Policy Research

Designing Smart Charter School Caps

Erin Dillon

Summary

In 2009, the US Department of Education started a program to incentivize lifting caps on allowance of charter school in a state. Teachers’ unions generally don’t support charter school expansion and it can be difficult for a state with a tight budget, but several states decided to lift their caps or raise them to allow for growth. Some of these states adopted a system to assess quality of charter schools alongside lifting the cap. Connecticut and Ohio are two states where accountability of new school authorizers is helping to regulate the system and preserve the competition between traditional schools and charter schools.

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Policy Implications

High quality authorizing ultimately involves some element of human judgment, even with the most specific and good-intentioned language written into the charter school laws. The “Smart Cap” system is a political compromise because it allows charter school growth while monitoring the quality of schools. If smart caps are adopted by states, they are likely to see an increase the overall quality of schools.