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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Charter School Press Center
This website is designed to help charter schools develop positive media relationships. Sample press releases and a PowerPoint presentation on how to talk to the press are available. Also, very helpful contact lists of distribution services, national publications, and charter school and education reporters by state are provided.
Charter Schools: To Enhance Education's Monitoring and Research, More Charter School Level Data Are Needed
This report examines how states allow charter schools flexibility and promote accountability. The researchers surveyed 39 states with operating charter schools in 2002-03 and found that 28 of these reported that they collected information on whether or not schools were achieving the academic goals stated in their charters. Most states provided flexibility by releasing charter schools from some traditional public school requirements. About half of the states reported a mix of authorizers, including local education agencies, public and private universities and other nonprofit organizations. The researchers found that data was sometimes difficult to obtain, particularly at the school level, in part because the Department of Education seldom identifies individual schools or distinguishes charter schools from other public schools. In a follow-up memorandum, Education officials said actions would be taken on all recommendations offered by the report.
National Charter Schools Week Homepage
The 6th annual National Charter Schools Week (NCSW) will be held May 1-7. This week of celebration is designed to increase the public’s understanding and support for charter schools. NCSW is once again being organized by the Charter School Leadership Council. The official NCSW website offers many resources to help organizations and schools prepare for the week. The Leaders Guide, a brochure with creative ideas on how charter leaders can plan for and publicize the week, and a Toolkit for State Associations and Individual Charter Public Schools are available for download. Promotional materials, such as media advisory templates, are offered to charter advocates to help them reach out to the news media, policymakers, business leaders, and the larger community.
SchoolMatters
Standards & Poor’s and several partners offer this free web-based national education data service to provide in-depth information and analysis about public schools, including charters. It provides users with test scores, school spending data, and demographics for individual schools and districts across the nation. Community demographic data is also available, including local income levels, housing values, household parental status, and adult educational attainment levels. The site's designers hope it will help transform the way education information is used by educators, policymakers, superintendents and parents. For example, educators in a given school will be able to find schools that have similar demographics with higher academic performance. This can be a useful start for schools and districts looking to develop comprehensive improvement programs and provides a first step in identifying promising practices of school reform.
Charter School Application Requirements are Reasonable; Financial Management Problematic
The number of charter schools in Florida has risen steadily, leaving the state ranking just behind California and Arizona in the number of charter schools in operation. In 2004-05, 300 charter schools served over 83,000 students, about three percent of the state’s public school students. In reaction to the rapid growth, the Office of Program Policy Analysis & Government Accountability has begun a series of reports designed to assist the Florida Legislature in its review of charter schools. This first report in the series focuses on the operation of charter schools and offers two key findings: Florida’s charter school application requirements are extensive, but reasonable; and, the lack of accurate and timely financial data makes it difficult for the state Department of Education to identify and provide assistance to schools with troublesome financial situations.
Texas Roundup: Charter Schooling in the Lone Star State
With more than 80,000 students enrolled in over 300 charter campuses, Texas charter schools trail only those of California in enrollment. This document traces the evolution of charters in Texas, details student and school performance and offers a series of recommendations. Findings include the state’s charters serve a larger percentage of disadvantaged students; they are racially/ethnically more diverse than other public schools, but enroll fewer students with disabilities and with limited English proficiency; the performance gap between the state’s charter school students and traditional school students is closing; and charters face immense funding challenges. Recommendations include making accountability more meaningful, eliminating the cap on open-enrollment charters, encouraging multi-campus charters, encouraging universities to operate charters, expanding virtual charters cautiously, and leveling the playing field.
A Tough Nut to Crack: Charter Schooling in the Buckeye State
The spread of charter schools in Ohio has been steady and strong, making the state the sixth largest charter school state in the nation. In 2003-04, Ohio’s charter schools served approximately 46,000 students, or roughly 2.5 percent of the state's 1.8 million students. This document examines charter schooling in the state, detailing the history, current status, challenges, and the future of the charter school effort there. Available academic achievement information on the state’s charters presents a mixed and incomplete picture. The charter school movement is faced with numerous challenges including political opposition, lack of funding, too few viable and motivated sponsors, and lack of useful data. The author offers numerous recommendations including increase funding; promote and protect “mom and pop” charters; encourage proven charter models to enter the state; require useful, timely data; and, improve political support and advocacy.
An Analysis of Charter vs. Traditional Public Schools in Utah Performance Assessments
Currently 29 charter schools serve over 5,000 students in Utah. This evaluation conducted for the state's Charter Board finds that elementary charter students (in grades 3, 5, and 7) scored better than traditional school students on the Science, Math, and Language Arts portions of the state's assessments. In grade 10, however, traditional school students exhibited higher scores.
Charter School Achievement: What We Know
This report evaluates 38 comparative analyses of charter school and traditional public school performance. The study finds that the quality of available research varies widely and the results, though inconclusive, are encouraging. Of the 38 studies reviewed, 17 look only at a snapshot of performance at one or more points in time. Nine show charter schools generally underperforming traditional public schools. The other eight show comparable, mixed, or positive results for charter schools. The other 21 studies look at change in performance over time. Of these, nine find that overall gains in charter schools were larger than other public schools; three find higher charter gains in certain categories of schools; and, six find comparable gains in charter and traditional public schools. The researcher concludes that more high-quality research is needed and that charter schooling is an important experiment worth continuing.
Evaluation of the Delaware Charter School Reform: Year 1 Report
This study of Delaware’s charter schools analyzed student performance, surveyed charter school teachers, compared the state’s charter laws with those of other states, and reviewed the state's oversight thirteen charter schools. It found charter school students in grades 8 and 10 performed significantly better on state tests than those attending regular public schools. Elementary grade charter school students, however, were found to have test scores similar to students in regular public schools. Surveyed charter school teachers were found to be younger, less experienced, and more likely to leave their schools than teachers in regular public schools. This is the first report in a three-year analysis; the upcoming second report, to be released later this year, will address possible negative consequences, such as segregation and division of state and district resources.
Testing the Constitutionality of Charter Schools: A Guide for Legislators
State supreme courts and lower courts have upheld the constitutionality of charter schools despite numerous lawsuits filed by charter school opponents. This document provides summaries about major legal cases which have been fought in eleven states since 1996.
Primers on Implementing Special Education in Charter Schools
This Web site and Primers provide background information and resources to facilitate the successful inclusion of students with disabilities in charter schools. They are designed to help charter school leaders develop special education programs, provide support for authorizers to better assist schools they charter, and give policy and practice support for those at the state level. Helpful information on special education is available for every life stage of a charter school, from pre-authorization to renewal/non-renewal. In addition to the primers and other special education resources, a State Matrix is provided to highlight various characteristics of the states which have charter school laws.
The Emancipatory Promise of Charter Schools: Toward a Progressive Politics of School Choice
Some charter school opponents mistakenly claim that charter schools are solely the territory of the political right. The editors of this new book argue that those with more progressive politics can and do embrace charter schools. They present charter schools as a powerful tool for reviving public participation in education. Charters are seen as a way to expand opportunities for progressive methods in the classroom and to generate new energy for community-based, community-controlled school initiatives. Contributors include well known school choice advocates and education leaders, including Mary Jiron Belgarde, Nina Buchanan, Robert Fox, Herbert Gintis, John King Jr., Melissa Steel King, Alex Medler, Eric Rofes, Stacy Smith, Lisa Stulberg, and Patty Yancey.
The Authorizer and Charter School Closures: Exercising Adaptive Leadership to Protect the Public Interest
This document addresses common issues that authorizers face in closing a charter school and provides some practical policy approaches that one authorizer, the New Jersey Department of Education, has incorporated into its school closure protocol and practices. The author advises authorizers to contemplate and plan for the possibility of a charter school’s dissolution. School dissolution plans should spell out how to transfer student records, administer personnel records, fulfill contractual obligations, liquidate assets, assess and satisfy outstanding liabilities, dissolve the board, and transition students and staff, as well as how to deal with several other issues. [NACSA’s Online Authorizer Resource Library (http://www.charterauthorizers.org/pubnacsa/library) contains a number of resources used by authorizers across the country in implementing charter school closures.]
Closing Low-Performing Schools and Reopening Them as Charter Schools: the Role of the State
This guide explores the role of the state in converting chronically low-performing schools into charter schools, a strategy available to states under No Child Left Behind to address schools that miss AYP for five consecutive years. The challenges and benefits of closing a school and reopening as a charter school are explored. The author states that reopening as a charter school allows for the opportunity to enlist the interest and energy of the community in changing and improving a chronically underachieving school. Additional potential benefits of reopening a low-performing school as a charter school include new leadership, new decision-making approaches, new staff, new mission, new educational approaches, and a new culture. The state can play several roles in facilitating conversion, including: establishing criteria and process guidelines; creating an RFP process; and providing additional resources to school operators.
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