Over the past two decades, researchers have spent countless hours studying the impacts of public charter schools--independently-run, tuition-free schools of choice that serve some 3.7 million U.S. students today. Just prior to the pandemic, studies from Ohio and nationally indicated that charters on average delivered superior academic outcomes…

This case study illustrates how leadership for learning and cultural competence could be used as theories of action during times of disruption to lead and transform urban teachers' sense of self, sense of others, and motivation for change. The case study focuses on educators from a large urban charter school whose response to the pandemic and the…

In a new report, "Never Going Back: An Analysis of Parent Sentiment on Education," the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools examines results from a survey of more than 5,000 parents conducted by The Harris Poll in May 2022. Survey results provide deep insights into how parents feel about education, whether and why they've made…

This paper explores how parents' COVID-19 safety concerns relate to school governance models (SGMs), instructional modes (i.e. in-person, hybrid, online), and perceptions of school quality during the pandemic. Leveraging two waves of household survey data across 47 states and the District of Columbia, we first conduct a series of multinomial…

This article theorizes how crises and markets shape the responses of consumers and producer organizations. We advance four propositions: 1) if a crisis requires major revisions in operational rules, less-exit sensitive (i.e., monopoly-like) organizations shall revise to aggregate preferences of organized producers; and more-exit sensitive…

Challenges to teaching in the post-COVID classroom plagued schools across the globe. This qualitative study followed two middle-school teachers in a charter school located in the Western United States to identify the changes to classroom teaching and their effects on the classroom environment through the first year of teaching after the 2020…

COVID-19 placed a significant burden on urban students of color and their families. Changing environmental, community, and schooling factors influenced students' ability and desire to attend school regularly. To ensure that students would attend school, district and school leaders were challenged with creating school environments and cultures that…

In early 2020, the global COVID-19 pandemic closed schools for the rest of the 2019-20 school year (fiscal year 2020 or FY20). The United States Congress deployed funds to help K-12 schools adjust and plan for reopening via the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, including the initial $13.2 billion installment through the…

Although the COVID pandemic dramatically expanded K-12 remote learning in its first years, little is known about the lasting effects on virtual schooling policies and practices. Drawing on evolutionary theories of change and qualitative data from 2019 to 2022, we explore this topic in Oregon, a state with a long history of virtual schools. We find…

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have been a catalyst for transformation in K-12 through initiatives, including diversifying teaching pipelines, starting new schools, and establishing programs designed to meet the aspirations of students far away from quality opportunities. HBCUs and their alumni have played powerful roles in…

This grounded theory study explored how primary-grade teachers perceive and enact dialogic English Language Arts (ELA) comprehension pedagogy in the novel context of pandemic-induced digital learning. The study involved nine diverse rural primary teachers teaching digitally during the coronavirus disease pandemic. The researchers followed a…

Uncommon Schools is a nonprofit charter management organization that starts and manages public charter schools, primarily in traditionally underserved communities. As part of a 2016 grant awarded to Uncommon from the U.S. Department of Education's Charter Schools Program to support replication and expansion of its school model, we conducted a…

As widely reported and documented, the coronavirus pandemic hit schools hard. To address challenges caused by COVID-19, the U.S. Congress created and funded the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER). While educators and the field have learned much during the era of reforming high poverty schools, the challenge to improve…

Since the peak of the pandemic in 2020, enrollment in virtual schools has steadily increased, with virtual schools now accounting for approximately 1.4% of the nation's public school students. While the effects of the pandemic on student achievement and mental health have been extensively studied, research has yet to thoroughly examine the impact…

In this paper, the authors draw on evolutionary theories of change and qualitative data from 2019-2022, to explore the impact of the pandemic on K-12 virtual education in a state with a long history of virtual schooling by asking: "How has the ongoing COVID pandemic influenced virtual schooling in Oregon?" A virtual school in this study…