Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), all public schools must provide a free and appropriate public education to students with disabilities. As such, public charter schools must accept and educate students with disabilities and maintain open enrollment policies, which often include a fair lottery system. Schools must plan…

A recent report commissioned by the Office of the District of Columbia Auditor examined the accuracy of enrollment projections by the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) and by charter local educational agencies (LEAs). While the report found that enrollment projections were fairly consistent with LEA level enrollment, based on a sum of…

We measure the relationship between travel time to school and students' likelihood of transfer (and where they transfer to), attendance, and test scores in Washington, DC. Travel time to school is especially salient in DC, where roughly three-quarters of students attend a school other than the one tied to their neighborhood. A longer commute is…

In dozens of U.S. cities, more than one in five students now attend charter schools. Charter school expansion has fueled an increasingly energetic discussion among advocates: How large a share of urban schools should be charters? Is the ideal New Orleans, where nearly all public schools are charter schools? Or does that create demands on charters…

The Citywide Education Progress Report looks at how a city is doing across three goals: (1) The education system is continuously improving; (2) All students have access to a high-quality education; and (3) The education strategy is rooted in the community. Across each goal it presents indicators of what the city is doing and how it is doing. The…

We estimate school-choice preferences revealed by the rank-ordered lists submitted by more than 22,000 applicants to a citywide lottery for more than 200 traditional and charter public schools in Washington, DC. The results confirm previously reported findings that commuting distance, school demographics, and academic indicators play important…

In this paper, Leading Educators and the Aspen Institute propose a roadmap to empower teachers to lead from the front of the classroom. This paper outlines key phases that system administrators will need to consider as they build teacher leadership systems that address their highest priorities. For each phase, the Aspen Institute offers a…

The Walton Family Foundation was at a pivotal point in early 2015. After investing $1.3 billion in K-12 education over the previous two decades, executive and board leadership were reflecting on past work, and charting a course for the Foundation's strategic direction based on key learnings from their investments in education. The Walton Family…

In America today, families in almost every urban community have some kind of public school choice. This report focuses on "public school choice," under which families are able to choose from both an array of traditional public schools and public charter schools. Public school choice has grown rapidly in the past 20 years; new charter…

The authors evaluate what impact, if any, the financial downturn had on the funding of traditional public school districts and public charter schools during the period FY07 to FY11 by examining all education revenues in Denver, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Newark, and Washington, DC. The findings indicate that the majority of sites increased…

This study was intended to enhance the limited research on the knowledge and confidence of special education teachers in public education regarding transition services and the quality of transition plans they develop. The key variables examined in this study are knowledge, confidence, and the quality of student transition plans. The sample…

The "Quality Practice Project" (QPP) is the National Association of Charter School Authorizers' (NACSA's) multi-year research initiative to identify what high-performing authorizers do to achieve stellar student and public interest outcomes. Participants and researchers collaboratively investigated the perspectives and practices of…

The foundation of school choice is offering families a variety of schools and letting them choose one they believe is most suitable for their child. For school choice to matter, schools need to have different features that parents are seeking. The District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarship Program was created by Congress to provide tuition…

Many districts are expanding and diversifying the school options available to parents--a trend that shows no signs of reversing. While all public schools are required to test and publically report results, it remains nearly impossible for families and education and civic leaders to make school-to-school comparisons, especially across district-run…

DC KIDS COUNT tracks indicators of child well-being at the neighborhood and Ward level, so that parents, service providers, advocates and policymakers can see outcomes for children more clearly. The DC KIDS COUNT Data Tool 2.0 allows the user to explore neighborhood-level data interactively. However, because DC is organized politically by its…