Innovative staffing means thinking differently about instructional roles and available funding to improve academics, creating new career options for teachers and addressing persistent teaching vacancies. By reallocating funding from these vacancies, existing budgets can fund new staffing models that increase teacher collaboration and pay, extend…

Facilities access is arguably the largest and most persistent challenge facing new and expanding charter schools. Creating a charter facility "incubator" can help solve this challenge. This case study provides an in-depth look at the design and operations of one such incubator, "Building Pathways," a nonprofit that serves as…

Almost immediately after schools closed due to the coronavirus outbreak in spring 2020, we began to see anecdotal evidence that charter schools were reacting quickly and serving students well. This paper offers evidence that smaller networks and schools that represent over 65% of the charter school landscape were able to respond quickly and take…

As districts across the country search for ways to turn around their lowest-performing schools, a growing number are partnering with external providers--often charter operators--to implement "restarts." These providers receive operational autonomy and bring their own approach to schooling, positioning them to implement deep and…

The first IDEA Public Schools' campus opened in 2000, just miles from the US-Mexico border in Donna, Texas. Fast-forward nearly two decades, and 79 IDEA public charter schools serve approximately 45,000 students across six regions, and those students consistently outperform their peers statewide on a range of metrics from proficiency to graduation…

In 2011, some of Charlotte's leading private and corporate foundations formed a partnership with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to implement innovative school turnaround interventions affecting use of talent, time, and technology, and engaging parents and communities at West Charlotte High School and its feeder elementary and middle schools. In…

Across the United States, a movement to create a new kind of public school--"autonomous district schools"--is giving districts the freedoms charter schools receive. Like charter schools, autonomous district schools are freed from innovation-inhibiting state and district policies, allowing talented educators to make academic and…