Are parents an untapped resource in improving and reimagining K-12 education in Kansas City? What do they think would enhance student learning and what are they willing to do to help their children get the education they deserve? These are among the questions explored in an in-depth survey of 1,566 parents with children now in public school in the…

The federal School Improvement Grants (SIG) program aims to improve student achievement by promoting the implementation of four school intervention models: transformation, turnaround, restart, and closure. Previous research provides evidence that low-performing schools adopt some practices promoted by the four models, but little is known about how…

Over just the past decade, online learning at the K-12 level has grown from a novelty to a movement. Often using the authority and mechanism of state charters, and in league with home schoolers and other allies, private companies and some state entities are now providing full-time online schooling to a rapidly increasing number of students in the…

Each school year, the School Climate Survey is administered to gather information on the perceptions that students, their parents, and school staffs hold concerning their schools and their performance. In 2010-2011, the survey was distributed to approximately 92,000 parents, 48,000 elementary, secondary, and adult students, and 25,000 staff. This…

Authorizers are as varied as the schools they oversee. Some are responsible for just one charter, while others monitor hundreds of charters serving tens of thousands of students. Some are school districts, while others are independent statewide boards, universities, not-for-profits, or state education agencies. Regardless of their size and type,…

The "Louisiana K-12 & School Choice Survey" project, commissioned by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice and conducted by Braun Research Incorporated (BRI), measures Louisiana registered voters' familiarity and views on a range of K-12 education topics and school choice reforms. In this paper the author and his colleagues…

The educational dilemmas faced in Milwaukee are mirrored in other large, urban cities across the country. Thus, Milwaukee presents an example that reflects a national crisis in addressing race and education. This article examines educational options for Milwaukee students through the lens of Critical Race Theory.

Catholic schools achieved the greatest social transformation in American history, pulling impoverished Irish immigrants out of the underclass and into the working and middle classes, writes Patrick McCloskey, author of The Street Stops Here--an account of a year in the life of a Catholic school in Harlem. These schools now provide a lifeline for…

This Issue Brief, an update of "Authorizing Virtual Charter Schools: Rules of the Road on the Digital Highway" by Gregg Vanourek, is part of NACSA's Cyber series, which addresses issues in policy and practice that concern authorizing online schools and blended learning. It aims to improve authorizer understanding and oversight of online…

In 2002, Qatar began establishing publicly funded, privately operated "independent schools" in parallel with the existing, centralized Ministry of Education system. The reform that drove the establishment of the independent schools included accountability provisions such as (a) measuring school and student performance and (b)…

CSI-USC continues to make sense of what the California statewide data system provides. This fourth annual report gauges multiple measures of academic and financial performance, probing well beyond mere test scores. Ratings in familiar green, yellow, and red cover four areas: financial resources and investment, school quality, student performance…

Student mobility is the phenomenon of students in grades K-12 changing schools for reasons other than customary promotion from elementary school to middle school or from middle school to high school. This non-promotional school change can occur during the school year or in the summer between school years. It may involve residential change, school…

The "Closing the Achievement Gap" series explores the Casey Foundation's education investments and presents stories, results, and lessons learned. An objective of every education investment at the Annie E. Casey Foundation is to attract co-investment in promising and evidence-based programs and policies. One way the Foundation does this…

In this era of unforgiving accountability and test scores with high-stakes implications, important lessons can be learned from charter school marketing. Scrutiny of the regular public schools has never been more sharp-edged. Charter school proponents are becoming increasingly aggressive in promoting themselves as a viable alternative for…

"Replication" is the practice of a single charter school board or management organization opening several more schools that are each based on the same school model. The most rapid strategy to increase the number of new high-quality charter schools available to children is to encourage the replication of existing quality schools. This policy guide…