On average, the funding gap between charter schools and traditional schools is 22 percent, or $1,800 per pupil. The average charter school ends up with a total funding shortfall of nearly half a million dollars.
Source: Charter School Funding: Inequity’s Next Frontier
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How District Leaders Can Support the New Schools Strategy
This report focuses on the role that school districts and district leaders can play in providing inspiration and assistance to their teachers, community-based organizations, parents and others in creating new schools that are more autonomous, more accountable, often smaller, and fundamentally different environments for teachers and learning.
Source: Education Evolving
Cyber and Home School Charter Schools: How States are Defining New Forms of Public Schooling
This paper examines how cyber and home-based charter school models are emerging within the larger public school and charter school communities, with particular attention to recent developments in California and Pennsylvania .Â
Source: National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, Columbia University
Collective Bargaining and Teachers Unions in a Charter District
This report reviews the challenges that arise when school district and teachers' union leaders consider changing collective bargaining agreements to support the creation of charter school districts. A variety of options for dealing with challenges related to work rules, compensation, job security and benefits are suggested.
Source: Education Commission of the States
Jumpstarting the Charter School Movement: A Guide for Donors
This guide is designed to provide donors with strategic ways to support a strong charter school movement in their communities and across the nation. This document, the first in a series on "Strategic Grantmaking in Education," draws on the experience of many of the movement's most active funders, providing a menu of possibilities that readers can choose from and adapt, with concrete examples of each approach to school reform.
Source: Philanthropy Roundtable
Assessing California's Charter Schools
A new report from the California Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) recommends that the legislature grow and improve the state's charter school movement and address inefficiences in the law. The LAO's specific recommendations include: (1) remove the cap on the number of charter schools that may operate in the state, (2) restructure the charter school categorical block grant, (3) strengthen charter school oversight by permitting school districts to opt out of charter authorizing, allowing for multiple authorizers, and creating safeguards to promote stronger accountability, and (4) modify fee policies by delineating more clearly between facility fees and oversight fees, capping these fees, and eliminating the mandate-claims process for oversight costs.
Source: California Legislative Analyst's Office
Two Years and Counting: Charters Schools and NCLB
According to this report, the federal No Child Left Behind law has complicated the accountability relationship between charter schools and their authorizers — as well as created new paperwork burdens — by requiring charter schools to measure and report the same across-the-board indicators as all other public schools, no matter the terms of the original charter. At the same time, it largely adopts the high-stakes charter model as an accountability framework for all public schools — and in fact, pays an additional compliment to the charter school movement by allowing districts to convert their low-performing schools into charters. This paper looks at how the federal No Child Left Behind Act has begun affecting the American charter school community, and points toward both the promising and worrisome signs on the horizon.
Source: Education Commission of the States
Catching the Wave: Lessons from California's Charter Schools
This examination of California's charter schools finds that the state's charter schools are fulfilling the expectations set out in the Charter Schools Act of 1992. While the average overall performance of charter schools remains lower than that of conventional public schools, this report points to three recent studies that show CA charters are demonstrating significant progress. The author makes numerous recommendations, including that the legislature expand the role of the State Board of Education, and allow universities and major nonprofits to act as authorizers.
Source: Progressive Policy Institute
Apples to Apples: An Evaluation of Charter Schools Serving General Student Populations
This is the first major study of charter schools that compares test scores at charter schools and regular public schools serving similar (general) student populations. The authors exclude "targeted" charter schools, i.e, those serving very specific populations (juvenile offenders, pregnant teens, extremely low-income students) on the grounds that these skew achievement data downward.
When measured against those public schools with similar demographic and geographic characteristics, charter schools produced slightly higher gains in math and reading over a one-year period, according to this study released in July 2003. Nationwide, charter schools on average exceeded public school scores by 3 points on math tests and 2 points on reading exams.
Source: Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
Charter School Authorizing: Are States Making the Grade?
In this national examination of charter authorizing, researchers explore how well existing state policy environments are supporting effective schools and authorizers. Data collected from nearly 900 individuals across 23 states and the District of Columbia reveals important findings across states, including: most major authorizers are doing an adequate job, but red tape and "compliance creep" are concerns; many state policy environments are not supportive of chartered schools and authorizers; local school boards generally do not make good authorizers; states with fewer authorizers, serving more schools each, appear to be doing a better job; and, quality authorizing costs money.
Source: Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
High-Stakes: Findings from a National Study of Life-or-Death Decisions by Charter School Authorizers
Drawing on randomly selected examples of decisions that charter school authorizers have made about whether to renew, not renew, or revoke the charters of individual schools, this study provides new information about how charter school authorizers are carrying out their responsibilities, the factors that influence their approaches, and the implications of their policy experiences.
Source: Public Impact
Charter School Laws Across the States: Ranking and Scorecard: 8th Edition
This annual report rates and ranks the nation's 41 state charter laws on the basis of 10 different criteria. Each state is assigned a letter grade based on the strength of its charter law. The 2004 evaluation resulted in the following grading: A: six states; B: fourteen states; C: thirteen states; D: six states; and F: two states. Arizona ranked number one; and Wyoming ranked at the bottom.
Source: Center for Education Reform
Authorizer Issue Brief: Renewal Decisionmaking
This inaugural brief addresses three recent charter school renewal decisions of the State University of New York (SUNY). SUNY's renewal findings and conclusions for the first schools chartered in New York State illustrate the complexity of the decision and the full range of outcomes.
Source: National Association of Charter School Authorizers
Building Excellence in Charter School Authorizing
This research and technical assistance initiative, made possible through a grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Charter School Program, has resulted in a comprehensive Online Library of Charter School Authorizer Resources, and has produced critical design research into authorizer responsibilities and issues of transparency in authorizer practices. In addition, intensive seminars for authorizers and issue briefs have been developed to showcase specific authorizing issues, challenges, practices, and strategies that illustrate and instruct the theory and practice of charter school authorizing.
Source: National Association of Charter School Authorizers
Charter Schools Program: Non-Regulatory Guidance (2003)
This guidance addresses questions the U.S. Department of Education has received regarding various provisions of the Charters Schools Program (CSP) statute, including those related to student admissions, the use of lotteries, private school conversions, and the involvement of for-profit organizations in charter schools. It also examines how businesses, faith-based communities and other community-based organizations and individuals can be involved in the development and operation of charter schools. These guidelines do not contain all of the information necessary to comply with CSP requirements, but are intended to provide guidance on the CSP and on examples of ways to implement it.
Source: U.S. Department of Education
Seizing the Charter Moment
The authors of this brief present a persuasive case of why more government organizations should actively embrace the opportunities of charter school authorizing. They suggest that chartering can further a state or local agency's educational, political, and financial goals. The paper points to research and experience that state and local leaders can serve needs through chartering that are not being fulfilled through traditional public schools.
Source: National Association of State Boards of Education
A Reference Guide to Special Education Law for Charter School Authorizers
This technical assistance guide addresses the key elements of federal special education law and regulation and examines authorizers' oversight roles in ensuring that charter schools are appropriately addressing the educational needs of students with disabilities.
Source: National Association of Charter School Authorizers
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