Authorizers: See what replacing failing charter schools, replicating great ones can do

March 18, 2013—In this post that appeared in the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s Ohio Gadfly Daily, Public Impact’s Bryan C. Hassel reflects on the lessons learned from Public Impact’s recent study Searching for Excellence: A Five-City, Cross-State Comparison of Charter School Quality, produced in collaboration with the Fordham Institute. The study compared the performance of charter schools in five cities with that of other schools in their districts. Although the charters outperformed their home districts, in all five cities the sector included a wide range of schools, from very high-performing to very low-performing. A simulation showed that by closing or replacing low-performing charter schools while expanding or replicating high-performing ones, cities could dramatically improve charter school quality in only a few years.