Ensuring the growth of successful charter schools requires special attention to a variety of challenges associated with providing high-quality specialized services to children with disabilities, such as lack of clarity about legal responsibilities, limited access to existing state support structures, and limited technical capacity to provide specialized services. This report, written by Lauren Morando Rhim for the Center on Reinventing Public Education, explores these challenges and examines potential opportunities to grow quality charter schools that have as a feature promising or innovative approaches to educating children with disabilities. Opportunities include advocacy to clarify existing laws and change laws that hinder charter schools’ efforts to develop quality special education programs, research to document how charter school operators are using their autonomy to craft potentially unique new instructional programs, and investments in building technical assistance networks and charter school infrastructures are essential. The multiple policy, research, and investment opportunities outlined can help pave the way for growing high-quality charter schools that successfully educate all children.
Charter School Replication: Growing a Quality Charter School Sector
Replication of successful charter schools is a promising strategy to rapidly increase the number of new high-quality charter schools available to children. Replication strategies also hold significant potential for district reform agendas and, specifically, efforts to identify school operators to turn around persistently low-performing schools. This guide, written by Lauren Morando Rhim for the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), outlines the critical considerations and makes recommendations to state policymakers who want not only to permit but to explicitly and vigorously promote replication of successful charter schools. Recommendations include clearly defining success worth replicating, removing or avoiding charter caps, allowing charter boards to govern multiple schools, and streamlining application procedures for potential replicators while maintaining rigor.
Successful School Turnarounds: Seven Steps for District Leaders
One promising strategy to dramatically improve chronically low performing schools is known as a “turnaround” – a quick, dramatic, sustained improvement in performance brought about by a highly-capable leader. This type of change is different from what many have tried in the past: the changes are bigger and faster, and the press for success is relentless. Turnarounds also require different types of support and flexibility from district leaders. In this Issue Brief, prepared by Public Impact for The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement at Learning Point Associates, we offer seven steps for district leaders to support the dramatic change required to turn around chronic low performance. Steps include: making a commitment to dramatic change, choosing turnarounds for the right schools, developing a pipeline of turnaround leaders, providing leaders extra flexibility, holding schools accountable, prioritizing teacher hiring for turnaround schools, and proactively engaging the community.
Racing to the Top on High School Teacher Effectiveness
Achieve is a leading national voice for raising expectations for American high schools so that all students graduate ready for what’s next. To assist the 35 states in its American Diploma Project (ADP) Network, Achieve created a series of briefs on how states could use the U.S. Department of Education’s “Race to the Top” competition to advance their college- and career-readiness agenda. Public Impact drafted the brief on teacher effectiveness, providing guidance for states on meeting – and going beyond – the Race to the Top criteria.
Racing to the Top with Low Performing Schools
Achieve is a leading national voice for raising expectations for American high schools so that all students graduate ready for what’s next. To assist the 35 states in its American Diploma Project (ADP) Network, Achieve created a series of briefs on how states could use the U.S. Department of Education’s “Race to the Top” competition to advance their college- and career-readiness agenda. Public Impact drafted the brief on low-performing schools, providing guidance for states on meeting – and going beyond – the Race to the Top criteria.
Salvaging Assets: Considering Alternatives to School Closure
Closing bad schools is necessary to maintain quality in a system based on performance accountability. However, even “failing” schools may have pockets of strength and/or “assets” that are worth preserving: a committed parent body, high-quality teachers, a valuable school building in a tight real estate market. In this report, prepared for the Center on Reinventing Public Education’s National Charter School Research Project, Lucy Steiner and Bryan Hassel draw upon interviews with high-quality charter school authorizers and school districts to offer a framework and preliminary lessons for considering alternatives to school closures. Three approaches — installation of new leaders, school reconstitution (where governance structures and personnel are replaced but students remain) and facility acquisition (new school operator takes over a failing school’s facility) — have shown promise for intervening in failing schools when closure is not the best option.
Expanding the Pipeline of Teachers and Principals in Urban Public Schools: Design Principles and Conditions for Success
Meeting the significant demand for outstanding teachers and principals is a persistent challenge in many urban school systems. This report, prepared by Public Impact for the Cleveland Foundation and the George Gund Foundation, analyzes common themes among eighteen promising programs to attract and prepare teachers and principals for success in urban school systems.
