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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Find a Charter School Today
Powered by Google Maps, this website allows users to search by state and city to find individual charter schools across the country. The site provides a zoomable map of all charter schools and provides each school's full address, contact information, grades served, and direct website links.
Improving Schools Through Partnerships: Learning from Charter Schools
Charter schools that have partnered with nonprofit, for-profit, and public organizations have leveraged human, financial, and organizational resources to help the schools improve. This article discusses a two-year study of charter school partnerships in 11 states which found that formal collaborations helped charter schools to overcome obstacles and achieve their goals by enriching curriculum offerings, broadening teaching experience, and helping at-risk students stay in school. The authors suggest that all schools can learn from the charter schools' experiences.
Staying In: Youth on the Path to Quitting School Explain Why Motivation is Central to Learning and Graduating
This new publication from Education/Evolving profiles high school students in Minnesota who quit school, were attending a school with a low graduation rate, or were on the path to quitting. Once engaged in a charter school, the students are found to be excited about learning and improving their performance rapidly. The document finds that different things motivate different students to choose learning and that no one factor is likely to motivate all students to learn well. The authors conclude that states now doing the best job with struggling youth are those allowing for the creation of new and fundamentally different schools and advancing customization in addition to high standards for learning.
2007 Richard Riley Award
The American Architectural Foundation, in partnership with KnowledgeWorks Foundation, invites charter schools to enter a submission for the 2007 Richard Riley Award. Charter schools which provide a "center of community" that demonstrate community collaboration and innovative design ideas could win a $10,000 prize. The award is open to all elementary and secondary public schools and entries will be accepted between now and July 9, 2007.
Web Seminar: Financing Charter Schools
The Education Commission of the States has made available a replay of a webcast that presents data and analysis to help state policymakers and other education leaders understand the issues and the policy options states have regarding charter school financing. Users can simply login and view the web seminar at their leisure.
2007 Charter School Facility Finance Landscape
This 2007 edition of the Landscape provides an expanded snapshot of the public and nonprofit financing programs for charter school facilities across the nation. It is designed to serve as a roadmap for individual charter schools as they work to finance their buildings and as a policy guide for those interested in helping the sector and developing more equitable funding for charter school facilities. Based on extensive research, the document includes descriptions of financing products and geographic markets for 25 private nonprofit providers, two public-private partnerships, and several public initiatives for charter school facilities at both the federal and state levels. It also provides a listing of all state-level grant, loan and credit enhancement programs in the 41 jurisdictions with a charter law.
Charter School Indicators
This new report from the Center on Educational Governance at USC draws on a quantitative database of multiple measures of California charter school, staff, and performance. It examines both financial resources and academic achievement as overall measures of progress. The data show that while California charter schools may rank lower on the API and AYP, their rates of improvement (as measured by the Academic Momentum Index) are more rapid than non-charter public schools. In measuring productivity, the researchers find that the state's charter schools typically have smaller per-student allocations than non-charters in their districts, yet charter schools have roughly equivalent levels of productivity: in essence, they get "more bang for their buck." The study also finds that charter schools are financially challenged; they are unable to build up large reserves and spend a significant portion of their budget on rent for facilities.
2007 Charter School Dashboard
This annual report on the charter school movement tracks student enrollment, growth, performance/accountability, the policy environment, and public opinion. Currently, 4,046 charter schools serve approximately 1,144,758 students in 40 states and the District of Columbia. The number of charter schools that opened in each of the past three years (between 400 and 450 per year) was noticeably higher than the average of the previous four years (340) and nearly twice as high as in the 2003-04 school year (260).
National Association of Charter School Authorizers Conference, October 22-23
The National Association of Charter School Authorizers will host its seventh annual conference October 22-23, 2007, at the Hyatt Regency Savannah on the Historic Riverfront in Savannah, GA. Steve Barr, Founder and CEO of Green Dot Public Schools, and James Forman, Jr. of Georgetown University are keynote speakers. With the theme of "Cultivating the Charter Garden," the conference will offer numerous interactive and practice-oriented sessions.
Arizona Charter Schools Association, Annual Conference, October 10-12
The Arizona Charter Schools Association will host its annual conference at the Glendale Renaissance Hotel & Spa in Glendale, Arizona, October 10-12, 2007. Conference information and exhibitor/sponsorship information will be available on the organization's website.
National Education Writers Association's Charter Schools and School Choice Meeting, October 5-6
The Education Writers Association, the national professional organization of education reporters, is hosting a two-day event in Milwaukee this fall to discuss the impact and effectiveness of charter schooling.
Ten Years of Excellence: Why Charter Schools are Good for North Carolina
This document analyzes North Carolina's 10-year history with charter schools. Those schools now enroll about 30,000 students, but growth is limited by a statutory cap of 100 schools. The author finds that the state's charter schools have low average school and class sizes, innovative curricula and instructional approaches, few disciplinary problems, and student performance comparable to district schools. He seeks to debunk some studies that have shown that N.C.'s charter school students have fallen short academically. Along with lifting the charter school cap, the report recommends that policymakers endorse an "Education Bill of Rights" that ties state funding to a student, not to a school system; create franchises that would allow successful charter school operators to avoid the state's application and approval process; and reconfigure the state's lottery formula to allow some lottery proceeds to flow to charter school students.
Piecing Together the Charter Puzzle: A Commentary
While charter schools are just in their adolescence, much more support is needed for them to advance public education, writes Greg Richmond, President of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers in a recent Education Week issue. He encourages states and local districts to create new systems of support based on innovation and flexibility. These systems must be anti-bureaucracies that foster informed choice, protect school autonomy, and provide the public real accountability. The opinion piece uses the significant changes taking place in the education system in New Orleans as an example of the successes and challenges facing those who seek a new system and increased support for charters.
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