Specifications include, but are not limited to: One of the explicit objectives for Indiana’s Quality Counts proposal is to “increase the number of high-quality charter schools statewide via incubation, replication, expansion, or improvement.” This objective goes together with the fourth objective of the proposal, being to “support implementation of high-quality charter school authorizing practices.”4 What success will look like in this RFP will be composed into targets. The short-term target within the fiveyear arc is to identify which schools are Quality/Improving and which are low-performance within each of the authorizers. Throughout the next three years, the mid-term goal will be the IDOE surveying each authorizer to ensure they have the support needed to meet their established goals. The long-term goal that demonstrates success for this RFP will be the percentage of schools identified as Quality/Improving will increase compared to their numbers from Year 1 by the conclusion of the five-year arc. The goal of this request is to help each of the State’s seven current school authorizers address their communities’ needs within education. A successful engagement will see customized learning plans developed for each of the state’s seven active authorizers and establish a learning framework for any future authorizer in the state. These customized learning plans must align to a nationally recognized framework for high-quality charter school authorizing and reflect the unique needs of each authorizer and the State. Ultimately, we are trying to strengthen Indiana’s authorizing ecosystem as a whole; therefore, it is critical that the entire engagement is informed by an evaluation and diagnosis of Indiana’s overall charter school sector. The organization must be able to evaluate the current state of charter school authorizing in Indiana by identifying the strengths and opportunities of each individual authorizer in the state. This means that a successful engagement will be rooted in shared statewide priorities for strengthening charter school authorizing that are informed by our history. Throughout the process, participating authorizers should receive feedback on their progress and be provided targeted opportunities for continued growth. At least annually, each authorizer should receive a comprehensive evaluation of their progress to date where they revisit their development plan/objectives and revise targets for the upcoming year. A statewide status report will also be provided annually to update the IDOE on progress of this work as a whole.
