The goal of this toolkit is to shed light on the importance of authorizing nontraditional charter schools and how the challenges of authorizing nontraditional schools manifest in practice, as well as to provide action steps for authorizers and school leaders who are able and eager to lead the field on these complex issues. The toolkit contains the…

Between 1994 and 2014, New York City engaged in a historic overhaul of its publicly funded high schools. This included the opening of charter high schools (made possible by a 1999 state law) and the creation of new, smaller district high schools that would, in time, replace many of the city's large, traditional, comprehensive, and vocational high…

New York State's system of public elementary and secondary schools is in steep decline, but it is salvageable. The roots of its problems pre-date the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, but the system's response to that challenge accelerated discontent with the schools and harmed students. The damage of those years will not be undone if…

Our urban school systems struggle because so many of their students live in poverty, but they also struggle because they were designed a hundred years ago, for an industrial society. In an increasing number of cities, they are being replaced by 21st century systems, in which the central administration does not operate all schools and employ all…

The "Quality Practice Project" (QPP) is the National Association of Charter School Authorizers' (NACSA's) multi-year research initiative to identify what high-performing authorizers do to achieve stellar student and public interest outcomes. Participants and researchers collaboratively investigated the perspectives and practices of…

This article compares charter schools and other public schools in New York State. School Report Card (SRC) data measuring student, teacher, and school characteristics from the state's 16 urban school districts with charter schools were examined. Descriptive and multivariate analysis was used. The findings suggest that there are more similarities…

This article introduces a conversation with Brett Peiser, named chief executive officer of "Uncommon Schools" in July of 2012, along with the principal of North Star Academy Vailsburg Middle School, a charter school in Newark, New Jersey's West Ward. There is no doubt that "Uncommon Schools" has given thousands of low-income…

When policymakers begin to think of ways to help schools improve, they often settle on the idea of giving individual schools greater independence. This led to the "site-based management" movement of the 1990s. Today, granting schools autonomy from some or all rules remains a popular strategy for reform. With expanded autonomy, districts…

Charter schools were developed, in part, to serve as an R&D engine for traditional public schools, resulting in a wide variety of school strategies and outcomes. In this paper, we collect unparalleled data on the inner-workings of 35 charter schools and correlate these data with credible estimates of each school's effectiveness. We find that…

The author reports on a new study which reveals that the lowest-performing public K-8 schools often linger in that state for years, neither improving enough to get off accountability life support nor being shuttered completely. The study adds that persistently failing charter schools fare no better than regular public schools. Of 2,025 chronically…

New York City's leading teachers' union signaled that it will not give up its fight to keep the city from closing bad schools. The Department of Education administers voluntary surveys to parents and teachers in each of its public and charter schools. The results of these surveys account for about 10 percent of the accountability score used to…

When 16 finalists come to Washington next week to make their final pitches in the $4 billion Race to the Top competition, most can expect to go home empty-handed. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, in announcing the finalists last week, said that no more than $2 billion will be divided among "very few winners" when the awards are…

This issue brief focuses on one particular report, released in September 2009, that has been widely cited by charter school advocates because it appears to show remarkable results. In the report, "How New York City's Charter Schools Affect Achievement," Stanford University professor Caroline Hoxby and her colleagues Sonali Murarka and…

This paper uses student level data from New York City to study the relationship between a public school losing enrollment to charter school competitors and the academic achievement of students who remain enrolled in it. Geographic measures most often used to study the effect of school choice policies on public school student achievement are not…

Only a quarter of the class of 2008 graduated from Alain Locke Senior High School in Los Angeles after four years. This was unsurprising since nearly 60 percent of the class had left Locke by the end of their sophomore year. A majority of Locke teachers--frustrated with the school's mediocrity--petitioned to allow charter management organization…