Better Together—Charter School Champions and Parent Advocates
This call to action explains why partnerships to better support students with disabilities are needed, the forms they might take, and how to get started.
Better Together: Why Charter School Champions & Parent Advocates Should Partner to Better Support Students with Disabilities
While the charter sector has much to celebrate, the country can do more to put great schools—including excellent charters—within reach for our most vulnerable students. Students with disabilities represent one such group. The best solutions start by partnering with the parent groups that advocate for students with disabilities, and have been doing so for decades. As partners, charter school champions and organizations working with parents of children with disabilities can collectively improve outcomes for students with disabilities, create better school options for them, and advocate for better policies. This call to action for charter champions to launch and deepen their partnerships with parent advocates explains how they are better together—why such partnerships are needed, the forms they might take from partnerships highlighted in Washington, DC, New York City, and Los Angeles, and how to get started.
Charter School Facility Incubators
Charter School Facility Incubators—An Innovative Approach to Charter School Facilities
This case study provides an in-depth look at the design and operations of Building Pathways, a charter facility incubator in Washington D.C.
Charter School Facility Incubators: A Case Study of Washington, D.C.’s Innovative Approach to Charter School Facilities
Facilities access is arguably the largest and most persistent challenge facing new and expanding charter schools. Creating a charter facility “incubator” can help solve this challenge. This case study provides an in-depth look at the design and operations of one such incubator, Building Pathways, a nonprofit that serves as the primary facility pipeline for Washington, D.C., charter schools, and provides insights and guidance to help other cities implement a similar program.
Career Paths and Pay in an Opportunity Culture
What if all teachers could achieve excellent student learning results by getting the right leadership and support? This guide presents examples of career paths that make this possible—using multi-school leaders, multi-classroom leaders, and other roles for teachers, who can collaborate, improve, and excel on teams led by multi-classroom leaders. Teachers and principals in all these paths reach more students with excellent teaching and earn more for it, within schools’ budgets.
Closing Achievement Gaps
Closing Achievement Gaps—In Diverse and Low-Poverty Schools
Report commissioned by Oak Foundation proposes a fresh, complete package of approaches to closing achievement gaps in diverse schools.
Closing Achievement Gaps in Diverse Schools
Read the Full Report | Read the Executive Summary
U.S. education leaders have spent decades highlighting and attempting to close achievement gaps, focused especially on the gaps between African-American and Latino students compared to their white and Asian peers, as well as the gaps between low-income students and others. But that focus can overlook the struggles in much wealthier areas: 55 percent of African-American students and 54 percent of Latino students attend schools with low or moderate poverty rates. In these more economically and racially diverse schools, students of color and low-income students fare better than in high-poverty schools—but they still face large achievement gaps. In this report by Public Impact, commissioned by Oak Foundation, we propose a fresh, complete package of approaches to closing achievement gaps in diverse schools. [Read more…]
