Central Michigan University Center for Charter Schools’ oversight software will now spread to 82 charters in Washington, D.C.

Authorizer Oversight Information System (AOIS) is a communicative device designed by CMU and is used to supply supervision to CMU’s authorized charters, reducing their administrative workload, said Special Adviser of External Relations Scott Herbert Ray III.

“CMU has taken a bold leadership role,” said James Goenner, the center’s executive director. “What we really have done with AOIS is we’ve streamlined and automated the regulatory reporting process so that school leaders have more time to spend with kids than with paper work.”

While the software has been implemented over the last six years into nine states and more than 330 schools, Goenner said, its use in the nation’s capital shows the national role CMU plays in improving education.

Timothy Odykirk, special adviser for business services at the Center for Charter Schools, said AOIS also allows parents, charter administrators and teachers to follow the trend and improvement of students’ learning.

“There’s a lot of bureaucracy in schools and we wanted to remove all that,” he said. “It’s made our operations more and more effective and efficient by getting rid of that day-to-day data … and that is what Washington is looking for.”

Odykirk said AOIS helps charters achieve their goals by offering easy distribution of stored documents, manageable checklists, document search engines and flexible review sheets.

“(Washington charters) are growing quite rapidly in the charter arena. They need better tools and they want their schools to achieve their goals faster and more effectively,” he said. “Using technology is that way to go. It reduces paper; it’s more and more electronic. It’s a tool to make them cost effective.”

Ray said CMU has been a key player in creation and innovation since its involvement with charter schools began 14 years ago.

“Charters were a strategy to help drive improvement in education,” he said. “You allow families to determine what’s the best fit for their students … you improve the quality in all schools.”

Michigan law has the number of charters allowed in the state capped at 150 schools, Goenner said, and CMU’s ability as an authorizer for new charters forces them to close one of their 58 institutions in order to open another. New charters arise through a multiple phase application process, from which candidate plans are chosen and sent for approval to the Board of Trustees.

With the completion of the first cohort of classes for CMU’s new online master’s degree program for charter school leaders, Odykirk said two more sections will launch, involving students across the country.

“Charter school leaders are a little different (from other innovative outlets); it’s more like a small business,” he said. “You have a school leader who has the ability. It’s a high demanding job.”

The Center for Charter Schools will also hold a back-to-school conference Sept. 17 in Brighton. Goenner said that will host all CMU authorized schools in Michigan and help keep relationships among administrators, who are responsible for the continued education of students statewide.

“It’s a way for our board members from multiple schools to talk to each other,” Odykirk said. “Whenever you have similarity in what you do, sometimes it’s hard to find other people to bounce ideas off their experiences.”

He said because charters differ in their strengths, their discussion assists in how they use certain tools and what methods are successful.

news@cm-life.com

E-mail the author: Jackie Smith