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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How to Start a Charter School: Cultivating the Seeds of Educational Success
This guide offers prospective public charter school developers recommendations for building support for a new public charter school. It gives guidance on developing a master plan and presents a "roadmap" for the application and approval processes.
Charter School Achievement: What We Know (Fifth Edition)
For five years, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has published an annual review of studies on public charter school academic performance. This latest edition examines 140 individual studies and finds evidence that many public charter schools are helping to increase academic performance, graduation rates and college matriculation around the nation. Studies examining public charter schools in recent academic years show that public charter schools produce more instances of larger achievement gains in both math and reading when compared to the traditional public schools. Public charter high school graduation and college matriculation results are promising, with studies in Illinois and Florida showing public charter school students with higher ACT scores, higher graduation rates and a greater probability of attending college than students who attend traditional public schools. The author stresses that much more research on public charter school achievement needs to be done. She recommends more studies using more recent longitudinal student-level data to assess how well students in public charter schools are performing; more and better research to explain why some public charter schools perform so much better than other charter and non-charter schools; and, more research on public charter school graduation and college matriculation.
KIPP Annual Report: 2008
In 2008, KIPP served nearly 17,000 students in 66 schools across the nation. This sixth annual report offers information about demographics, funding, facilities, and student achievement. The report shows that after four years at KIPP, 100 percent of KIPP eighth grade classes outperformed their district averages in both mathematics and reading/English language arts. The average KIPP student who stays with KIPP for four years starts fifth grade at the 41st percentile in math and the 31st percentile in reading. After four years at KIPP, these same students are performing at the 80th percentile in math and the 58th percentile in reading. While less than 20 percent of low-income students go to college nationwide, more than 85 percent of KIPP students from the original two KIPP Academies are matriculating to college.
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.
2009 National Poll on Public Charter Schools
According to a new national opinion poll, nearly three-quarters of voters support President Barack Obama's call on states to lift the limits restricting the growth of public charter schools. The poll also found strong support (83%) for the President’s plan to create “Promise Neighborhoods” that use public charters as the centerpiece of integrated services ensuring safe and healthy student development. Thirty-seven percent of voters said they strongly or somewhat favored public charter schools, while 12 percent said they were strongly or somewhat opposed. The poll showed significant public endorsement for key characteristics of the public charter school model, including “holding students, teachers and parents accountable for improving student achievement” (93%) and “giving schools more autonomy in exchange for greater accountability for improved student achievement” (83%).
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