The purpose of this document is to provide information and resources on special education for charter schools and charter school authorizers. The information in this report should not be relied upon as a comprehensive or definitive response to specific legal situations involving special education compliance. This report includes a: (1) Minnesota…

When engaging in the process of opening a new school, leaders have endless planning and details to consider. One of the most important considerations lies in assembling a strong team of professionals and working to develop positive school culture. School leadership has a critical impact on the development of culture, and studies have shown that…

The COVID-19 pandemic paralyzed school operations worldwide; therefore, educators adopted online pedagogy to ensure learners continued their learning activities. However, the academic achievement of K-12 children in New York City was negatively impacted after adopting virtual learning, evidenced by reduced academic performances. The problem…

Education policy research has produced a wealth of information, but it has been less successful at actually informing education policy. Iris Rotberg notes that the issues addressed by policy research evoke strongly-held value judgments that are more powerful than research findings. But she also suggests steps we can take to strengthen the utility…

Multi-academy trusts are groups of schools in England led by an Executive Head Teacher and a Board of Trustees. High profile failures of these organisations raise questions over the way they are strategically led. Leadership studies argue that the absence of strategic thinking is a major detractor from performance & sustainability. However,…

The share of students attending charter schools has been rising. There is evidence that charter school growth has increased socioeconomic segregation of students between schools. In this paper, we assess whether charter school growth affects how students are organized within nearby traditional public schools (TPS). We use administrative data from…

This case study illustrates how leadership for learning and cultural competence could be used as theories of action during times of disruption to lead and transform urban teachers' sense of self, sense of others, and motivation for change. The case study focuses on educators from a large urban charter school whose response to the pandemic and the…

Using Charmaz's constructivist approach to grounded theory, this study presents a substantive theory about the ways that equitable leadership practices developed in principals within charter management organizations during a time of deep social transformation. This study was designed to understand the mindsets, beliefs, and values of principals…

Pregnant and parenting teenagers in the United States face academic, social, and emotional hardships (Baney et al., 2022; Kinser & Masho, 2015; Masterson et al., 2021). Schools, programs, and policies can aid pregnant and parenting students by alleviating burdens or improving schooling outcomes (Brouwer et al., 2019; Modesto, 2018; Zief et…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how teachers who teach 6th, 7th, or 8th grade English language arts in a virtual charter school environment describe the gamification process to support student engagement in the classroom. The overarching research question was: How do teachers who teach 6th, 7th, or 8th grade…

The linking of school choice and charter schools to the legacy of Black alternative education and civil rights initiatives is a central discursive galvanizing and organizing tool for charter proponents, as it aims to provide legitimacy to the charter movement, while simultaneously coopting Black critiques of the institution of education to advance…

Using student-level data, we analyze the post-secondary enrollment of high school graduates across 29 states from an online charter provider from 2017 to 2020. We estimate the association between virtual charter student characteristics and the likelihood of college enrollment. We find that students who enroll multiple years in the virtual school…

Using six waves of the Schools and Staffing Survey and the National Teacher and Principal Survey that span two decades, our study explores the differences between urban charter and traditional public school teachers and how those differences become more or less pronounced over time. During this time frame, the charter sector experienced…

School social workers provide mental health services to millions of students each year. However, few studies focus on how social workers generate funding and other support for school mental health. The purpose of this study is to identify the continuum of school mental health supports and how social workers advocate for and generate these…

Theories of market-based school reform suggest that teacher labor markets may be inefficient because schools lack autonomy to incentivize performance in hiring, retention, and compensation. We test this empirically by comparing teacher exits in the deregulated market of New Orleans with neighboring traditional school districts. We find that the…