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CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — Eight organizations said they'll apply to run schools within Nevada's Achievement School District, a newly created, state-run entity with a mission of turning up to six of the state's lowest-performing schools into charters.
The groups that filed a letter of intent by last Friday's deadline include three Nevada-based organizations, as well as two from California and one each from Arizona, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. They have until Aug. 31 to file the full application for the role, and state education officials plan to choose finalists by the end of the year.
Gov. Brian Sandoval proposed the district in his State of the State address, and Nevada lawmakers voted on party lines this spring to pass a bill creating it. Democrats opposed the plan.
The state has identified 78 schools that are considered persistently underperforming and could end up within the district, where they would be run by a charter school management organization as soon as Fall 2016.
Students who currently attend the schools would still be enrolled when the new charter managers take over, unless they opt out. But the new charter management organizations could choose whether to hire teachers who previously worked there, or choose an entirely new staff.
Teachers who aren't hired at the charter school under its new management must be reassigned to another school in the district, according to the law.
Similar models are in place in New Orleans, Tennessee and Detroit, while Georgia is at a similar stage as Nevada in getting its program off the ground.
Proponents say schools that haven't been able to improve their performance for years could use a drastic overhaul, starting with the leadership and staff but trickling down to details such as the length of the school day.
"The work of turning around failing schools is hard and requires new ways of thinking, collaboration, and additional resources," Superintendent Dale Erquiaga wrote in support of the plan.
A report released on the topic this week by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and the Center on School Turnaround notes the challenges of turning failing public schools into charters, but said charter laws offer individual schools flexibility in hiring and firing, choosing curriculum, scheduling and updating their facility.
Report sponsors said they wanted to take a closer look at the public school-to-charter model after seeing the federal government spend nearly $6 billion in School Improvement Grants since 2007 without substantial improvements. Only 79 of the approximately 2,000 schools that received the grants since 2010 were taking the dramatic step of restarting public schools as charters, the report found.
"What we know for sure is that the path of least resistance that a lot of districts are taking isn't producing results," said Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
The charter management organizations that say they'll apply to work with Nevada's Achievement School District include Coral Academy of Science in Reno and Las Vegas; Regan & Associates in Reno; Magnolia Educational and Research Foundation in Westminster, California; Pathways in Education in Pasadena, California; Daisy Education Corporation of Chandler, Arizona; Renaissance School Services of Oldwick, New Jersey; and American Paradigm of Philadelphia.
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