The U.S. Department of Education (ED)
has as one of its important policy goals expanding the number of
high-quality public school choice options. Specifically, according
to Part B section 5201 of the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act, two of the established purposes of the Charter School Program
office are: evaluating the effects of charter schools, including
the effects on students, student academic achievement, staff and
parents, and expanding the number of high-quality charter schools
available to students across the nation. Charter school
authorization is at the very crux of any efforts to expand and
ensure high-quality public school choice options through public
charter schools because charter school authorizers are the public
entities primarily responsible for: initial charter authorizations,
on-going monitoring and oversight, and charter renewal and closure
decisions. This data collection provides information to a
comprehensive national database of roughly 900 charter school
authorizers complete with the schools under their authority; some
of these data elements are available from public documents, but
they are not made available to the public consistently across all
authorizers. This is a comprehensive, fully-populated tool for
tracking the activities of and evaluating the quality of
authorizers nationwide based on their authorizing decisions in
light of schools' performance. This instrument will be administered
to all charter school authorizers.
PL:
Pub.L. 107 - 110 5201 Name of Law: Elementaray and Secondary
Education Act of 1965, as amended
On behalf of this Federal agency, I certify that
the collection of information encompassed by this request complies
with 5 CFR 1320.9 and the related provisions of 5 CFR
1320.8(b)(3).
The following is a summary of the topics, regarding
the proposed collection of information, that the certification
covers:
(i) Why the information is being collected;
(ii) Use of information;
(iii) Burden estimate;
(iv) Nature of response (voluntary, required for a
benefit, or mandatory);
(v) Nature and extent of confidentiality; and
(vi) Need to display currently valid OMB control
number;
If you are unable to certify compliance with any of
these provisions, identify the item by leaving the box unchecked
and explain the reason in the Supporting Statement.