State sets few rules for charter school oversight. A new report offers improvements.

California lawmakers have been told over the past two decades that it needs to improve how it oversees charter schools, but the state has not yet made significant changes to its laws and policies about how to hold a charter school accountable while it’s operating.

Those shortfalls have cost the state, which has seen recent cases of fraud and other improper spending by certain charter school networks. San Diego prosecutors said a lack of charter oversight was prominent in the A3 charter school fraud scandal of 2019, in which A3 operators used their charter network to steal $400 million of state school funding via illegitimate practices.

A new 83-page report published last week highlights what it describes as long-standing weaknesses in California’s charter oversight and argues for lawmakers to make improvements, including setting clearer and higher standards for the authorizers that oversee charter schools and changing how much funding authorizers receive for oversight.

The report was produced by California Charter Authorizing Professionals, a nonprofit group that provides support and professional development for charter authorizers in the state, as well as the National Network for District Authorizing.

Charter schools are publicly funded and privately run schools that are independent of school districts.