Public Impact

High-Quality Charter Schools

How Charter School Facility Incubators Can Overcome Common Charter Barrier: Case Study from Public Impact

Charter schools frequently confront inadequate facility funding, few affordable and suitable buildings, inadequate facility expertise among charter founders, and gradual expansion of enrollment and grade levels that requires more or new space. Charter school facility incubators provide affordable, short-term space for new and growing charter schools. In a new report, Charter School Facility Incubators: A […]

Big Ambitions: IDEA Public Schools Aims High for Growth + Quality

In 2000, IDEA Public Schools opened its first campus on the U.S.-Mexico border. Today, IDEA operates 79 schools serving 45,000 students in six regions, proving that it’s possible to grow rapidly while maintaining quality. And IDEA plans to keep its foot on the gas. It’s on track to enroll 100,000 students by 2022, and one […]

Betting on a Brighter Charter School Future for Nevada Students

For too many children in and around Las Vegas, getting a great education has been a losing bet. As their Clark County School District exploded to become the country’s fifth-largest district, poor and minority students found themselves shut out of its top schools and concentrated in the county’s lowest-performing district and public charter schools. And […]

Learning from Tennessee: Growing High-Quality Charter Schools

In just five years, Tennessee went from 29 charter schools and six charter management organizations (CMOs) serving 5,500 kids to 98 schools and 24 CMOs serving 29,000 students—while emphasizing the need to replicate high-performing and high-potential charters in underserved communities. How did Tennessee do it, and what lessons can other education leaders learn from this state?

As we document in Public Impact’s new report for the Charter School Growth Fund, Growing a High-Quality Charter Sector: Lessons from Tennessee, the state benefitted from the convergence of favorable policy conditions, political leadership, public-private grants, and an existing supply of local high-quality charter operators. That created an environment for the Tennessee Charter School Incubator and the Charter School Growth Fund to carry out unique philanthropically supported strategies focused on identifying and developing promising new school leaders and expanding high-performing CMOs in Memphis and Nashville. Though the state has too little data yet to fully judge the impact on student achievement, early academic results are promising, and the newest charter schools are predominantly run by organizations with a record of success.

Report: Trends, Possible Improvements in School Quality Rating Systems

A new review of 25 school quality rating systems by Public Impact’s Lyria Boast and Tim Field for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools revealed clear trends that may help rating system designers and users think about optimal system designs.

The rating systems inventoried included some from state departments of education, large public school districts, charter associations and authorizers, and private news and advocacy organizations. Among the trends they found among the systems were:

  • the inclusion of student growth, useful for evaluating a school’s quality based on its students’ progress–a new standard, the authors say, for quality rating systems.
  • the expansion of college- and career-readiness measures–going beyond graduation rates to include important, new indicators.
  • an exploration of new ways to focus attention on the lowest-performing students–as the authors say, “great schools are great for all students in the building.”
  • an interest in valid measures of student engagement–although systems focus on academic outcomes, some try to capture school culture as well.
  • simplified reporting formats to categorize school quality.
  • an increase in data transparency and public accessibility–so that a rating system can be judged not just by its accuracy, but by how available its data is to users.