In 2023, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools elevated the voices of charter school students, educators, families, and advocates. The organization persevered through challenges and expanded access to high quality public charter schools for a greater number of students around the nation. This annual report covers what the sector…

In this study, the authors draw on 58 interviews with state policy makers and experts in five states to examine how state policy makers and education leaders think about school choice policy and how issues of equity show up in state-level discourse and action. The findings from these interviews suggest that more could be done to advance equity in…

The need for more quality public schools for U.S. children is as great as ever. One policy solution to help meet this demand is to grow more of what is already working. To expand access to existing high-quality charter schools, policymakers and authorizers remove barriers and make it easier to grow enrollment and expand locations. Behind every…

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed the way that families and policymakers view K-12 education. Learning loss is having an outsized impact on students who were furthest from opportunity before the pandemic. And families are increasingly looking for new educational options for their children. For decades, access to educational options…

Education policy debates over the last twenty years have focused on the need to increase students' test scores. The federal government and states have implemented and expanded a variety of test-based, school accountability policies. Accountability pressures have incentivized schools to narrow their curriculum, decrease time allocated to…

A number of cities across the country are trying to make school choice work better for families by adopting new systems and policies that cover both district and charter schools. The common enrollment system is a promising new development that allows families to fill out a single application with a single deadline for any and all schools they wish…

The information contained in this report is based on data collected from the Charter School Facilities Survey in Louisiana during the 2017-18 school year. The Charter School Facilities Survey consists of 55 base questions which are used in every participating state, with an option for participating states to include 15 additional state-specific…

The debate over school vouchers continues as more states offer government dollars to fund private schooling for students as a method of improving choice and quality in K-12 education. Previous research in the charter school sector has found that special education enrollment discrepancies between charters and traditional public schools is likely…

Under new school-choice policies, schools feel increasing pressure to market their schools to parents and students. I examine how school leaders in New Orleans used different marketing strategies based on their positions in the market hierarchy and the ways in which they used formal and informal processes to recruit students. This study relied on…

Five years after the hurricane devastated the region, New Orleans schools emerge changed--and challenged. New Orleans finds itself with a transformed educational system and one that continues to evolve. This new reality comes as the city's public school population stood at about 38,000 as of February, well below the estimated 65,000 before the…

In post-Katrina New Orleans, Louisiana, there is a growing concentration of charter schools. The Recovery School District (RSD) has oversight of the majority of these schools. To explore charges from community advocates that RSD charter schools restricted admission and provided inadequate services for students with disabilities, the following…

Charter schools have been a mechanism of school reform for three decades (Finn, Manno, & Vanourek, 2000; Greene et al, 2010) and have received increased attention during the current Obama administration (Loveless, 2010). Studies on the effectiveness of charter schools demonstrate mixed results and that school quality varies dramatically, but…