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 Conference
The National Charter Schools Conference will be held in Sacramento, February 28-March 3, 2006, in conjunction with the 13th annual California Charter Schools Conference. Online attendee registration & hotel reservations will be available beginning August 15, 2005.
On the Journey to Open a New School: One Step at a Time
This guide offers a detailed review of the functional steps required to start a charter school. It includes numerous sample documents such as: vision/mission statements; research/marketing survey; location/facility identification considerations; summary of facility/space requirements; comprehensive business plan outline (including detailed personnel plan); charter school development and proposal considerations; marketing and fundraising strategies; detailed financial documents; school crisis plan, operations, faculty, and student handbook outlines; administrative forms list; curriculum overview; admissions forms; and academic calendars. It also provides an extensive resource list for new school developers.
What's Wrong with a Six-Hour School Day?
This article discusses "full-service" charter schools that make the school days longer, more numerous, and filled with services. These schools offer children and their families programs from afterschool skill-building workshops to on-site mental health services. For example, the Codman Academy Charter Public School in Boston holds classes Monday through Friday from 9 am to 5 pm, and Saturday from 9 am to noon. The schedule, founder Meg Campbell says, provides time for students to learn the basic skills that some of them were lacking when they arrived, as well as helps to "create a culture that's purposeful and academic and emphasizes character values." The school includes students' parents in both the school's leadership and its classrooms. "Full-service community schools are valuable resources in local communities because they provide for the seamless integration of academic, developmental, family, and health services to children and their families," says Maryland Congressman Steny Hoyer who has introduced legislation to provide funding for full-service schools.
Debunking the Real Estate Risk of Charter Schools
This study discovers that landlords and real estate lenders who are wary of dealing with charter schools perceive the schools as much riskier clients than they actually are. It found that fewer than six percent of the schools have closed in a way that impacted their landlords or real-estate financiers. Certain factors were found to reduce overall risk. Charter schools started in conjunction with EMOs were found to have negligible failure rates, even if the contract with the EMO is later terminated. Charter schools with more students are less risky than average, as are those started one year or more after the home state passes a charter law. The study found that the charter school facility issue is to some extent circular: securing a long-term lease or mortgage helps a charter school to stabilize, attract students and survive -- but many cannot strike such a deal because of concerns that they won't survive.
Magnet and Specialized Schools of the Future: A Focus on Change
This book provides advice on the construction of a new building, addition, or renovation of a magnet or charter school. Twelve projects are described, followed by guidance on funding, finding a home for the charter school, designs for autistic students, specialized school design, site design and landscape architecture, acoustics, indoor air quality, sustainable design, and project delivery. A draft charter school operations facilities plan and many references are provided.
National Charter Schools Institute Resources Journal
The National Charter Schools Institute (NCSI) Learning Resources Journal, a peer reviewed online publication for practitioners in charter schools, is welcoming submissions from educators involved in teaching, learning, and professional development. Articles may describe effective administrative or instructional projects with a local, regional, state, national, or international scope. Features should address instructional models, innovations, and best practices for preK-12 charter school classroom teachers and school leaders. For style and manuscript guidelines, visit the website.
Charter School Achievement: What We Know, July 2005 Update
This document updates a study that was originally published in March 2005. The study finds that the quality of available research varies widely and the results, though inconclusive, are encouraging. Of the 44 studies reviewed, 18 look only at a snapshot of performance at one or more points in time. Ten show charter schools generally underperforming traditional public schools. The other eight show comparable, mixed, or positive results for charter schools. The other 26 studies look at change in performance over time. Of these, twelve find that overall gains in charter schools were larger than other public schools; four find higher charter gains in certain categories of schools; and, six find comparable gains in charter and traditional public schools. The researcher calls for better research about why some charter schools perform so much better than other charter and non-charter schools and says we need much more attention focused on evaluating chartering as a policy.
National Association of Charter School Authorizers Conference
This year's conference of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) -- October 24-25 in Denver, CO -- will engage several hundred charter school authorizers and other education leaders. The conference will feature 40 highly interactive and practice-oriented workshops and roundtables on issues of importance to charter authorizers and others interested in charter schools. Alan Bersin, California's Secretary of Education and formerly the Superintendent of San Diego City Schools, will deliver the keynote address, sharing his vision for strengthening public education through charter schools, choice and competition. In addition, the conference will feature a grand finale by Spark Creative, a professional comedy troupe.
Doing School Choice Right
School choice is growing around the country, due to the growth of charter schools, as well as private voucher programs and the No Child Left Behind requirements that school districts offer options to children in chronically poor performing schools. The author sees choice not as a magic bullet, but a context that rewards intelligent problem solving. The author discusses recent research on choice that shows that design and implementation must be done right to benefit disadvantaged children. Critical issues are the quality of parent information, the amounts of money that follow children to schools of choice, and the rules governing school admissions. He encourages the research community to conduct research on how families choose schools; closely study the actual costs of private and parochial schools that have proven effective in educating poor children; and, analyze state laws to find ways of allocating funds on a follow-the-child basis.
The "Framing" of Charter School Stories
This article explores how the media places stories about charter schools into two types of frameworks: competition or complementary. News stories that treat charter schools as complementary to public education emphasize how they enrich the public education system. Stories that treat charter schools as competitive with regular public schools emphasize what makes them different from traditional public schools and how those differences put pressure on the rest of the public school systems. Most articles fail to address the dual aspects of the charter schooling movement and the author finds that "using only a single frame, and describing charter schools in language only in terms of conflict and competition or, conversely, only about small public schools serving children with unique needs, fails to describe what is really going on."
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