By Rachel Scott, The Finance Project

Connectedness to the learning community, excitement about what each new school day can bring, positive relationships with role models, consistent performance, a commitment to come back next year... these are some of the outcomes independent charter schools hope to elicit for kids in their schools. With a rate of 25% teacher turnover (compared to 14% at public schools) in one study, charter school leaders must also think about how to bring about those sorts of outcomes for their teachers. While schools’ charters often give administrators the flexibility to ensure that the teachers they employ have the right skills and the right "fit" with a school, the majority of turnover can still be attributed to voluntary choice by the teachers.

Beyond the obvious costs of frequently searching for, hiring, and orienting new teachers to charter schools, teacher attrition has other costs that are harder to quantify.  David Stuit and Thomas M. Smith at Vanderbilt University (2009) recap the findings of several researchers who find that teachers with the strongest academic achievement themselves are the ones most likely to leave charter schools (and the teaching profession altogether) -- a move that pulls some of the most qualified teachers out of charter schools. Perhaps just as costly, when teachers don't return, the critical network of adults at any given charter school who know the children well and are invested in their success as they grow erodes.

Causes for Teacher Attrition
Discovering the reasons why good teachers leave is essential to knowing what leaders of independent charter schools can do to keep them.  Research on the subject is readily available. It is worth noting, however, that the examination of teacher attrition in charter schools is often connected to other political or ideological 'baggage." Charter school leaders must understand that teacher retention is, to a large degree, linked to other sensitive issues like unionization of charter school teachers and comparative assessments of student achievement between independent charter schools, managed multi-site charters, and public schools.

Several studies point to the relatively young age of charter school teachers (compared to public school teachers) as the strongest predictor of turnover, as it is with teachers in any setting. Other factors correlated with teacher attrition in charter schools include: low number of years at the school, non-certified teachers or teachers teaching outside their certification areas, and "teachers' relative satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the school's: 1) mission, 2) perceived ability to attain the mission, and 3) administration and governance" (Miron and Applegate; Western Michigan University, 2007).)  One study of teacher attrition in charter schools in Wisconsin that controls for many of these factors concludes that "high turnover rates in Wisconsin charter schools appear to be a disadvantaged school problem rather than a charter school problem per se"-- pointing perhaps to increased needs for more wraparound services for students and families, as well as teacher support and training in cultural competence.

Others posit that teachers are less likely to want to stay in charter schools where they tend to be paid less than in public schools and are more likely to be without union protection. In fact, the Century Foundation suggests that 90% of charter schools are non-unionized environments, and many teachers cite job security and protection of wages and benefits as primary factors as they select jobs.

What Indie Charter School Leaders Can Do to Keep Good Teachers

• Maximize wages and benefits to attract qualified teachers as you develop your school budget. Look at what district teachers and other charter school teachers are being paid in your region, and ensure your salary and benefits packages are competitive. Within the range of salaries you can offer, ideally you should be able to hire a mix of seasoned and new teachers. Low-balling salaries makes it far more likely that your school would not be the employer of choice for qualified candidates and it reduces the number of experienced teachers in a school who can serve as mentors for younger teachers. Using the Cost Estimation Tool and Revenue Planning Tools developed by the National Resource Center on Charter Schools can help you realistically estimate costs and plan for ways to beef up your funding. 
• Give teachers a voice in developing school policies and curricula. For many charter school teachers, the autonomy and opportunity to be creative in their work is what draws them to their jobs in the first place!  So, ask teachers about the ways they would like to be involved in decision making. Solicit their input frequently and openly as you make decisions. Consider using an outside facilitator to help you get their input for very critical decisions. Let teachers know you value their input and how you plan to use it; if you ultimately make a decision that contradicts their input, let them know in a respectful way why you decided that way. Ensure that teachers' voices are directly and regularly heard by your governance body.
• Make teacher buy-in and integral aspect of the mission of your school and give teachers the support they need to execute that mission. Find interesting and innovative ways to connect meetings and professional development opportunities to the school's mission in order to keep teachers excited about what you're accomplishing together. Resist the urge to do most of the talking when you convene staff. Build a strengths-based and transparent system to support teachers who need help. Visit classrooms often. Recognize teachers who are executing the mission in creative, effective and fun ways.
•  Leverage available supports for high-need or vulnerable students and their families. Teachers in charter schools often put in longer hours for less pay than their district counterparts.  Their jobs can be overwhelming -- especially for young and inexperienced teachers. Rarely are teachers also trained social workers. So, ensure that your school offers adequate resources to meet the needs of English language learners and special education students. If there are other basic unmet needs for students and families, such as health and mental health care, child care, food supports, or housing, look for community nonprofits or community action agency partners who can help meet these needs. In some cases, the school itself can access federal, state or local funds to meet these needs. Check out issue-specific funding guides, like LEARNING TO READ: A Guide to Federal Funding for Grade-Level Reading Proficiency, for ideas on how to bring in resources for students and families with specific needs.

Human resource management may or may not be your leadership strong suit. But knowledge of the research that exists on teacher attrition in charter schools along with careful planning to avoid it can help keep great teachers at your school, enrich your organizational culture, and ensure that students at your charter school benefit from having the best available teachers in their classrooms.  

 

The views expressed in Charter Notebook blogs represent the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Center for Educational Innovation-Public Education Association or the U.S. Department of Education.

Lisa DiGaudio
Founding Board Member, New Dawn Charter High School

Outside of writing the full charter school application, preparing for the interview with the review committee is one of the most stressful parts in the chartering process. This is the job interview of all job interviews, folks. It seems like a huge task, the applicant group sitting with the review committee around a table, needing to answer their questions on point. For some board members who may have expertise in banking or real estate, for example, they may have a hard time understanding the nuances of the instructional program. On the other side of that, educators may have a hard time fielding responses related to the budget over the five-year period or the impact of using a private facility instead of shared space. Either way, the committee needs to be comfortable with each other, be able to jump in and respond where appropriate and most of all, be confident with the panel and the team.

The New Dawn applicant group was at an advantage, as most of us had worked together in various stages on the PICCS program, which helps charter schools implement a series of tools to help drive performance forward for all students. With the experience and training in our PICCS school improvement engine, we were already aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the group, and we all took pieces of the charter that would showcase our strengths. We spent hours upon hours studying and building a “go-to closet” of resources that we could cite when responding to questions. For example, if a question came from the panel regarding our accommodation of the projected ELL population in the school, not only should any one of us be able to answer that question, but we should be able to cite curriculum and other resources to support our response. This meant studying a great deal of information over a very short period of time.

Slowly, we built out our sections of expertise. Each of us took our areas of expertise and worked on these elements, making notes, practicing answering questions with each other, and then having a conversation about our responses. Like following a Peer Review protocol, we each gave warm and cool feedback to increase our ability to respond and improve the level of ease in which we could answer questions in our field of comfort, and out of our field of comfort.

The New York City Charter School Center was so helpful in this regard. We scheduled a meeting with the center as a “mock interview.” The panel asked us very tough, very pointed questions, and if we did not respond in a way that completely answered the question, they would redirect and force a response out. After the question and answer period, the panel gave us feedback on every aspect of our responses. If you don't have such an ally organization in your area, then reach out to other charter schools that are already open and see if members of their founding team would be willing to hold a "mock interview" for you.

This process was extremely helpful! They critiqued our opening statement, the way we actually looked when we answered questions, and whether we smiled or showed we were nervous. They were even able to show us how to look confident when we might falter on a response. They advised us on where to sit (which of the panel should sit next to each other to show unity) and how to sit. It actually reminded me of a funny seen in Ocean’s 11, when Brad Pitt’s character is telling Matt Damon’s character to do all of these things in his performance with Andy Garcia, “Don’t say three words when two will do, don’t keep your hands in your pockets, don’t look away, he’ll think you have something to hide.” The depth to the feedback really gave our teams the ability to further prepare, and to prepare well. So thank you so much, once again, Charter School Center staff!

Having that vital feedback then gave us the chance to go to work. We made notes, we read the charter inside and out. We practiced with each other. The more you practice, the better you get at responding. It really gives you the confidence walking in to the real thing that you've “got this.” The other factor was the level of trust that our team had in each other. We all had each other’s backs. During the interview we would support each other, filling out answers when needed, and each of us had a chance to respond to the panel. Thanks to the rigorous mock interview we had with the Center, when we met our review panel, the entire meeting just flew by. We were able to answer the questions with ease, we were able to be comfortable with the panel (who were very inviting and supportive in their own right), and after it was all said and done, the panel warmly thanked each of us, noting the preparation we had brought to the table.

Just like the public meeting, there a few things to be absolutely ready for: 

• Treat your appointment like a job interview. DO NOT show up in jeans and a sweater. Suits only folks!
• Make sure you remember everyone’s name on your panel. People tend to make very silly mistakes when they get nervous. Write everyone’s name down by creating a very simple seating chart, so you can mention your reviewer or colleague by name when you need to speak.
•  Smile. It really shows confidence and ability.
•  Write the key words of the question down, and take your time responding. Showing that you are thoughtful and not just pulling information out of a hat so to speak will win points.
•  Make sure when you leave that you shake every reviewer’s hand and thank them. They spend a lot of time reviewing your application and your interview. Ultimately their feedback is the key in getting your application chartered.

It was quite an accomplishment for New Dawn making it through this process. We are lucky to have a close knit group of educators dedicated to building student achievement. We work together on various levels and share many of the same ideas on effective instructional practices. We took the time to be organized, to practice, and to be super prepared. In the end, all of these elements truly helped us be successful.

Next up…Hooray we’re chartered! Now what do we do?

 

The views expressed in Charter Notebook blogs represent the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Center for Educational Innovation-Public Education Association or the U.S. Department of Education.

Lisa DiGaudio
Founding Board Member, New Dawn Charter High School

According to New York State Law (as well as charter law in most other states and localities), the public must be sufficiently informed about charter schools in their community throughout the process. One of the last steps before the interview process is the public hearing. The purpose of the application hearing is to provide the public a chance to ask questions of the charter group, namely the lead applicant and founding team. Many concerns are raised during these hearings, particularly when charter schools are seeking to share space with district-operated public schools. Prospective charters may have to delay their openings because at the last minute if the district-operated school works to prevent the charter school from entering the building. These discussions can be extremely contentious, and just because there may be open space in a district-operated school does not mean sharing will be welcomed or even tolerated.

The public meeting usually takes place in a location that is common to other schools that are seeking to open in the district. The prospective schools arrive with materials that describe the mission and vision of the school. Each school has the opportunity to speak about the mission and vision of their school, and then respond to public comment. We treated this hearing as a “practice” of our interview with the review panel. One of the most important things to demonstrate to the public and to the review committee is the unity you have with your founding team. You must be in full agreement on how the school is going to run. Your responses should be able to flow seamlessly from one person to the next. You have to show confidence, sincerity and knowledge. You have to respond to tough questions with the same grace. It’s a good place to put that to practice, as the public hearing, though not a factor in getting the charter (in New York State), can cause the review committee to raise questions if there is a serious outcry from the public hearing.

Our public hearing for New Dawn Charter School's application took place shortly before our interview with the review committee. Fortunately, there were no concerns raised at the meeting about our school. This was in great part due to our outreach and engagement of the community in the process of developing the charter application (see a discussion of how to identify the right founding team members to assist with this process in my post on Writing the Letter of Intent). In fact we were honored to have a community member speak positively on our behalf.  But this isn’t always the case. I have attended meetings in the past where charter applicants have to come to these public meetings and not taken them seriously. Follow these easy points, and this hurdle can be easily cleared:

• Dress professionally. While this may seem obvious, it is important to share this point with all of the individuals representing your team. The public hearing is your chance to show you are a professional group.
• Speak clearly and answer questions directly.
• Make eye contact when you speak (I’m not kidding. I watched a presenter never lift his gaze from the floor. This does not project confidence or trust.)
• Do not show you are flustered by tough questions. Getting defensive or giving wrong answers can happen when you get nervous, but this only makes the audience angry.
• Be humble. I’m a big believer that when you are dealing with children, your ego has to get checked at the door. Everyone has an opinion when it comes to teaching and learning, and you must be open to hearing every single one. It’s about the children, not you.
• Be gracious. Thank the audience for the time, be accessible after the meeting convenes if it seems that there might be other questions.

Transparency is the key to being in control. If you show you are willing and able to show the community the ins and outs of your school organization, the more trusting they will be of your presence in the community. Know your charter in and out, and be able to speak to every element in it. Community members will feel good knowing that the applicant group knows their stuff and  are comfortable with each other and their community!

Next time…the big “show”! The Interview.

 

The views expressed in Charter Notebook blogs represent the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Center for Educational Innovation-Public Education Association or the U.S. Department of Education.

Dr. Charisse Gulosino

Visiting Scholar, Department of Education Policy and Social Analysis, Columbia University Teachers College;  Affiliate Research Faculty Member, Loyola Institute for Quality and Equity in Education, Loyola University New Orleans

In this post, I explore some aspects of the phenomenon of charter schools in rural America. I started out by mapping the extent of student poverty, the demographic makeup of the student population, and the "rural" locational context of rural charter schools. The maps reveal a varied rural charter school student population. While 70 percent of rural charter schools are predominantly White, the rest serve predominantly minority students. Regardless of the predominant race/ethnicity of their student enrollment, rural charter schools attract a high percentage of students living in poverty. Though most rural charter schools are located in non-urbanized areas (79 percent), a sizable percentage are in urbanized areas and urban clusters as well. The maps reveal that the geographic boundaries of rural areas are not clear-cut, in part due to the many rural-suburban-urban interlinkages. These findings provide fertile ground in which to study rural charter schools nationwide.  

The topic of rural charter schools is a relatively new area of research.  The aim is to begin filling in part of this information gap by examining how rural charter schools respond to the policy and market signals, and the impact of such signals on the willingness and ability of rural charter schools to serve disadvantaged student populations.

 Through USDA's Rural Development Community Facilities support program, the U.S. Education Department is providing a policy incentive for states to boost their support for rural charter schools in communities with fewer than 20,000 people. Though the design and operation of rural charter schools is not specifically meant to resolve racial/ethnic disparities in education or to specifically serve disadvantaged students, rural charter schools do have challenges serving low-income and minority students. Charter-school initiatives in the rural areas hold both promises and problems. On the one hand, rural areas with a history of civic involvement, a vision that allows households to exercise school choice options, and the desire for a sustainable small school could provide fertile ground for a charter school (Rural Policy Matters, 2011; Broton et al., 2009; Richard, 2004). On the other hand, many rural areas are economically disadvantaged and also face shortages of academically talented teachers, transportation services, start-up funds and school facilities. These  are significant obstacles for charter school creation and sustainability (National Charter School Resource Center, 2011; Miller & Hansen, 2010; Wittmeyer, 2006).

I focus on the 39 states that have rural charter schools in 2010. Rural charter schools in these states account for 16 percent of the entire U.S. charter schools. The analysis looks at only one aspect of the rural charter school story - the location of rural charter schools and the variation in the socioeconomic and racial/ethnic composition of student population enrolled in them. If rural charter schools are to expand, it will be useful to examine where rural charter schools are currently operating across different states and the characteristics of students attending them, giving us insights into the workings of charter school options in rural areas.

The “rural” status of charter schools is based on the locale codes available from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and designed to be consistent with census categories and geographic regions from U.S. Census Bureau. By those definitions, rural areas are those regions outside urbanized areas and urban clusters.  Urbanized areas and urban clusters are defined by population density and population. Under the NCES coding system,  a school is classified as "rural" based on its geographic proximity to population centers. Rural schools are further classified into fringe, distant, and remote schools depending on the distance from an urbanized area of greater than 50,000 people or an urban cluster of between 25,000 and 50,000 people. For more information on NCES local classification system, see http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/ruraled/page2.asp) The charter schools that fall under the classification of rural therefore encompass a variety of charter school settings which include such diverse examples as rural charter schools in the farming communities in Kansas, predominantly Native Americans living on reservations, the fishing communities of the Gulf Coast, and the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina.

I have linked the NCES Common Core of Data with the Census Bureau TIGER/Line shapefiles and geocodes for the school addresses to explore the enrollment demographics and location of rural charter schools for the 2010 school year. To assess the spatial distribution of rural charter schools, I cleaned and standardized the school addresses and converted them to geocoded locations.  In all, I have obtained geocoded addresses for 820 of 825 rural charter schools, a geocoding success rate of 99%.  

I have analyzed enrollment demographics based on five major racial/ethnic groups in the school population:  Black, White, Asian, Native American, and Hispanic.  I consider the predominance of one particular group if that population is equal or greater than fifty percent of a school’s population.  I followed the standard practice in the education and social science research and measure poverty at the school level by using the percentage of students who apply for and were found eligible for free and reduced price lunch program (FRL). The free and reduced lunch (FRL) percentages are broken down for school-level populations being studied. The five major racial/ethnic groupings are described below. 

• Black: Black/African-American persons, not Hispanic/Latino.
• White: White persons, not Hispanic/Latino.
• Native-American: Native-American persons, not Hispanic/Latino.
• Asian: Asian and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific islander persons, not Hispanic/Latino. Hispanic: Persons of any race who are Hispanic/Latino.

The next series of maps identify rural charter schools contained in urbanized areas and urban clusters, non-urbanized areas, and Native American reservations.  The actual locations of these schools and the percentage of their students eligible for FRL are also divided into equal intervals and symbolized as dots colored in scaled color densities from light to dark.  These maps confirm the presence of rural charter schools that are considered rural but are contained in urbanized areas and urban clusters.  There are also rural charter schools that are located in non-urbanized areas.  A number of rural charter schools are located in geographically and tribally diverse Native American reservations.  A series of location and context specific questions will be explored as we examine these maps.

The inset map at the top shows the total number of rural charter schools per state, while the inset map at the bottom shows the rural charter school percentage share of the charter school market for each state (Map 1).  States vary considerably with regard to the count of rural charter schools located in rural areas, from a low of 1 to a high of 123. The highest percentages of rural charter schools are found in Wyoming, Kansas, and Iowa. The smallest percentages of rural charter schools are found in predominantly urban states on the East and West coasts.  

Map 1

The average percentage of students eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch (FRL), in all rural charter schools, is 35.39 percent, but there are stark differences in poverty levels across rural charter schools.  The percentage of FRL students in rural charter schools are skewed towards low poverty.  Map 2 reveals the following statistics: 300 rural charters have 0-20 percent students on FRL; 150 rural charters have 21-40 percent students on FRL; 142 rural charters have 41-60 percent students on FRL; 130 rural charters have 41-60 percent students on FRL; and 98 rural charters have 41-60 percent students on FRL.

Map 2

There does not appear to be any group predominance for 90 out of 820 rural charters, as shown in Map 3.  These schools are skewed towards low poverty.  50 percent of these schools have 0-20 percent students on FRL, which include rural charters in states such as Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Tennessee and South Carolina. 

Map 3

 Only 11 rural charter schools are predominantly Asian. Their mean percentage of students eligible for FRL is 50.28 percent, approximately 15 percent above the national average of rural charter schools' student poverty.   One rural charter in Texas has 0-20 percent students on FRL, while rural charters in Hawaii are skewed towards higher poverty, serving between 18 percent and 83 percent of students on FRL (See Map 4). 

Map 4  

31 rural charters are predominantly Black, or about 4 percent of the total number of rural charter schools.  Their mean percentage of students eligible for FRL is 64.01 percent, approximately 29 percent above the national average of rural charter schools' student poverty.  26 of these schools are serving between 41 percent and  99 percent of students on FRL.  Predominantly Black rural charters with higher poverty levels are found in states such as Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Michigan (See Map 5).    

Map 5

32 rural charter schools are predominantly Native-American.  Their mean percentage of students eligible for FRL is 61.22 percent, approximately 26 percent above the national average of rural charter schools' student poverty.  24 of these schools are serving between 40 percent and  98 percent of students on FRL.  Predominantly Native American rural charters are found in states such as Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Oregon, and Alaska (See Map 6).   

Map 6

67 rural charters are predominantly Hispanic, or about 8 percent of the total number of rural charter schools.  Their mean percentage of students eligible for FRL is 52.65 percent, about 17 percent above the national average of rural charter schools' student poverty.  52 of these schools are serving between 21 percent and  98 percent of students on FRL.  Predominantly Hispanic rural charters are found in states such as Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California (See Map 7).     

Map 7

575 rural charters are predominantly White, or 70 percent of the total number of rural charter schools.  Their mean percentage of students eligible for FRL is 31.28 percent, approximately 4 percent below the national average of rural charter schools' student poverty.  These schools are skewed towards low poverty; 250 of them are serving 0-20 percent students on FRL.  The concentration of predominantly White rural charters are found in states such as Oregon, California, Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Texas, North Carolina, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan (See Map 8).  

Map 8

A comparison of rural charters found within urbanized areas and urban clusters shows the differences in student poverty levels for these two geographic regions, with is skewed towards less poverty in urbanized areas.  Maps 9.1 and 9.2 illustrate the proximity of charters to an urbanized area and an urban cluster categorized as fringe, distant, or remote.  Both maps show similar percentages of rural charters in fringe rural (63%), distant rural (23%), and remote rural (14%).

Maps 9.1 and 9.2

Map 10 illustrates the locations of 31 rural charter schools that are contained in Native American reservations.  These schools are serving Native American populations in numerous tribal groups on reservations such as the United Houma Nation of Louisiana, the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and the White Earth Ojibwe tribe in Minnesota, and the Eastern Shoshone Tribe and Northern Arapaho Tribe in Wind River Indian reservations in Wyoming.  Their mean percentage of students eligible for FRL is 48.01 percent, about 13 percent above the national average of rural charter schools' student poverty.  13 of these schools have 0-39 percent students on FRL, while the other 18 schools have 40-98 percent students on FRL.  

Map 10

Map 11 shows the locations of 652 rural charter schools that are contained in non-urbanized areas.  Their mean percentage of students eligible for FRL is 34.73 percent, approximately 1 percent below the national average of rural charter schools' student poverty.  250 of these schools are serving 0-20 percent students on FRL, or about 30 percent of the total number of rural charter schools. 

Map 11

In summary, the foregoing maps illustrate that the majority of charter schools serving rural America are white (70%) and economically disadvantaged (4% above the national average of rural charter schools' student poverty).  Less than one-fourth (31 schools) are predominantly African-American rural charters, and predominantly Hispanic charters make up only 8 percent of the total.  Approximately 4 percent are predominantly Native Americans charters, while 1 percent of the schools are predominantly Asian.  Rural charter schools with no group predominance are about 11 percent of the total.  Student poverty levels are most severe for rural charter schools that are predominantly African-American and Native American, which ranges between 61.22 percent and 64.01, or about 29 percent higher than the average for all rural charters.  The share of student poverty levels for predominantly Hispanic rural charters and predominantly Asian rural charters are 52.65 percent and 50.28 percent, respectively. Rural charter schools with no predominant group have the lowest percentage of student poverty (30.57 percent), or about 5 percent lower than the average for all rural charters.  These statistics show that addressing school choice in the rural areas will require solutions to both the poverty gap of minority student populations and economically disadvantaged conditions in rural schools.   

Of course, there are other dimensions of rural charter school enrollment demographics which are not captured in this analysis.  The geo-spatial analysis of rural charter schools is exploratory in its nature and limited to examining the charter demographics.  I did not consider the age and grade levels of charter schools, organizational orientation, state charter school regulations such as racial/ethnic enrollment guidelines, equity provisions such as free transportation to all students, and other local characteristics all of which may have an effect on charter school demographics as found in previous charter school studies (Bifulco et al., 2009a, 2009b; Garcia, 2008; Renzulli & Evans, 2005).  All such topics/dimensions remain unexplored but fruitful areas for future research in rural charter schools nationwide.  Thus, future work might be helped by capturing several dimensions of rural charter school enrollment demographics based on previous studies and policy debates on charter schools in general.

1) State and local policy on transportation - Previous findings suggest that charter school enrollments are influenced by state and local policies.  For example, a multi-state study of charter schools by Lacireno-Paquet (2004) found that states where transportation for charter school students is not required have lower percentages of FARL-eligible and minority students than do charter schools in states where some kind of transportation of charter students is required.  In Pennsylvania, Miron, Nelson, and Risley (2002) found that charter school students travel 5.5 miles, on average, to attend a charter school.  In states such as Indiana where charter schools do not receive local tax levies for transportation, the transportation issue is a de facto parental responsibility as well as a disincentive for poor families to exercise their freedom and choice.  Low-income households may lack sufficient resources to transport their children to the nearest charter schools, as in the case of those living in Indiana's rural areas who travel more than 40 miles to get to the nearest charter schools. Indeed, transportation of students is an important state/local policy in understanding how rural charter schools may attract students and families from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds.

 

2)  State law on racial clauses and enrollment preferences - Notable scholars such as  Amy Wells, Bruce Fuller and Robert Bifulco claim that charter school policies may have exacerbated existing inequality and stratification in urban, suburban, and  rural school districts (Wells, 2002; Fuller et. al., 2003; Bifulco et al., 2009a, 2009b).  Renzulli (2006) examined charter schools in states without racial clauses designed to ensure the fair representation of racial and ethnic subgroups had smaller numbers of African-American students in charter schools.  While many state legislatures continue to make amendments to their state charter school laws, there are currently fourteen states that have existing racial balancing provisions designed to limit or eliminate racial isolation and imbalance in charter schools (Oluwole & Green, 2008).  In the case of the Indiana charter school law, charter schools could only accept students in persistently failing schools or who were enrolled in FRL programs. Further research on rural charter schools may examine how the policies enacted by states either foster or hinder charter schools’ service to certain student enrollment demographics (i.e., minority students and FRL students). 

 

3) The number of charter schools allowed in a state - In terms of the number of schools permitted, a cap on the total number of charter schools allowed per state/school district could restrict educational alternatives to underserved populations and resource-poor rural areas.  Permitting only a small number of charter schools may also impede the creation of a viable alternative to struggling public schools, as found in one study of the effect of state caps on students' academic performance (CREDO, 2009). While state legislators and school district officials may try to handle the competition potentially introduced by rural charter schools, for example, by restricting the total number of schools, empirical work is needed to examine if these types of policies may result in artificial constraints on the market with unintended consequences for particular student targets (i.e., low-income and minority students) and academic outcomes in rural areas. 

 

4)  Types of charter schools that serve rural schools - The Charter Management Organization (CMO) movement, such as KIPP, represents one form of organizational orientation—the not-for profit form.  In the case of Arkansas, a state considered as entirely rural, KIPP and Lighthouse Academies have been encouraged to establish a strong presence in rural areas. While contracting with CMOs such as KIPP is not new to education, what is empirically interesting is to examine the relationship between organizational characteristics of the schools, like CMO-management status versus stand-alone schools (i.e., parent-founded), and the enrollment demographics served.  Both types of educational organizations tend to build their charters slowly and incrementally, grade by grade, over a period of years, and reach capacities well below national averages.  Such enrollment strategy may be suitable to rural areas with declining enrollments, a particular problem for low-income rural districts. However, unanswered questions remain.  Who do both educational organizations serve as they pursue students in rural areas?  Are they reaching out to students in clear need?  A recent study by Miron et al. (2011) noted that while KIPP schools served a higher percentage of African-American students and students eligible for FRL than did their local school districts, they also enrolled fewer students with disabilities, English Language Learners (ELL), and Hispanic students.  Whether both types of educational organizations capture a niche market of underserved and disadvantaged populations in rural areas is largely an open field of research.

 

5) Other local characteristics - The racial composition of a rural charter school can be fully understood only in relation to the racial composition of the state, school district, or the broader neighborhood in which it is located (Gulosino & d’Entremont, 2011; Gulosino & Lubienski, 2011; Lubienski, Gulosino, & Weitzel, 2009).  Knowing what percent of rural charter schools  in the nation or a state are predominantly white or predominantly minority (i.e., Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native-American) does not tell us anything about how they are physically distributed in school systems: they could be distributed into largely black, traditional public schools or distributed fairly equally among traditional public schools.  Rural charter schools' enrollment demographics may also be influenced by pre-existing patterns of student segregation.  In addition, the analysis does not show variations within many states. The maps also do not show related socio-economic conditions such as unemployment rate, household education level, median household income, or low academic achievement that might be correlated with the racial composition or poverty level of student bodies. 

The final set of maps show selected student characteristics of rural charter schools within urbanized, urban clusters, and categories based on local codes (fringe, town, and rural).  In particular, the differences in student poverty rates across these local classification schemes are shown.  Presumably, rural charter schools based on the NCES definition of rural and non-rural status are located outside of urbanized areas and urban clusters.  Interestingly, in these two categories, pockets of rural charter schools are found in both urbanized areas and urban clusters.  This raises challenges pinning down a precise locational context of rural charter schools.  How "rural" are rural charter schools?  What portions of rural charter schools can be considered urban and suburban?  Are rural charter schools locating in spatially contiguous and compact areas as a competitive response from nearby schools struggling to maintain a basic level of enrollment? Or are rural charter schools seeking to locate near preferred clients (less economically disadvantaged and more motivated parents) in order to gain advantage from meeting their needs at lower costs (e.g. transportation, marketing and recruitment, staff and teacher accessibility)?  As charter schools spread in rural areas, they gain the ability to locate their schools anywhere and address the unique educational needs of families in rural areas.  In the case of charter schools that locate in Native-American reservations, the geographic proximity to Native American tribes may be a reflection of the schools' interest in a culturally-driven curriculum.  More location-specific research inquiries are raised below.

 

1) It is logical to investigate the extent to which rural charter schools classified according to NCES/Census local codes are playing on a level playing field in terms of their access to the teaching staff, extra-curricular activities, and professional development that are essential for meeting the achievement goals required under their performance-based contracts.

 

2)  Questions remain over the parental demand for charters in the rural areas. What are the characteristics of parents making school choices in rural charters? Are the parents' reasons for choice in rural charters similar to those in urban and suburban charters?  Will the parents' ability and motivation to travel long distances to and from school each day influence the types of students served by rural charter schools?  How do we explain the differences/similarities in the educational decisions made in the three market contexts? 

 

3)  An educational program that responds to rural contexts (i.e., charter schools that are locally responsive or "placed based curriculum", "ethno-centric") in terms of the natural landscapes, local culture, and values may create a tension in the general school curriculum that prepare students to excel on state tests.  It may be interesting to examine the extent to which rural charter schools classified according to NCES/Census local codes are incorporating placed-based knowledge throughout school curricula vis-à-vis outcome measures such as achievement, graduation rates, student satisfaction, and community satisfaction. 

Future studies of rural charter schools can provide valuable contribution on virtually all of the essential aspects of the charter school reform in rural America.  It is hoped that the foregoing analysis will stimulate questions and encourage discussion and further comprehensive exploration in this area.

The views expressed in Charter Notebook blogs represent the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Center for Educational Innovation-Public Education Association or the U.S. Department of Education.

Lisa DiGaudio
Founding Board Member, New Dawn Charter High School
Curriculum Coordinator, Lefferts Garden Charter School

In an earlier blog post, I introduced this blog series as a means of talking about how to implement the common core into your curriculum. For immediate reference, I want to point out three sources that I found very helpful when writing the curriculum for Leffert Gardens Charter School:

• The Network of Independent Charter Schools Resource Library entry on Common Core: http://indiecharterschools.org/commoncore.php
• The New York State Education Department: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/ciai/common_core_standards/
• The Gates Foundation Common Core Maps: http://commoncore.org/maps/index.php

You can actually purchase additional maps and lessons for all grade levels via the Gates Foundation site; it was $20 well spent!  Not only does the site membership include maps, but in the maps are additional resources that are free of charge. These lessons can fit just about any school curriculum, and they are written by teachers in the field.

Now back to the "how" on implementing the common core. There are two things that must be considered when you start. The first, and probably the most difficult for me, is looking at the standards and figuring out which ones would be most often tested on the State Assessments. The test is changing each year, in an effort to accommodate the push on informational text, yet at the same time, the skills being tested are not consistent like we were accustomed to in the past. When I prepped my students for the New York State ELA exam prior to the change in cut scores (2009-2010 school year), it was easy to go back into the old tests and look at the item analysis provided by the State. I was able to look at each exam, record the performance indicator tested and compare its frequency from year to year. In this way, I could adapt the level of practice I would impose on my students in a variety of ways, from the “one passage” drill, to packets of skill practice and writing within that skill. We don’t have that luxury currently in grades 3-8. The pitfall for me in writing the K-2 curriculum at LGCS is anticipating the level of frequency of the common core standards and the shifts that are required from the state standards year to year. (The state website again is very helpful on this topic, directly addressing the shifts, though basically every school must be fully using CCSS by the 2013-2014 school year.) As I looked over this timeline, I made the decision with my principal, Marc Magnus-Sharpe, that our best bet would be to just jump right into CCSS and implement it fully into our curriculum now. This gives us the entire school year to ready our second graders for the state assessment next year, which will use the CCSS entirely for 2012-2013.

With that determination, the next point is to figure out how to get alignment going in the curriculum. I am going to focus on social studies in this blog entry, mostly because it’s what I used to teach and it’s an easy connection to ELA instruction. The first thing I did for my level of students (grades K-2 right now) is to lay out the topics of study. Our school follows the New York City Department of Education curricular alignments as close as possible, along with a focus on environmental science.  I looked at the curricular units for the grades throughout the school year.  Let’s look at a topic for November in Kindergarten as an exemplar:

Unit of Study for November in Social Studies: Myself and Others

Overarching Question: How are people unique?

Performance indicator: All people share common characteristics (3.1d)

Common Core connection: Read to the children Lon Po Po: A Red Riding Hood Story from China (Ed Young)

Teaching point: Compare and contrast Little Red Riding Hood stories. Have the students make connections on how people from far-away places can have many things in common with us.

Kindergarten students, with assistance, will be able to compare and contrast the attributes of people from China and the United States via Lon Po Po.  This is the intent of common core, using different texts to learn content. It’s important to note that the common core is not a set of standards that spoon feed teaching and learning to students and teachers. It is a framework to take these learning experiences and deepen them for our students. Is it easier for our Kindergartners to learn cultural diversity through a textbook, or by being engaged in a Read Aloud, and then taking that content and applying it to their own classroom? The experience should set the bar for more learning experiences in the future.

This is not the be-all, end-all of how to implement the common core. I hope that this blog will serve as a vehicle to talk about all of the ways that we can not only just teach the standards, but to deeply engage our students in learning experiences that matter. It’s funny, but I just finished reading John Dewey’s Experience and Education (1938!) about that very thing--quality experiences are the basis to learning. Here we are almost 75 years later, and that element--the quality of learning experiences--remains the basis for how our students should learn content.  I look forward to sharing ideas and experiences of my own, as well as learning from and sharing your comments to improve our students’ learning experiences within the Common Core and well beyond it.

 

The views expressed in Charter Notebook blogs represent the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Center for Educational Innovation-Public Education Association or the U.S. Department of Education.

Lisa DiGaudio - Founding Board Member, New Dawn Charter School, NYC

One of my favorite activities to partake in the fall is attending the New York State English Council Conference, held at the Desmond Hotel in Albany. The drive up the New York State Thruway, looking at the beautiful foliage, is a great time for renewal and motivation for me. I always find something new to hook into and use.  As a teacher, my first year at the conference, I learned how to use graphic organizers like the Four Square method. For my reluctant writers, this was a revelation for them. As an administrator, I was able to meet other admins from around the state and talk about recruiting and teacher quality and training. All in all, the Desmond is a lovely place to go even when there aren’t conferences happening. The fall weather, the accessibility to downtown Albany, and also a great park, The Crossings, allows you to truly enjoy all that “upstate” living has to offer.

This year my mission was to attend as many sessions on the Common Core as possible. The general vibes from the teachers I had from last year were no different this year. High school teachers were lamenting the death of “literacy,” administrators were skeptical about the implementation of PARCC standards (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness in College and Careers) and if they were actually going to happen, as there is now talk that PARCC standards may actually become “optional” for school districts . With all of this uncertainty, only two things remained clear: High School teachers were thankful for the return of the January regents, and Common Core is an annoyance that will hopefully go away.

As you know from my last blog post on the Common Core, I quite like the common core standards. The interdisciplinary approach gives teachers multiple opportunities to address content in a variety of ways, deepening critical thinking skills. For example, one of the sessions I attended, “Reading Social Studies: The Character Connection” (Louisa Kramer-Vida, Ed.D, C.W. Post University) focused on teaching social studies like we would teach ELA, with “characters.”  By teaching social studies with a “story,” students can make the connections to their studies as they would with a novel in ELA. To me, this is what the Common Core seeks. As I reflected on what I am writing for my own school’s unified curriculum, the goal is to connect our students to the people and places around them.  Instead of creating characters, we want to connect our students to their own community, developing their sense of space from the small to the very large. For older students, connecting them in the same way is equally important.

One of the most emotionally charged portions of the conference was for me hearing Erin Gruwell speak about “teaching hope.” She talked about her work as a classroom teacher in South Central L.A., and the birth of the “Freedom Writers” from her decision to connect her students’ pain to books. The character connection for these students was so clear. Ms. Gruwell built a curriculum of violence and teens for her own students to relate to, as violence was so prevalent in their own lives. By learning how to connect to characters with similar circumstance, and subsequently learn the facts, these students grew emotionally from the experience. I spent the whole lunch hour crying, thinking about the students that New Dawn Charter High School will be recruiting for September, and further realizing that we need to be doing exactly what Ms. Gruwell was doing with her students, giving them hope for something better.

Something else also came out of the Reading Social Studies session, and it was a comment that one of the participants made when we were talking about the differences of teaching from a textbook vs. teaching from a novel. She said, “We forget that literacy is more than just reading fiction.” I thought back to my first methods courses when earning my degree in School Leadership…we learned that in implementing change, buy in takes at the minimum three years for full acceptance. The comment about literacy brought me back to this. This is the second year of the Conference, and last year (Year One I’ll call it in Common Core discussions and implementation) was full of complaints and criticisms. This year, criticisms were still prevalent, but there were more workshops, and fully attended ones, that focused on implementing the common core in the classrooms. The literacy comment connected me to this level of buy-in. Criticism can come from fear and resistance to change in itself. While the common core dictates that by a student’s senior year 70% of their “literary” studies be rooted in informational text, that does not denote the “death” of fiction. One of the biggest differences I found in my own studies at Adelphi University during my freshman year was that most of what I was reading was informational text. I was a history major, and I was studying primary documents on a variety of topics. The fiction I read was in my honors courses, and I hated it! What I would have appreciated from high school was a better way to read non-fiction quickly and efficiently. 

So the take away from the conference? Common Core is definitely here to stay, regardless of what the tests are going to look like. Resources, different thinking, and creativity are required when thinking about implementing the common core. But this isn’t reinventing the wheel. To a certain degree, maybe we have all been a bit complacent when thinking about our lessons and curriculum. Erin Gruwell was a terrific example of what we all should be doing for our students, and I am sure there are many, many teachers out there, doing the same thing, day after day to reach their own at-risk students. If we choose to look at common core as a limit to what we can teach, then we will indeed be limited in what we achieve with our kids. If we choose to look at it as a “do over” in curriculum planning, then we give our own students the chance to have their own “do over” in learning.  In ten years, maybe common core will become of those of buzz words that got retired, like how “differentiated instruction” replaced “tracking.” When we look at curriculum and teaching in a way that includes everyone, there’s no place to go but up, even if it includes the necessary grumbling and extra hours to make it work.

 

The views expressed in Charter Notebook blogs represent the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Center for Educational Innovation-Public Education Association or the U.S. Department of Education.

By Shawn Stelow Griffin, The Finance Project

In late 2009, the National Governor’s Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) announced a joint effort to create recommended standards for students in grades K-12 in English language arts and mathematics. Over the past two years, these two prominent national membership organizations have convened experts to write and vet the standards. To date, 44 states and the District of Columbia have adopted the standards. Chances are, your state has adopted these standards, and your school must now adjust its curriculum to meet these new standards. Not to worry—there are a number of resources that can support these efforts.

 Resources

In New York, the board of regents adopted the Common Core standards in January 2011. According to a timeline posted on the NY State Education Department website, every teacher should implement at least one unit aligned to the Common Core Standards each semester.[1] The timeline calls for full implementation of the Common Core Standards and aligned assessments by the 2014-2015 school year. The timeline is accessible at: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/ciai/common_core_standards/ccstimeline.html.

Teachers and leaders at independent charter schools in New York have two key websites to turn to for information and support:

• The state education department’s Curriculum and Instruction office has a Common Core portal on its website. A Common Core Implementation toolkit of information can be accessed at: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/ciai/common_core_standards/toolkit.html. This portal provides copies of the standards themselves, as well as supporting resources such as test exemplars, samples of student work and the research basis of the standards. The toolkit also links to national resources available at the Common Core Standards Initiative website.
• The second New York state resource is the EngageNY website. This website provides support to teachers and administrators in key areas of education reform in the state. Common Core resources on this website include curriculum exemplars, details of instructional shifts, a video series that explain the standards in depth, and the implementation timeline.

For readers outside of New York state, most state departments of education have developed web-based portals of resources to disseminate state priorities for implementation as well resources to assist teachers and administrators in the development of units, lessons, and resources that align to the new English/Language Arts and Mathematics standards. Other states are building resource pages and structures to support the implementation of the Common Core standards in their states. Here is a sampling of web resources from selected states from across the country:

• California: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cc/: for state curriculum documents and a parent guide
• District of Columbia: http://dcps.dc.gov/DCPS/In+the+Classroom/What+Students+Are+Learning/DCPS+Common+Core+State+Standards: for implementation plans and assessment plans
• Illinois: http://www.isbe.net/common_core/default.htm:  for implementation plans as well as assessment transition plans
• Louisiana: http://www.doe.state.la.us/topics/common_core.html: for the state’s implementation plan, information for parents and teachers
• Maryland: http://www.marylandpublicschools.org/MSDE/programs/ccss/?WBCMODE=Presentat%25%25%3e%25%25: for state common core frameworks and other information
• Massachusetts: http://www.doe.mass.edu/candi/commoncore: for state frameworks and a state assessment transition plan
• Maine: http://www.maine.gov/education/lres/commoncore:  standards documents as well as documents detailing the state’s perspective regarding the application of the Common Core for English language learners and students with disabilities
• Michigan: http://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,4615,7-140--232021--,00.html: for assessment transition plans, and grade by grade crosswalks of the Michigan Content Expectations to the Common Core standards

There’s an App for That!

A quick search of the Apple App Store reveals several iPhone and iPad apps designed to support teachers and administrators as they design lessons and units aligned to the Common Core standards. One of the apps, Common Core by Mastery Connect, is available for Android phones as well.

 

• Map your existing curriculum, materials, units and lessons/activities: Using curriculum and unit maps for your school, overlay current unit topics and curriculum scope to the Common Core Standards. This strategy will give you a clear vision of changes that need to be made in order to meet the scope and sequence of the Common Core. Recalling that New York state has an implementation timeline, needed changes can be addressed purposefully in a way that adheres to the implementation timeline.
• Work hard, and smarter: Independent charter schools are lean organizations, with staff playing multiple roles within the school. Many independent charters become part of collaborative networks in which they share resources and information and, in some cases, staff. Collaborative networks can work in person or using platforms such as Skype and/or Google Docs to co-create units and lessons aligned to the Common Core. Armed with a plan describing the sequence in which curriculum revisions will occur, school leaders can explore the creation of writing teams or other strategies to encourage collaboration and sharing among other independent charter schools.

Check out the blog series on implementing the Common Core at an independent charter schools in New York, written by Lisa DiGaudio, to see how one school is redesigning their curriculum. What other strategies are you exploring to complete the curriculum revision process? What planning frameworks or work management tools are you using to track progress in this effort? How are you sharing new units of study among your faculty and staff? Feel free to post your ideas below to keep the conversation going.

 

The views expressed in Charter Notebook blogs represent the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Center for Educational Innovation-Public Education Association or the U.S. Department of Education.

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Lisa DiGaudio - Founding Board Member, New Dawn Charter School, NYC

In my last post on starting a charter school, I rather lengthily talked about writing the full application. The narrative section of the application is one of the most important pieces of the entire process. In New York State, there are information sessions set up for groups looking to submit applications. You can go here http://www.p12.nysed.gov/psc/documents/NovDecInfosessions.pdf to get the latest information on dates and times for the 2011-2012 cycle of applicants. It would be helpful to review the 2010 and 2011 cycles, which outline the process, and show you how many applicants started the process to how many applicants finished with a NYS Board of Regents approved charter. The guidelines in the kits are strict. Page overages or being under the required pages could end up costing you a spot further along in the process. If you are located outside of New York State (where I am working on our charter application), be sure to take time to review all of the specific guidelines provided by your authorizer.

And don’t forget about the Network of Independent Charter Schools Online Hotline. You can use it ANY TIME, free of charge, to ask questions specific to your charter application process!

After the application narrative is completed, you must spend some time thinking about what attachments you will include to support your narrative.  I’m going to walk through the attachments prepared in the New Dawn full application, which you can find here: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/psc/2011CSFullApplications.html. The first two attachments are standard for the full application. It includes a roster of all the individuals associated with your charter: board members, prospective employees, and community activists. The next is a certification statement that the lead applicant must sign. Those are the “easy” attachments to fill out.

The next attachment is the school schedule. This takes some careful consideration, because you have to think about the needs of your student body and what they will be taking over a period of time. For high schools, the challenge of what new entrants will need vs. a student who needs everything can be tricky. Elementary schools have less struggles with scheduling, just needing to account for scheduling with student/staff projections over the course of the charter. The school calendar must also be included, ensuring the number of days of instruction, along with holidays and school closures are listed over the course of the charter.

The Corporate By-Laws is a legal requirement. The By-laws of your charter establish the name of your school, the mission of the school and the purpose of the charter. This document outlines the roles and responsibilities of the board of trustees. This includes the roles of the board in relation to school governance. Code of Ethics is next.

The next section is dedicated to the proposed employees and board members of the school. With each role, a curriculum vitae is included, which supports the individual’s credentials. This is important, because it provides transparency to the authorizers on the abilities of the team to run a school. The New Dawn applicant group features many talented educators and administrators who have decades of experience with children, managing organizations and designing curriculum for the target cohort of students. Following the credentials of the members, attachments include a Statement of Assurances for each member, along with a signed Request for Information sheet, providing information required on the pages from the charter office. Essentially ,the request for information establishes no conflicts of interest from the board and prospective school employees.

The organization chart is another important component of the attachments. This gives you the opportunity to really think about the structure of accountability and reporting from the student level up to the board of trustees. These relationships establish the basis for school culture and relations within the community with teachers and parents. Following the organization chart is the description of each of the positions listed in the organizational chart. New Dawn chose to have an Executive Director and Principal, so that the Principal would be free to spend time in classrooms and foster a true learning community with feedback regularly taking place in the classroom. The last section is the budget. This shows the fiscal health of the organization and its capacity to serve its students over the life of the charter.

No matter what may be required by your specific Authorizer, these attachments are important, and I would recommend preparing all of them even if they are not legally required by your Authorizer. It shows how the instructional program of the school will be supported through the organization, board of trustees and budget. All of these components demonstrate the health of the organization and the ability to run the school throughout the length of its charter and through renewal to the next charter. Demonstrating sustainability is the key to getting your charter approved.

Next time…preparing for the meeting with your community board.

 

The views expressed in Charter Notebook blogs represent the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Center for Educational Innovation-Public Education Association or the U.S. Department of Education.

Shawn Stelow Griffin, The Finance Project

Some argue based on recent policy changes and press coverage that there is a bias towards charter schools run by Charter Management Organizations (CMOs). Based on a new report, those favoring CMO’s on the basis of academic achievement should reconsider their position. The National Study of Charter Management Organization (CMO) Effectiveness: Charter School Management Organizations: Diverse Strategies and Diverse Student Impacts shows that CMO charter schools are not performing significantly better than their district school, or their independent charter school peers.

The study, co-written by Mathematica and the Center for Reinventing Public Education, took a comprehensive look at student achievement in schools run by 40 CMOs. The study dug into five key “drivers” the study’s authors hypothesized would have the most significant impact on student achievement:

•  An emphasis on school-wide behavior policies;
• Teacher coaching and mentoring;
•  Increased instructional time;
•  Regular use of formative assessment; and
• Performance-based compensation.

The study found that of the drivers only the emphasis on school-wide behavior policies and teacher coaching and mentoring had statistically significant impact on student achievement. 

So What?  

While this study focused on CMO charter schools, there are some takeaways for leaders of independent charter schools. The successful strategies, as is often the case with education reform approaches, can be widely implemented.

Successful Strategies: 

• Comprehensive Behavior Policies—Zero-tolerance policies, behavior codes or specific interventions that offer incentives and clear consequences, engaging parents as partners to manage school and individual student behavior netted an increase both in reading and math scores.
• Expanded Teacher Support and Review—Charter management organizations that conducted frequent review of teacher lesson plans, classroom observation, and teacher mentorship and coaching appear to correlate to increased student achievement.

These two achievement-boosting strategies can be implemented in any charter school, regardless of structure.

Strategies that did not net significant differences:  

• Defining a CMO-wide educational approach and/or curriculum
• Performance-based teacher compensation
• Frequent formative student assessments
•  More hours of annual instruction (there were positive results in math achievement, but its hard to separate this variable from comprehensive behavior policies for causality).

As with the successful strategies, the above strategies, that did not show significant improvement in student achievement, are implemented by district schools and independent charter schools as well as CMOs.

The study’s authors noted that a comparison of successful strategies in independent charter schools as well as CMO charter schools is a future direction they will pursue in their research. It will be interesting to see what the data show in relationship to this question.

What’s the Takeaway?

The data collected in this study support those who posit that without an orderly and safe environment and high-quality challenging instruction; curriculum, testing programs, and time on task do not make a significant positive impact on student achievement. These two variables are within every leader’s ability to control.

 

The views expressed in Charter Notebook blogs represent the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Center for Educational Innovation-Public Education Association or the U.S. Department of Education.