NACSA | The Fund for Authorizing Excellence
The Fund at Work – Delaware Department of Education
Interview with John Carwell of the Delaware Department of Education
Interviewed by Erica Jones (NACSA)
February 2011
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Name: John Carwell |
The Delaware Department of Education received an evaluation grant from The Fund for Authorizing Excellence. The Delaware Department of Education will use its $33,700 grant to fund a comprehensive evaluation of its authorizing practices. The Department will use the findings to identify areas of focus in order to achieve the ambitious goals proposed in the state’s Race to the Top application.
How long have you been with the Delaware Department of Education and in what capacities?
I joined the Delaware Department of Education in August of 2010 as the Charter School Officer. Prior to that, I served for nearly five years as Vice President of Community and District Partnerships for the Rodel Foundation of Delaware. My first job in education was as a program officer for the US Department of Education's 21st Century Learning Centers Program. I then served as an independent contractor with the Fairfax County Virginia Public Schools. I also served as a grants manager with the Commonweal Foundation for several years, focusing on making grants to small non-profit organizations in Washington, D.C. before joining the Rodel Foundation.
Delaware was awarded a Race to the Top grant. How do charter schools fit in to Delaware's Race to the Top plans?
One important component to highlight is that all of Delaware's charter schools are receiving a Race to the Top grant allocation; some schools will receive more funds than others, but they will all receive something. Charter schools with the highest population of students in poverty will receive the largest allocation. We also hope to figure out how charters can better fit into our state's overall education reform strategies.
How do you plan to use NACSA's Fund for Authorizing Excellence (The Fund) to improve the Delaware Department of Education's authorizing policies and practices?
First, we are hoping that the evaluation by NACSA will help us figure out where we stand in terms of our current practices. We then have our sights set on applying for a strategic planning grant from The Fund. A strategic planning grant would help us review our 3-5 year plan and see exactly how charters can impact the entire landscape of education in Delaware. After completing that stage, we hope to apply for and receive an implementation grant from The Fund.
A critical component of the comprehensive evaluation of your authorizer practices is the site visit, where your authorizing policies and practices are evaluated against NACSA's Principles & Standards for Quality Charter School Authorizing. Can you tell us more about that experience?
In January 2011, we completed the site visit component of our authorizer evaluation process, which entailed having NACSA representatives visit our office and complete a review of our current authorizing practices and procedures. Our site visit was conducted by Katie Piehl and Jim Ford. Their knowledge and expertise were great; I soaked up their knowledge. I did not realize the extent to which they would participate in so much helpful sharing instead of just coming in and asking me and my colleagues a multitude of questions the entire time. The site visit experience was such a helpful exchange of ideas for me, my team, my supervisor, and the Delaware charter accountability committee. The site visit was invaluable on so many levels. We will soon receive an official report from the site visit team that will identify our strengths and areas for improvement.
Tell us more about Delaware's interest in authorizing more innovative charter school models and replicating existing high-performing charter schools.
A major interest of ours is to begin to attract some high-performing charter school models. We hope to bring a number of high-performing charter management organizations (CMOs) to Delaware. This might include KIPP or even virtual charters. We also want to see some of our existing high-performing charter schools in Delaware replicate. The strategic planning grant will help us to determine which schools, how many, and how to align the growth of charter schools in Delaware with the state's overall reform plan.
In what ways have you utilized and interacted with your peers in NACSA's expansive network of authorizer member organizations?
The NACSA Leadership Conference was fantastic. It was a great opportunity to meet potential charter school partners. While at the 2010 NACSA Leadership Conference, I had a chance to speak with leaders of several charter management organizations (CMOs) and met people who introduced me to some additional charter operators. A number of these CMOs were on my radar prior to joining the Delaware Department of Education, but it was great to focus on learning more about these various CMOs.
I also look forward to NACSA developing additional networking opportunities for authorizers beyond the Annual Leadership Conference – either virtually or otherwise.
In what other ways have you found value in your NACSA membership? What NACSA resources have been most helpful?
NACSA's Principles & Standards for Quality Charter School Authorizing has been the most helpful resource thus far. Member Notes, NACSA's weekly member e-newsletter, is also extremely valuable; I definitely read it regularly. Furthermore, my office recently needed to create a charter application rubric, and the resources and guidance I found on NACSA's website were great.
We also utilize NACSA's webinars, which are complimentary for all NACSA members. Just last month I was able to point my colleague to NACSA's webinar on assessing the financial oversight of charters, titled "Follow the Money: How to Monitor Financial Health Effectively."
Another helpful component of our engagement with NACSA is benchmarking ourselves against other authorizers. Through NACSA, we are able to observe and learn more about the practices of high-performing authorizers to help inform our own practices, and this is extremely important to us.
What were your key take-aways from the 2010 NACSA Leadership Conference? What do you hope to learn at the 2011 NACSA Leadership Conference?
As a new-comer to charter school authorizing, I wanted to learn a lot about performance monitoring and board governance at the NACSA Leadership Conference. The Conference had several sessions that addressed those issues. Finally, the Conference allowed me to find out what successful authorizers are doing, which was great.
What insights do you want to share with other authorizers who are thinking about strengthening their practices and possibly applying to The Fund?
Being able to have an external, objective assessment of where you are as an authorizer is critical to helping you assess your current practices and to begin to plan a path forward. From the moment I joined Delaware's charter school office, I knew that I would be pursuing a NACSA authorizer evaluation grant. Whenever a person comes on board to a new job, he or she has a "wish list," and the authorizer evaluation was one of those; it will help to validate my assumptions.
We also have a charter school accountability committee. Most of the members are employees of the Delaware Department of Education, so some of them have a subject matter expertise and others don't, but my idea is for us as the charter school office to be the engine for improving the quality of the Department's charter schools and to make recommendations on charter school applications. We also hope to raise the bar for charter school applicants.
