During the past few decades, Charter schools have been utilized as laboratories for educational innovation. Each year, more and more Charter schools open across the United States. These schools are governed the same way traditional public schools are, but there is research that suggests that inequalities exist in the representation and performance…

Research on the effectiveness of fidget spinner use in the classroom to increase academic performance and behavior has had mixed results, with no studies evaluating the use of fidget spinners on reading performance. The current study examined the effects of using a fidget spinner on Aimsweb oral reading fluency probes for 66 students in the 3rd…

The Washington State Board of Education (SBE) issues an annual report to the Governor, the Legislature, and the public, in accordance with the Charter School Act, RCW 28A.710.250. The statute requires the annual charter school report to include the following: (1) The performance of the state's charter schools during the prior school year,…

The charter school movement encompasses many school models. In Massachusetts in the 2010's, the site of our study, urban charter schools primarily used "No Excuses" practices, whereas nonurban charters had greater model variety. Using randomized admissions lotteries, we estimate the impact of charter schools by locality on college…

On July 24, 2023, the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) of the U.S. Department of Education (US ED) released a Dear Colleague letter (DCL) and lengthy guidance related to the responsibilities states have to oversee the education of students with disabilities in their schools and to ensure that those students are afforded all of their…

The COVID-19 crisis caused the educational system's sudden and drastic upheaval as parents were forced to decide where their children would attend school and how they would get there. These decisions were complicated by the uncertainty surrounding what type of online or hybrid schooling districts would offer, the health risks of different…

To promote a STEM career pipeline, a mentor outreach program was created within a K-12 charter school network, with a pilot year focusing on eighth and ninth-grade students. Utilizing a small cohort of volunteers from a nearby community college as student mentors and one faculty member, 12 visits were conducted throughout the school year. The…

Across the United States, cities like St. Louis may be perceived as predominantly Black/White and monolingual. In such places, there are often few state resources and expertise driving the new growth of dual language bilingual education (DLBE)--that is, policies and programs that aim to develop students' bilingualism and biculturalism from an…

Growing numbers of students are educated in charter schools, including students with disabilities (SWD). Prior research suggests that charter schools educate a smaller percentage of SWD than traditional public schools, leading to a special education gap between sectors. We used data from a large urban district to examine how choice, mobility, and…

(Purpose) This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of Imagine Math by comparing the performance of program users and non-users on the NWEA MAP Growth Math assessment. (Methods) Propensity score matching was utilized to compare statistically similar southeastern U.S. charter school students who used or did not use the Imagine Math program during…

Charter schools continue to expand, particularly in urban communities. To critique the civic side of charter schools, we applied Wilson's counter-public framework from a macro level to analyze the 2014 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)- Civics results. We employed a multilevel regression model to ascertain whether Black and…

African American students are under-enrolled in gifted and honors programs due to external and internal factors, which are explained in this Executive Leadership Portfolio (ELP). To address this problem, I have studied the APEX program, a predominantly African American honors program based at East Side Charter School in Wilmington, Delaware, and…

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Congress created the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund to help support K-12 public schools in emergency situations. These funds were essential in helping schools to better adapt to students' needs. This report explains how public charter schools allocated the…

Unified enrollment (UE) systems were designed to improve efficiency, equity, and transparency in school choice processes, but research has focused on efficiency gains. This study examines whether moving from decentralized enrollment processes to UE mitigates or exacerbates racial segregation that often occurs in choice systems. Specifically, we…

Objective: Despite widespread availability of COVID-19 vaccines, millions of Americans have not received the recommended vaccine doses. In the District of Columbia (DC), COVID-19 vaccination rates are lowest among residents who are Non-Hispanic (NH) Black and among school-aged children. We assessed COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among staff and…