Massachusetts Charter Schools

Additional Charter School Accountability Updates

To:	Massachusetts Charter School Leaders and Board Chairs
From:	Cliff Chuang, Associate Commissioner
Date:	April 30, 2013

Please note a few important updates related to the information provided previously at http://www.doe.mass.edu/news/news.aspx?id=7370. The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education's Charter School Committee meeting was postponed on April 22 and has been rescheduled for May 20, 2013, from 2-4 p.m. The agenda is posted at http://www.doe.mass.edu/news/news.aspx?id=7322. Consequently, we are postponing the target date finalization of the Charter School Performance Criteria Version 3.0 until June 1, 2013, in order to allow us time to incorporate any feedback from the Committee meeting. Despite the delay on finalization the Criteria, we hope to finalize a Renewal Application prior to June 1 (hopefully by the end of next week), and will be scheduling a call for affected schools shortly to provide additional information. The finalization of Accountability Plan Guidelines, however, will likely also be delayed until closer to June 1, though we anticipate that we will stay on target with a June 1 date for Annual Report Guidelines (in which further details will be provided regarding how to report on Accountability Plans that may still be in draft form). Given the additional time, we have also added a third Feedback Call opportunity on May 10 at 1 pm to allow for additional input. Please register at http://www.doe.mass.edu/conference/?ConferenceID=1541 . The information received from the first two calls has been very helpful, and we encourage schools to continue to provide feedback via email and phone as described at http://www.doe.mass.edu/charter/acct.html?section=common. As always, please don't hesitate to contact us with questions or concerns.

Last Updated: May 2, 2013