Charter school authorizers play a critical gatekeeping role in determining which schools open and which close, yet little is known about whether the tools they use to evaluate applicants actually predict long-term school quality. This brief presents findings from a pilot study spanning 2013 to 2023 that examined Florida’s standardized charter application evaluation instrument across 209 approved applications from 22 districts.

While application scores showed little evidence of predicting later accountability grades, lower scores were significantly associated with higher closure risk, with operational items related to governance, staffing, and startup readiness showing the strongest associations with school survival. The study also found substantial scoring variation across districts without corresponding differences in outcomes, pointing to opportunities for strengthening authorizer practices by emphasizing operational readiness, improving rubric alignment, and investing in interrater reliability.