The Center For Charter Schools at Central Michigan University advances public education through its national leadership and gold standard approach to chartering schools, overseeing and supporting their operations, and evaluating their performance.

There are approximately 600 charter public school authorizers nationally. They include universities, districts, state departments of education and local education authorities. Each of them would see benefits from the use of AOIS in assisting their schools to become more efficient in document management, compliance reporting and the automatic generation of an oversight audit trail, - leaving more time and resources to dedicate to educating students.

Ferris State University Charter School Office oversees nineteen school locations throughout Michigan. They have utilized AOIS since 2003 to make compliance a process rather than an event.

Jimmie Rodgers Director, Charter School Office recently commented that the Ferris charter school office gives back over 30% of its oversight fee through academic performance grants, online assessments and funding AOIS as a free service for their schools.

Northern Michigan University Charter School Office under the direction of William Pistulka has installed the Authorizers Oversight Information System (AOIS) to aid in the monitoring of five charter schools authorized by NMU.

Lake Superior State University has oversight responsibility for seven charter schools. The charter school movement has evolved into a major educational force. With that growth, there have been increased calls for accountability – from legislators, educational leaders, authorizer boards, and the taxpaying public – to ensure that charter schools are meeting or exceeding the traditional public schools.

With the increase in the use of technology, Lake Superior State University and the academies it authorizes will be able to automatically monitor the compliance of their schools with state and LSSU requirements on a daily basis. “This can all be accomplished without storing reams of paper in the many five inch binders presently used,” said Lila Malmborg, charter schools director at LSSU. “Our schools will have Internet access to all their documents and compliance history seven days a week, 24 hours a day.” 

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation believes that all children deserve a high quality K-12 education at the school of their choice. Nationally and in their home state of Ohio, they strive to close America's vexing achievement gaps by raising standards, strengthening accountability, and expanding education options for parents and families.

Kathryn Mullen Upton, Director of Sponsorship at Fordham stated “Part of our job as an authorizer is to make sure that our schools are in compliance with state regulations. Having AOIS allows us to ask for that information year round, instead of pulling it from the schools each time we need something. Most importantly, the tool lets us significantly shorten our site visits of the schools.”

Chicago International Charter School (CICS) is unique among other charters in Chicago. CICS is a multi-campus charter assisting the campuses with real estate acquisition and development, fundraising, public relations, accountability, charter school governance, and the implementation of new programs. CICS is partnered with EMO’s to assist in the day to day operations at its campuses.

Erin Lanoue at CICS states “AOIS keeps each of our schools accountable and there is no excuse if something is not completed on time – or accurately. Your schools can’t say “I didn’t know about that.” It takes away the excuses of not being in compliance.”

Ball State University Office of Charter Schools (BSUOCS) is one of few University’s in the nation that sponsors charter schools. BSUOCS continues to strive at providing each of their students a variety of choices so they can achieve a high quality education.

Brighton School District (BSD) was the first district in Colorado to authorize a charter school. BSD continues to hold the charter schools accountable as well as making sure they are following all of the regulations. Sam Sakurada is the districts Charter School Liaison; he has developed a great relationship with the charter school leaders. Sam made the decision to start using AOIS for their four schools in hopes to make all of their lives easier in complying with the state and federal laws.

Ashe Culture Center currently sponsors 12 charter schools around the Cleveland area. In 2007 they made the decision to run a pilot test using AOIS. They chose 4 of their charter schools to be a part of the test. After the pilot test they will bring on their remaining charter schools.