This report examines 46 community (charter) schools that operated during the 1999-2000 school year. Community schools tend to be smaller than their public counterparts, enroll a higher proportion of minority and poor students, and serve relatively fewer special-needs students. On average, community-school teachers have fewer years of experience…

This book contains evidence about charter schools that can provide important data on evaluating this new public-private hybrid and its success at serving the core purpose of public education. The book focuses on charter schools in Michigan, which is regarded as having one of the most permissive charter laws in the country. The first three chapters…

This publication includes up-to-date information about charter schools in Wisconsin. It is intended to present best or promising practices of charter schools to each local educational agency in the state. It is a means of demonstrating agency accountability for informing the public, legislators, and those interested in charter schools, both within…

Family-school partnerships are increasingly touted as a means of improving both student and school improvement. This recognition has led to an increase in policies and initiatives that offer the following benefits: improved communication between parents and educators; home and school goals that are mutually supportive and shared; better…

This document is designed to guide local boards of education and school systems in Maryland in assisting individuals and organizations interested in establishing public charter schools. This guide is organized into the following parts: (1) Maryland Public Charter Schools Act; (2) Organizing to Assist Public Charter School Development; (3)…

The federal government is devoting millions of dollars to charter and voucher programs that currently require parents to abandon regular public schools. The goal of the authors of The School Choice Hoax is to expose the misleading hyperbole that has been driving the school choice movement and to show how charter schools can become more effective…

This report examines trends in student learning. Using data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the first section reports on current trends in reading and mathematics test scores, highlighting arithmetic and noting that student's computation skills have stagnated or declined in recent years. The second section revisits the…

This primer is designed to help charter school leaders in Ohio in coordinating testing and test data reporting procedures as required by state and federal guidelines. The report discusses the roles and responsibilities of charter schools under Ohio's new accountability system and what charter schools need to know to administer the tests of the…

This book is a short edited volume that brings together in one place, the best scholarly articles in charter schooling by national experts and leaders, written in a user-friendly fashion. It is the ideal introduction for those interested in the charter school movement with numerous insights for and by charter operators, administrators, and…

As the charter-school option has expanded across the country, contracting for educational management services is an increasingly available and attractive choice for charter-school governing boards and founding groups. To make contractual relationships work well, charter-school boards need to strike an effective balance between fulfilling their…

This manual provides information to help charter schools navigate the facility development process, including worksheets that can be customized to suit a particular school's needs. Sections cover how facility planning fits into business planning for charter schools, review a process for assessing a school's facility needs, and summarize how to…

Problem-based learning (PBL) is an instructional strategy for preparing administrators whose basic unit of instruction is a project. Students are organized into teams and work on these projects to grapple with the problem and to achieve the learning objectives that are embedded in the project. In this PBL project, students design and prepare a…

In 1991, the charter school movement began in Minnesota and since then, 28 more states and the District of Columbia have passed similar versions of charter school law. This paper examines a facility planning model designed to help charter schools maximize their chances of succeeding in the effort to secure permanent facilities. The model includes…

This report is a general guide for people planning a charter school. In September 1995 the Program on Reinventing Public Education, a collaborative effort of the University of Washington's Institute for Public Policy and Management and the RAND Institute for Education and Training, sponsored a workshop on charter school startup. This report…

This guide is intended to help current and prospective charter school leaders decide whether and how to work with pre-existing "whole school designs." Such school designs range from those that cover one core element of school operations to designs covering almost every aspect of school operations. The guide contains initial information…