Eva Moskowitz (the founder and CEO of the Success Charter Network in Harlem) and Arin Lavinia offer practical, classroom-tested ideas for dramatically improving teaching and learning. Moskowitz and Lavinia reveal how a charter school in the middle of Harlem, enrolling neighborhood children selected at random, emerged as one of the top schools in…

Public officials are increasingly contracting with the private sector for a range of educational services. With much of the focus on private sector accountability on cost-effectiveness and student performance, less attention has been given to shifts in democratic accountability. Drawing on data from the state of New York, one of the most active…

This article provides key findings from a study of 30 principals working in charter and conventional schools in two northeastern states. It aims to inform policy makers regarding how principals could more positively influence teacher quality. It focuses on the following questions: (1) What influenced how principals hired, assigned, evaluated, and…

Our 31st annual report analyzing data from southeast Wisconsin's public school districts finds that while 68 of the 92 school districts are exceeding or significantly exceeding expectations on our new state report cards, there are large achievement gaps across the region on state assessments for low-income students and students of color. Key…

Our 32nd annual report analyzing data from southeast Wisconsin's public school districts finds progress on some college readiness indicators and largely positive showings on district report cards. Those results are offset, however, by discouraging results on standardized tests and continued substantial achievement gaps between students of…

In this paper the authors do not examine different operating strategies for charter schools or analyze the impact of their often educationally intensive models on finance. Instead, because public charter schools are funded predominantly by public dollars, they simply ask what impact location--and its associated variances in public funding and the…

Reform-minded educators often run into obstacles when they try to bring their innovative ideas to schools modeled on twentieth-century factories. The challenge of "greenfield schooling," as I write in my new book, "Education Unbound: The Promise and Practice of Greenfield Schooling," is to cultivate environments that invite…

This report highlights 10 of the most advanced and talked-about teacher evaluation systems nationally: Delaware; Rhode Island; Tennessee; Hillsborough County, Florida; Houston, Texas; New Haven, Connecticut; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Washington, DC (referred to throughout just as Washington); Achievement First (a charter management organization,…

U.S. school districts have taken widely varied approaches to reopening public schools for the 2020-2021 school year. The divergence stems from the highly localized approach to both schooling and addressing the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and differences in COVID-19 transmission rates among communities. To develop a national…

Creating smart, coherent education policy is painstaking work; there are technical, budgetary, and political challenges at almost every turn. But it is some of the most important work that state leaders can undertake. As Ohioans prepared to elect a new governor in late 2018, we at the Fordham Institute began rolling out a set of policy proposals…

For the last 30 years, the Public Policy Forum has collected and analyzed education data to produce an annual report on the demographics, academic performance, and finances of public school districts in southeast Wisconsin. In the three decades of producing this report, few years have exhibited as much change and transformation as this one. The…

In 2007, Andrew J. Rotherham proposed a new approach to the contentious issue of charter school caps, the statutory limits on charter school growth in place in several states. Rotherham's proposal, termed "smart charter school caps," called for quality sensitive caps that allow the expansion of high-performing charter schools while also…

Educators, school administrators, policymakers, and community members are responsible for providing a quality education for all students in the nation's public schools. Traditional and charter schools bear the duty to ensure that special populations of students have access to the best education possible. This responsibility makes it essential for…

As schools are in the business of educating students, academic performance should be the primary outcome by which a charter school is evaluated. But a charter school cannot provide students with a good education if it cannot meet payroll, afford to keep the lights on in the building, or worse yet, improperly uses public funds that should be spent…

Drawing on deep expertise and diverse experiences in the sector, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) and the Charter School Growth Fund (CSGF) have collaborated to identify a set of key policies and practices that could dramatically accelerate the replication and growth of high-performing charter schools and charter…