NACSA | The Fund for Authorizing Excellence
The Fund at Work - Nevada Department of Education
Interview with Steve Canavero of the Nevada Department of Education
Interviewed by Erica Jones (NACSA)
February 2011
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Name: Dr. Steve Canavero, Ph.D |
The Nevada Department of Education (NDE) received an evaluation grant from The Fund for Authorizing Excellence. The NDE will use its $36,827 grant to fund a comprehensive evaluation of its authorizing practices. The Department plans to use evaluation results to support its goal of moving from a passive to an aggressive authorizer.
In Nevada, local school districts, public universities/colleges, and the Nevada State Department of Education are eligible to authorize. Yet, the State Department of Education is the main entity authorizing charters at scale. Why has the Nevada State Department of Education embraced charters as a way to improve public education in the state?
The Charter Schools Office was created to support the work already underway by the State Board of Education. Prior to the establishment of the charter schools office in June 2010, authorizing was a shared responsibility among several staff members at the Nevada State Department of Education in various departments.
The State Board of Education recognizes the need for choice and seeks to increase school choice state-wide. Charter schools fit well with a number of the goals recently adopted by the Board. The State Board is the only authorizing entity in Nevada that is authorizing at scale. The State Board recognizes the need for authorizing additional high quality charter schools given that local school districts in Nevada who are eligible to authorize charters are not currently participating in authorizing additional charter schools.
How long have you been with the Nevada Department of Education and in what capacities?
I have been with the Nevada Department of Education for two and a half years. I began as an Accountability Consultant. Prior to joining the Department, I was a principal at a charter school and prior to that taught in private school. I'm familiar with Nevada charter school law as it was the principle area of study for my dissertation.
What steps does your office plan to take to improve the quality of its authorizing practices?
Our vision is to be recognized as a national leader in quality charter school authorizing. We plan to take a three tiered approach to improving the quality of our charter schools and authorization process: evaluation, strategic planning, and implementation.
The first step is to have our current authorizing practices evaluated. We're using our grant from The Fund for Authorizing Excellence to have NACSA do a thorough evaluation of our current authorizing policies, practices, and procedures. The evaluation process has been an absolute game changer. It has not only enabled me to make the tough decisions that authorizers must make, but also allowed for the rationale behind those decisions to have added merit.
We aspire to follow all of NACSA's Principles & Standards for Quality Charter School Authorizing. NACSA's authorizer evaluation process will provide a static picture as to where we are in relation to those principles and standards. We think we already know some of the big areas we need to improve, but we are awaiting the final evaluation report to get a more complete picture of where we stand. Our evaluation took place in January, 2011 and the results will be delivered to us soon. After we complete the evaluation process, we plan to apply to The Fund to receive a strategic planning grant.
It is important to note that the State Board is participating in this as well. I did a little bit of education with the Nevada State Board of Education and State Superintendent around Principles & Standards, and the Board agreed that when we receive the evaluation report from NACSA, at that time, they will officially adopt and/or endorse the NACSA Principles & Standards for Quality Charter School Authorizing.
How do you plan to use NACSA's Fund for Authorizing Excellence (The Fund) to achieve these goals?
We currently have an evaluation grant from The Fund, but we plan to apply for strategic planning and implementation grants from The Fund in the future. The evaluation will help us identify the areas of top priority that we need to focus on improving. We then plan to incorporate those findings into an application for a strategic planning grant. The strategic planning grant will allow us to bring in some external expertise to plot out the steps needed to approach quality authorizing practices. We also want to improve our special education procedures. We are intrigued by the work that the Indianapolis Mayor's Office (another authorizer and Fund grant recipient) has done in the area of special education; improving our protocol around special education is a new idea that until now we had never even considered.
In what ways have you utilized and interacted with your peers in NACSA's expansive network of authorizer member organizations?
I've been involved in a lot of associations, but NACSA is by far the most meaningful. NACSA provides useful and practical material. I have been able to connect with many peers across the country. For example, Curt Fuchs in the Missouri Department of Education's charter school office has been great and very helpful. He sent me their application, evaluation rubric, and various other documents so that I could see examples of how to put together our own template. The only way I was able to connect with Curt was because I asked NACSA's William Haft to put me in touch with a few authorizers that my office should look at. Now I have the Missouri materials on hand and can look at them and see what elements we want to incorporate into our own process here in Nevada. As we look at the model information that the Colorado Charter School Institute and Denver Public Schools have used, I am able to see where various authorizers are in their lifecycle. Everybody has just been fantastic to work with and willing to share.
As a new leader of an authorizing office, what has been the value of NACSA to you? In what ways have you found value in your NACSA membership and what NACSA resources have been most helpful?
The annual NACSA Leadership Conference and Issue Brief series are extremely helpful. For example, I had to write up a rationale behind a decision on one of our charter schools/applicants, and I had to begin to paint the picture on what replication means. I was able to incorporate language from NACSA's Issue Briefs. The NACSA webinars are also informative. I attended the January 2011 webinar, "What NACSA's Research on Authorizing Reveals About Quality Charter Schools," which was quite helpful. The webinars are informative and fun, and it's nice that we as NACSA members have those available to us. Sometimes we are not able to attend all of the webinars we want to because things come up that cause us to miss them. However, to the extent that we can listen to those and participate, they are very good.
Furthermore, I am now able to sit in front of the Nevada State Board of Education and talk about how charters fit into Nevada's future beyond just simply the basics of charter applications/renewals/etc., but in a broader context. I am able to get some of that through NACSA's publications and the conversations with other authorizers in the NACSA network.
Last but not least, NACSA's Principles & Standards for Charter School Authorizing are fantastic. That has become one of our non-negotiables.
What were your key take-aways from the 2010 NACSA Leadership Conference? What do you hope to learn at the 2011 NACSA Leadership Conference?
My key take-aways were the best practices around the Principles & Standards for Quality Charter School Authorizing. This includes everything from the very basic application review to performance contracts. Furthermore, the conversations around strategic intent were also helpful. Being able to see some of the authorizers and their strategic plans/intents was great. Minnesota's new 'authorizing of authorizers' process was a very interesting conversation. Of course, being a part of the pre-conference meeting for The Fund grantees was great. I was able to listen to other authorizers and realize that we were not alone.
What insights do you want to share with authorizers who might not have a dedicated charter office but are interested in moving from a passive to a proactive authorizer as the Nevada State Department of Education is doing?
Where leadership doesn't exist; provide it. You have to help establish charter schools on the agenda for your office or your organization, because charters are already on there, but they are just not always high enough on the agenda to gain attention. In Nevada, in addition to internal momentum there was a lot of support to improve our authorizing practices from the charter schools themselves. There was somewhat of a boiling point at which the schools said, "We need some help here." School leaders need to get together and make some proposals to their authorizer to make some changes.
