Public Impact

  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • What We Do
  • Media
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Subscribe
Innovation. Excellence. Service. Impact.
  • Opportunity Culture
  • Teachers & Principals
    • Teacher Leadership
    • Recruit, Select, and Keep Education Talent
    • Competencies of High Performers
    • Evaluating Teacher and Leader Performance
    • Teacher and Leader Compensation
    • Professional Development for Educators
  • Turnarounds
    • Turnarounds Within Schools
    • Restarts by Charter Operators
    • Innovation Zones
  • Funding
    • School Funding
  • Charters
    • Charter School Authorizing
    • Scaling Up Quality
    • Restarts in Failing Schools
    • High Market Share Cities
    • State and Federal Charter School Policy
    • Help for Charter Schools
    • Serving Students with Highest Needs
  • More Topics
    • Big Ideas for Education
    • Entrepreneurship in K-12
    • Parents and Community
    • Philanthropy in Education
    • Special Populations
    • Technology in Schools
    • Assessment and Data

What Happens When Charter Schools Achieve Scale

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on August 24, 2015

In Early Lessons from Newark’s Experience with Charter Schools, commissioned by Startup:Education, a Public Impact team led by Juli Kim considers the issues and lessons from a school district where the charter sector has grown so large that its effects on traditional schools are impossible to overlook. The Newark school district, long under control of the state of New Jersey, faces challenges driven in part by strong parent demand for high-performing schools and the rapid growth of a high-performing charter sector: The sector currently serves 27 percent of Newark’s students and is anticipated to serve 40 percent by 2018–19. According to one study, Newark has the second-highest performing charter sector among the nation’s cities. What could other cities and districts with a growing charter presence learn from Newark’s journey?

The district made national news in 2010 when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave Newark a $100 million challenge grant, matched by an equal amount of local and national philanthropy.

Under a state-appointed superintendent, the district pursued a wide-ranging reform agenda, including a major new teacher contract and evaluation system intended to retain and reward the district’s effective teachers and remove ineffective teachers from the classroom.

The district also identified and responded vigorously to a number of concerns that the growing charter sector raised. Those included the location of charter facilities; the concern that charter schools were not serving their “fair share” of high-need students; and the impact of charters on the district’s budget and teacher quality because of state-imposed constraints on the district’s ability to dismiss ineffective teachers. The district’s response, which included a common enrollment system, a common performance measurement system, and “charter launches” in low-performing district facilities, has generated both progress and controversy.

“Amid a strong and growing charter school sector, the Newark school district has undergone significant changes to reverse course on a decades-long struggle to provide consistent quality education to its children,” Startup:Education Executive Director Jen Holleran writes in the foreword. “As this report goes to press, those changes continue as a new superintendent steps in, with a mandate to continue improving school quality while leading a transition back to local control of the district by the elected school board.

“The work has been complex and challenging, and it has required the district to forge a new kind of partnership with the charter school sector in ways that few other cities have seen.”

Coming out of these experiences, Public Impact identified early lessons for other districts, including the importance of:

  • Taking a citywide perspective: All students should have equal access to high-quality schools, whether district- or charter-operated. When the charter sector is large, some entity other than the district likely needs to lead the citywide planning that keeps the city’s overall interests in mind.
  • Aligning state and district policy: For example, New Jersey’s last-in, first-out employee dismissal policy prevented the district’s (state-appointed) superintendent from fully carrying out her sweeping reform plans, forcing her to keep some ineffective teachers on the payroll even as charter growth requires downsizing.
  • Creating effective and genuine community engagement: Transparency builds trust and is a crucial first step, but a district and charter operators must also use sophisticated strategies to increase support for change, neutralize opponents (often well-funded ones), and capitalize on early successes to build momentum and support for further reforms.
  • Cultivating the “supply lines” for great district and charter schools: A city with significant numbers of low-performing schools needs operators willing to take on failing schools and serve all students.
“We are committed to learning as much as possible about the successes, struggles and lessons from this concentrated five-year effort to improve Newark’s public schools,” Holleran writes. “It is only through such learning that we all can continue to help improve education for all students, especially those presently most underserved.”

About Sharon Kebschull Barrett

Sharon Kebschull Barrett is a senior editor with Public Impact. She edits the Public Impact and Opportunity Culture blogs, copyedits Public Impact's reports, and provides research and writing for the firm. Her recent work focuses on extending the reach of excellent teachers, charter schools, and state policy. A former newspaper reporter and copy editor, Ms. Barrett is the author of two cookbooks, Desserts from an Herb Garden and Morning Glories (St. Martin's Press). She has a B.A. in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she served as editor of The Daily Tar Heel.

Public Impact®

Public Impact, LLC
Chapel Hill, NC
919-240-7955

Public Impact encourages the free use, reproduction, and distribution of our materials, but we require attribution. If you adapt the materials, you must include on every page “Adapted from PublicImpact.com; Copyright Public Impact” in the font size specified here.

Materials may not be sold, leased, licensed, or otherwise distributed for compensation. See our Terms of Use page or contact us for more information.

Public Impact is certified as a living wage employer by Orange County Living Wage.

Search

Subscribe

Sign Up for E-News!
 


 
Read Back Issues of our
E-Newsletter

 
Subscribe to our blog with RSS

Follow

New from Public Impact

Employment Opportunities—Opportunity Culture Consultant
Public Impact is seeking candidates for Opportunity Culture consultant positions, with a Summer 2021 start date. The deadline for applications is January 17, 2020!

Learning in Real Time—How Charter Schools Served Students During Covid-19 Closures
Profiles highlight how charter schools were able to respond quickly to school closures during the pandemic and continue to serve their students well.

Building an Effective Staff—Profiles of Leaders of Color
Three-part series looks at how being a person of color affected the ways in which successful charter school leaders built schools where students, families, and staff learn, grow, and thrive.

Engaging Families—Profiles of Leaders of Color
Three-part series looks at how being a person of color affected the ways in which successful charter school leaders built schools where students, families, and staff learn, grow, and thrive.

Building a Strong School Culture—Profiles of Leaders of Color
Three-part series looks at how being a person of color affected the ways in which successful charter school leaders built schools where students, families, and staff learn, grow, and thrive.

The Impact of School Restarts—Lessons from Four Indianapolis Schools
Report analyzes how enrollment, demographic, and student performance data changed following the restarts of four charter schools in Indianapolis, IN.

Learning from Project L.I.F.T.—Legacy of a Public-Private School Turnaround Initiative
Report examines successes, challenges, and lessons from a private-public district turnaround initiative.

Public Impact, LLC | 919-240-7955 | Terms of Use | © Public Impact 2000-2020 | Wordpress website design by LeGa Design Group


Don’t miss the latest Public Impact reports:
Sign-up for our newsletter!



×