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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National Charter Schools Week Tool Kit for State Associations and Individual Charter Public Schools
This toolkit is designed for charter school leaders to help promote charter schools week nationally and enable schools and state associations to craft themes and events that reflect local interests. It includes ideas for events and programs, media strategies, charter fact sheets, and sample press releases.
Source: Charter School Leadership Council
Teacher Recruitment and Teacher Quality? Are Charter Schools Different?
According to this analysis, which draws on data from the National Center for Education Statistics, teachers in the nation's charter schools have half the experience of traditional public school teachers and are far less likely to be certified. The report finds that traditional public school teachers had an average of 14.6 years of experience in comparison to 7.1 years for charter school educators. In addition, 73 percent of charter school teachers were certified, compared to 93 percent of public school teachers. The report also found that charter schools are taking advantage of opportunities to be innovative in their hiring. They are placing more of an emphasis on the selectivity of the teachers' undergraduate institution and less on their certification and experience when making hiring decisions. In fact, charter school teachers were more likely to have attended selective colleges than traditional public school teachers (35 percent to 29 percent).
Source: Education Policy Center, Michigan State University
Charter High Schools and Real-World Practices
This website offers a collection of resources about charter high schools with a special focus on practices that link students to the world beyond the classroom. School profiles, student accounts of their charter school experiences, highlighted practices, research reports, and links to additional resources are provided.
Source: Center on Education and Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
The Finance Gap: Charter Schools and their Facilities
This study examines the facilities experiences of charter schools in fourteen states and the District of Columbia, areas that house seventy-five percent of the nation's charter schools. The findings substantiate and detail the widely-held belief that facilities are the number one hurdle for charter school developers. The shared experiences of charter schools with innovative financing mechanisms, private sector involvement in facilities financing, and the use of instructional revenue for the repayment of debt are documented. The report also offers recommendations for public and private sector participants.
Source: Local Initiatives Support Corporation
A Building Need?
The lack of facilities financing leaves charter schools competing with traditional public schools on an uneven playing field. Charter school leaders often spend significant time trying to secure loans or donations to cover facilities costs as well as managing any construction or renovation. This article examines the charter school facility challenge and profiles how some states and private foundations are working to address the inequities.
Source: Hoover Institution
Does School Choice Increase School Quality?
This paper investigates how the introduction of charter schools in North Carolina affects the performance of traditional public schools on statewide assessments. Using end-of-year test scores for grades three through eight from North Carolina's state testing program, researchers found that charter school competition raised the composite test scores in district schools, even though the students leaving district schools for the charters tended to have above average test scores. The introduction of charter schools in the state caused an approximate one percent increase in the score, which constitutes about one quarter of the average yearly growth. The gain was roughly two to five times greater than the gain from decreasing the student-faculty ratio by 1.
Source: National Bureau of Economic Research
Comparison of Traditional Public Schools and Charter Schools
This study examines the test scores of more than 60,000 Arizona students attending 873 charter and traditional public schools statewide over a three-year period. Its purpose is to determine the net effect of attending either type of school on reading achievement scores and total achievement growth over time. The researchers found that charter school students, on average, showed overall annual achievement growth roughly three points higher than their non-charter peers, despite beginning with lower test scores than their traditional public school counterparts. Charter school students who completed the twelfth grade surpassed traditional public school students on SAT-9 reading tests. Achievement growth varied by grade level. In the elementary grades, charter school students exhibited faster achievement growth than traditional public school students. Achievement growth in the middle grades was similar for both kinds of students, while high school achievement growth was higher for traditional public school students. Researchers suggest that one reason for this is that elementary charters are more likely to focus on academics, while middle and high school charters generally serve students who want vocational training, have been out of school, have learning or behavioral problems, or those who have been in the juvenile justice system.
Source: Goldwater Institute
A Policymaker's Primer on Education Research: How to Understand, Evaluate, and Use It
The goal of this primer is to help answer three big questions in education research: What does the research say? Is the research trustworthy? How can the research be used to guide policy? While intended to help policymakers make evidenced-based decisions about education policies, the guide makes very technical material more accessible to others in the education community, including parents. Readers can expect to gain a better understanding of education research and become more informed consumers of research.
Source: A joint effort of McREL and ECS
State Policies for School Choice Database
This online database contains information about each state's policies for school choice, including charters, vouchers, open enrollment and tax credits. Users can generate profiles of state policies for school choice, create comparisons of specific types of state policies for school choice across several states, and view predetermined reports on state policies for school choice.
Source: Education Commission of the States
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
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