Public charter school boards and their superintendents have a responsibility to plan for the future, including for the next school superintendent. Superintendents serve as the Chief Executive Officer responsible for overseeing academic, financial, and operational performance of the school system. The job of school superintendent is very complex…

"Brown v. Board of Education" held that the educational systems of seventeen states that mandated segregated schools violated the Constitutional guarantee of equal protection. The decision helped set off the civil rights revolution. However, after so many years of backlash, schools of the South are dramatically less segregated than what…

May 17, 2024 marks the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision that ruled segregated schools were "inherently unequal." At the time, North Carolina was one of 17 states that enforced de jure segregation, that is, segregation by law. The state of North Carolina and the school districts within…

This study asks: What is the relationship between principal turnover and school performance? We use data on all Colorado public schools for the years 2013 through 2018 to examine the relationship between turnover and school performance. Analyses included difference-in-difference and ordinary least squares regression after first differencing.…

The annual assignment of elementary students from one classroom to the next is a ubiquitous cycle in schools. Since student class assignment has an effect on students' educational trajectory, understanding how placement procedures impact student equity is an important area of research with benefits for all stakeholders. In this action research…

The American Educator Panels (AEP) are nationally representative samples of teachers, school leaders, and district leaders across the country. The American School District Panel (ASDP) is a partnership among the RAND Corporation, the Center on Reinventing Public Education, Chiefs for Change, the Council of the Great City Schools, and Kitamba. The…

There is a perception that charter schools enroll a disproportionately lower number of students with disabilities than traditional public school districts (TPS). Coupled with this perception are antidotal stories of students with disabilities being turned away by charter schools during the enrollment process. This study sought to determine what…

This basic interpretive study was designed to understand the leadership coaching experiences of 15 public charter school principals across the United States and to explore the leadership practices that they described that they attempted because of leadership coaching. The findings from this study reveal that trust is an important condition when…

Despite a growing recognition of the significance of student transportation for promoting equitable school choice, to date, there has been limited understanding of the implementation of school transportation policies, particularly in choice-heavy settings. Moreover, little is known about the challenges associated with managing student…

The Charter Schools Program (CSP) is the nation's only source of dedicated federal funding to support the creation, expansion, and replication of public charter schools. Since FY2019, the CSP has been flat funded at $440 million. The CSP amounts to less than 1% of federal spending on K-12 education, however, it has a substantial impact on the…

In this paper, we investigate how student enrollment in public schools is different after the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the pandemic--between the 2018-19 and 2021-22 school years--about 12 percent of public elementary schools and 9 percent of middle schools experienced more than a 20 percent decline. This is a significant change from before the…

Critical-thinking development can enhance students' reasoning and thinking abilities, but the extent to which additional critical-thinking instruction can enhance academic performance remains unclear. Therefore, there is a need to investigate whether providing additional critical-thinking instruction can improve academic performance. This study…

Between March 2020 and March 2021, the federal government distributed an unprecedented amount of money to American public schools to address the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. About $6 billion was distributed in three waves to the state of Michigan alone. This report uses data provided by districts to the state government to analyze how…

School systems have taken on greater roles in guiding and supporting classroom instruction by redesigning their "educational infrastructure" -- the coordinated resources, structures, and norms that support teachers' work and drive instructional improvement. However, teachers often adapt or resist common instructional approaches citing…

School systems have taken on greater roles in guiding and supporting classroom instruction by redesigning their "educational infrastructure"--the coordinated resources, structures, and norms that support teachers' work and drive instructional improvement. However, teachers often adapt or resist common instructional approaches, citing…