This report documents how education "quarterbacks" (formerly known as harbormasters) have supported governance reform in three cities, and why and how they were effective. This exploration of why districts need governance reform and how to catalyze and implement it focuses on the following questions: (1) Why did the education…

State laws and charter authorizing standards have not kept up with the explosive growth of charter schools in the last two decades. Annenberg Institute for School Reform's (AISR's) 2014 report "Public Accountability for Charter Schools: Standards and Policy Recommendations for Effective Oversight," offers seven standards, each with a set…

Across the United States, a movement to create a new kind of public school--"autonomous district schools"--is giving districts the freedoms charter schools receive. Like charter schools, autonomous district schools are freed from innovation-inhibiting state and district policies, allowing talented educators to make academic and…

Will the digital-learning movement repeat the mistakes of the charter-school movement? How much more successful might today's charter universe look if yesterday's proponents had focused on the policies and practices needed to ensure its quality, freedom, and resources over the long term? What mistakes might have been avoided? Damaging scandals…

Education Resource Strategies (ERS) works with school and district leaders to help them more strategically use resources--people, time, and money--to improve student performance. They have found that many school districts begin creating small high schools without a clear sense of how much they will spend or how to ensure that small schools…

The Charter School Office has created the Opening Procedures Handbook as a tool to assist charter school founding groups prepare for the exciting, yet challenging, task of opening a Massachusetts public charter school. The Handbook summarizes the opening procedures process, identifies the action items that must be completed prior to the school's…

The Annual Report is a critical document in charter school accountability; it is intended to be a clear, concise report regarding school performance and its success in meeting Accountability Plan goals. The formatting for each school's report may be unique; however, there are required elements set forth in this document that must be included in…

Teachers may be the most important element of an effective school, but does that mean that K-12 improvement must wait on the ability of schools or systems to recruit, nurture, and retain outstanding teachers? Such a strategy implies that widespread excellence hinges on the ability of publicly funded school systems to attract more than 3.3 million…

This report is one of nine detailed case studies of small urban high schools that served as the foundation for the Education Resource Strategies (ERS) report "Strategic Designs: Lessons from Leading Edge Small Urban High Schools." These nine schools were dubbed "Leading Edge Schools" because they stand apart from other high…

Education Resource Strategies (ERS) works with school and district leaders to help them more strategically use resources--people, time, and money--to improve student performance. They have found that many school districts begin creating small high schools without a clear sense of how much they will spend or how to ensure that small schools…

Massachusetts currently maintains several charter schools in its K-12 educational system. This paper applies the charter school idea to public institutions of higher education. Charter colleges are publicly owned institutions managed independent of most controls imposed by state bureaucracies and higher education systems. Charter schools are more…

The eight schools profiled in this document are serving different populations, but all of them are closing the achievement gap between low-income, minority, and special needs students and their peers. By trying out innovative new strategies, these schools are blazing a trail for others to follow. They are dispelling the myth that some students can…