This is the executive summary for the report, "Seizing the Opportunity: Educating Students with Disabilities in Charter Schools." Only about 20 percent of students with disabilities score at proficient levels on state assessments. Fewer than 70 percent earn a high school diploma within four years. Charter schools, which operate with…

The Center on Reinventing Public Education has long focused on making school choice work. Parents of children with disabilities face greater barriers to choosing schools for their children. This brief is the first installment in a series of reports examining how parents of children with disabilities experience the process of choosing schools. The…

In January 2014, as part of a multicity study, researchers from the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) met with a dozen parents in Detroit to learn about their experiences with education in the city. Parents struggle to navigate the city's complex education marketplace. A lack of information, confusing paperwork, and transportation gaps…

The current wave of new teacher evaluation systems around the country offers an opportunity to broaden the conversation surrounding teacher effectiveness and its relationship to school coherence, to look at how schools and school systems might take a more integrated and intentional approach to attracting, training, and managing high-quality…

In April 2010, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation convened a group of researchers and financial analysts to discuss how to better understand the financing and sustainability of Charter Management Organizations (CMOs). The goals of the meeting were twofold: (1) to suggest a set of common ways…

A staggering achievement gap exists between minority and white students in America. The gap is unjust, and it is constraining the country economically, socially, and politically. Intense political pressures, labor contracts, and other forces prevent urban superintendents from closing those gaps. However, partnerships with high-performing charter…

The most important burden of charter schools is the need to demonstrate that the instruction they provide actually benefits students. They can hire their own teachers, make their own tradeoffs between spending on administration and teaching, locate anywhere in the community, and let parents know in advance what a child must do to succeed in the…