Dynamic new ventures like the Knowledge is Power Program, Teach For America, and New Leaders for New Schools, are increasingly being asked to step in to assist struggling school districts. While promising, these ventures have thus far typically been characterized by "one-off" examples of success that are extraordinarily reliant on talent and…

Kansas Association of School Boards (KASB) staff created an index of educational outcomes to compare results from state to state. This report is an analysis of that study. A list of the overall rankings is included on the back page of this report. The index is based on a combination of objective qualitative measures. The data comes from national…

The charter school landscape is dramatically different today compared to when the federal government first forayed into the field in 1994. That year it established the Charter School Program as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA. The Charter School Program, which is designed to support the startup of new public charter…

Charter schools emerged in the early 1990s as a strategy for improving student learning and increasing quality educational options, often for underserved students and communities. The charter school idea centers on the promise of increased autonomy for accountability for results. Thus, the charter movement has helped to lead the charge--and has…

Fifteen years after the first charter school legislation was passed, the number of charter schools opening in the United States each year continues to grow. In 2000, research was conducted to examine the extent and quality of service to students with disabilities in Texas's charter schools. Descriptive statistics and structured interviews were…

There has been a great deal of focus in recent years on high school reform as a way to ensure all students graduate ready for a skilled job or additional postsecondary education. As expectations for a more highly educated American citizenry rise, what happens in the middle grades--the beginning of the secondary-to-postsecondary education…

The author, who lived and worked as a charter school consultant in post-Katrina New Orleans for 6 months, describes the evolution of charter schools as the predominant means of education and the challenges that chartering faces as a reform, raising issues of access and equity as central concerns. The article concludes by offering some solutions to…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to revisit a successful school to see how the principal had sustained success over time. Design/methodology/approach: The paper uses a case study research design similar to the 2005 report. Findings: The old findings revealed a principal who had used direction setting, developing people and redesigning the…

Over the last three years, "Hopes, Fears, & Reality" has provided new evidence and analysis about what is going on in charter schools, how well they are doing, where they need to improve, and what can be learned from the research on these types of public schools. Past volumes have outlined how achievement studies should be conducted and…

KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) offers training for teachers designed to turn them into school principals with an entrepreneur's skill set. Teacher Jason Singer underwent KIPP training and now recruits 5th-grade students for the charter middle school he opened. KIPP, which was founded in 1994 by Teach For America alums Michael Feinberg and David…

In the seven years that Eva Moskowitz has been in the public eye as City Council member and now head of a charter school, she has proven her unwavering commitment to public education. During her tenure as Chair of the Council's Education Committee, she held 125 oversight hearings on everything from procurement practices to work rules in the…

This report, designed as one component of the comprehensive evaluation of the Milwaukee school system being conducted by the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP), is based on focus group conversations with low-income families whose children attend Milwaukee public and private schools. The report seeks to elucidate the demand side of school…

Site visits are one of the means the Department of Education uses to document each charter school's performance and progress. These visits usually take place during the second and third years of the charter. The Charter School Office, however, reserves the right to conduct visits at other times when deemed necessary. The primary purposes of a site…

Formerly titled "Empowering Gifted Minds: Educational Advocacy That Works", the author believes this book is the definitive manual on gifted advocacy for gifted students. The author tells parents and teachers how to document a child's abilities to provide reasonable educational options year by year. This book provides imperative information on…

Mayor Cory A. Booker, a rising star in the Democratic Party nationally, has high hopes for the role education in general, and charters in particular, can play in efforts to revitalize this long-struggling city. He says that, eventually, he would like to see one-fourth of Newark's public school students attend high-performing charter schools. The…