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
The Center for Education Reform offers an interactive map that allows users to find public charter schools by school name, location, program, and state. Public charter school officials can also use the map to update their schools' information as well as post job openings.
National Charter Schools Week Toolkit
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has prepared a free online tool kit to help public charter school advocates celebrate charters in their communities in honor of National Charter Schools Week. Tips for planning events, media strategy suggestions, and sample materials including talking points, sample letters, news releases, and fact sheets are provided. While the Toolkit was prepared with National Charter Schools Week in mind, public charter school advocates will find the suggestions for engagement, media tips, and advocacy ideas useful anytime.
The Challenges for Charter Schools: Replicating Success
This brief, coauthored by Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute and Monica Higgins of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, examines ways high-performing public charter school networks can grow quickly while maintaining quality. The authors highlight potential pitfalls of "simply copying a recipe out of an acclaimed cookbook" when growing charter networks and offer organizers suggestions on how they can expand quickly and successfully, including creating entrepreneurial roles within the company and building external social capital.
EPIC National Charter School Consortium
The Effective Practice Incentive Community (EPIC), an initiative of New Leaders for New Schools, operates in partnership with public charter schools across the country and with the school districts of Washington DC, Memphis and Denver. The program's central tenet is to financially award educators driving high student achievement gains in exchange for their sharing the effective practices that contributed to those gains. As of Spring 2009, the EPIC National Charter School Consortium is made up of 144 public charter schools from 17 states and the District of Columbia. EPIC recently awarded 21 public charter schools who have made a dramatic difference for high-need students with roughly $1.9 million in awards. The program invites new public charter schools to participate in future years. Eligibility requirements include: serving 30 percent or more of students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch; submission of a minimum of two years of test scores for all students, with a preference for three years where possible; and, a willingness to share effective practices with New Leaders and EPIC partners.
Center for Education Reform's 2009 Accountability Report
This report offers a state-by-state look at public charter school closures and finds that 657 schools (nearly 13 percent) have closed, with financial problems or mismanagement the leading reasons cited. The largest number of closures have been in California (103), Arizona (96), and Florida (82) -- the three states with the largest numbers of public charter schools. No public charters have been closed in Hawaii, Iowa, Mississippi, Rhode Island, and Wyoming. The leading causes of closure were: "financial deficiencies caused by either low student enrollment or inequitable funding" (41%); "mismanagement" (27%); "poor academic performance" (14%); and "hostile policy environment" (10 percent).
Michigan Charter Public Schools Beating the Odds
A comparative analysis of the Math and English Language Arts (ELA) performance of Michigan's public charter school students against the statewide average and students in similar districts finds that 57 percent of all public charter schools earned individual grade/subject test scores exceeding the statewide average for all public school students. Fifty-two public charter schools have been recognized as "Beating the Odds" by the Michigan Department of Education for achieving over 60 percent proficiency in Math and ELA while having at least 60 percent of their students eligible for free or reduced priced lunch. Overall, 73 percent of public charter students were ranked proficient in Math, compared to 68.6 percent of students in similar traditional school districts. In English Language Arts, 69.3 percent of public charter students were ranked proficient compared to 64.5 percent of students in similar traditional school districts.
Charter Schools in Eight States: Effects on Achievement, Attainment, Integration, and Competition
This longitudinal study, conducted by RAND researchers, used student-level data to examine public charter schools in Chicago, San Diego, Philadelphia, Denver, Milwaukee, and the states of Ohio, Texas and Florida, and found mixed results. A primary finding was that students at public charter schools graduate and attend college at significantly higher rates than students at traditional public schools. Public charter school students were 7 percent to 15 percent more likely to graduate from high school and attend college than students at traditional public schools. The researchers also found little evidence that public charter schools are producing, on average, test score gains that differ substantially from those of traditional public schools. Public charter schools did not appear to have an effect (negative or positive) on the achievement of students in nearby district schools. In addition, children enrolling in public charter schools had similar academic achievement levels as those attending district schools (except in Ohio and Texas, where students entering public charter schools are substantially behind the achievement levels of their district peers).
Charter Schools Institute: Practices for High Performance, July 20-23
This summer's Charter Schools Institute, located at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is designed for those involved in the design and implementation of public charter schools at both the school and system levels as well as those responsible for the design of state or national policy affecting public charter schools. The intensive four-day program will help participants examine elements of high- performing public charter schools, explore issues of scale-up that support positive outcomes for students, address topics of internal accountability within public charters that enhance student learning, set priorities and allocate resources to build organizational capacity, and devise a theory of action for working effectively with external agencies and constituencies.
National Charter School Conference, Washington, DC, June 21-24
The National Charter Schools Conference, the only national gathering of the entire public charter school community, offers opportunities to hear from new administration, education policy and movement leaders, to learn new ways to reach students and improve academic achievement, and to network with public charter school professionals from across the nation. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will present a keynote address at the opening general session on Monday, June 22. DC Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein are confirmed speakers. Pre-Conference Workshops include the National Charter Schools Teachers Institute, School Board Boot Camp, and How to Become a Green Charter School. June 24 is Advocacy Day. More information available at the conference's website.
National Charter Schools Week, May 3-9
With the theme of "Promoting Innovation and Excellence," the national public charter school community will celebrate the growth of a movement which began with a single school 17 years ago and which has expanded to 4,600 schools that serve 1.4 million students in 40 states. National Charter Schools Week, May 3-9, will provide an opportunity to inform policymakers and public officials that public charter schools need their support. This is a time to push the message that charter schools are public schools and to show how the quality and accountability of public charter schools is transforming public education and the lives of over a million children. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools will announce the annual 2009 Champions for Charters award winners in Washington D.C. on May 5th. And on that day, state public charter schools leaders and advocates will travel to Washington to meet with Members of Congress to advocate on behalf of public charter schools, including voicing support for the President’s budget which increases funding for the federal charter school programs.
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