key indicators of performance instead of rules and checklists — and that enable all authorizers, regardless of size, location, and finances, to achieve the highest standards of charter school authorizing.

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