By Rachel Scott, The Finance Project

I grew up attending public magnet schools in Indianapolis in the 1980’s, and it never occurred to me that the student body of other schools was any different from mine: about half black and half white with smaller numbers of Latino and Asian students. What I didn’t know at that time was that the magnet schools I attended, in addition to providing innovative programming not offered by my neighborhood schools, were part of an intentional national policy effort to ensure students were learning in diverse environments that reflected the richness of their communities.

Thirty years later, charter schools around the country now find themselves at the center of the “school choice” movement and there are fewer magnet schools. Charter schools most certainly are serving a broad array of children in all types of settings. In the aggregate, we can say “charter schools are diverse” and “families in all kinds of neighborhoods now have ‘school choice.’” However, a number of studies show that, intentionally or unintentionally, many families are choosing to send their children to schools where the majority of the students are just like them—resulting in what some call a “resegregation” of public schools. In fact, a high school friend of mine who is a school librarian in a major city recently told me, “We have two kinds of charter schools here: the white ones and the black ones.”

Is “resegregation” really a problem?

Among other researchers, The Urban Institute and The Century Foundation have highlighted the fact that school choice tends to lead to racial and socioeconomic segregation. Adverse effects of this segregation are felt by students in both high-income and low-income schools. Schools with a majority of low-income students tend to have fewer resources to expend on the students and more difficulty attracting the most qualified teachers. Schools with a majority of higher-income students tend to produce students who have more difficulty working with and communicating with people who are different from them.

Particular to charter schools, Miron, et al found in a study of demographic patterns in 968 largely Education Management Organization (EMO)-run schools that only a quarter had enrollment demographics similar to those of the sending district, with concentrations of either majority or minority students dominating enrollment at most schools. Not only that, Miron and his team found that these EMO-run schools enrolled smaller percentages of both special education and ELL students, and that:

Most charter schools were divided into either very segregative high-income schools or very segregative low-income schools. Between 70% and 73% of the schools were in the extreme categories of the scale, depending on the comparison.

Of course, a high concentration of minority students in a charter school can be precisely what some charter school leaders have in mind. A two-part series of articles in the Orlando Sentinel last year includes discussion by some charter school proponents who say that achieving higher scores for minority students is their purpose entirely. While this goal is laudable, any achievement for a group of students in an artificially isolated environment that even unintentionally "shields" them from the real climate of their community is a hollow one—a sentiment echoed by groups like AAUW who oppose single-sex education environments.

Leaders of independent charter schools are in a good position to learn from these troubling trends seen with many larger charter organizations, and are more likely to have the flexibility to change policies or practices that may be resulting in a lack of diversity in their schools.

“Not Discriminating” is Not Enough

In some ways, it would be easy for charter schools to solve the problem of over-concentrations of some student populations in schools if the problem were caused by simple discrimination. However, more likely, at the roots of ‘school choice’ (that we have seen more often results in segregation) are a number of very complex, deep-seated, and interrelated factors like culture, family attitudes and expectations, and what “feels comfortable” to any of us.

Socialization is a powerful and often invisible force, and knowing how difficult it can be to make people revisit their attitudes may make some charter school leaders wonder if it’s worth the effort. Is it the job of charter schools, in addition to meeting students’ educational needs, to provide students with diverse classroom settings? I would argue, yes. Further, there has been an increased focus on Civil Rights Office at the U.S. Department of Education, and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has identified education “as a key civil right.” The Department recently released guidelines on voluntary ways schools can make reasonable, fair, and legal efforts to encourage diverse enrollment, summarized here by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

I look forward to your feedback and plan to revisit this topic in the near future, especially as it relates to special education, English Language Learners, and successful strategies independent charter schools have used to ensure their schools are true reflections of their communities.

What are you seeing that works, or doesn’t work, in your school or community?

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 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
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.

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.

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

In my last blog entry on "Starting a Charter School," I talked about writing the letter of intent. The letter of intent for New Dawn Charter School (the school I am helping to found) was due January 19, 2011. Shortly thereafter (February 2) the full 20-page prospectus was due. As I mentioned last week, from over 80 founding groups, just 36 were asked to turn in full applications. We were lucky to be one of those 36, and then one of the 22 invited for an interview with the selection committee. This was a tremendous source of anxiety as each deadline came and went. For all of us, opening a school of our own was our chance to prove how much we know about effective teaching practices and how students learn.

The Prospectus is an abbreviated version of the full application (download a copy of New Dawn's Prospectus). It was required to be just 20 pages in length and outline the overall structure of the school. The first part, our mission statement, describes what it is we are looking to accomplish when students enter the building.  This is New Dawn’s mission:

 New Dawn Charter High School will provide over-aged and under-credited students 15 - 21 years of age living in Sunset Park, including those who are English Language Learners and those with special needs, the opportunity to return to school and obtain a high school diploma through a rigorous NYSED standards-based education program. Within the framework of the education program, three programs will be offered: 1) Interventions for those with fewer than 11 credits, and for those with more than 11 or more credits: 2) Internships in the community and 3) College enrollment.

The next sections describe each element of the school, from the instructional program to finances. It is important in this brief outline of the school that we share the team’s ability to run a school. In two separate places we wrote small blurbs about ourselves that demonstrated why we were a strong founding group as compared to other applicants. One of the most important things that we had going for us, besides the majority of our team being affiliated with JVL Wildcat Academy Charter School, was our training in the School Improvement Engine through the Partnership for Innovation and Compensation for Charter Schools (PICCS). This extensive, YEARS-long training has made the bulk of the founding team capable of guiding the development of Individual Learning Plans (ILP’s), staff development through Peer Review and Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s) as well as using the TERC data analysis tools. These elements are all significant evidence of how as a team we are not only in tune to student needs, but also in tune to faculty needs.

Throughout the prospectus, we each took sections to write as a base for the lead applicant, Sara Asmussen. My strengths lie specifically in instructional programming, using advisories, the workshop model and differentiating instruction. I had been trained on how to implement Individual Learning Plans (ILP’s) in the classroom, and piloted their use with my sixth grade ELA class (and yielded a 98% passing rate on the ELA exam for 2009). Other team members took the sections on student recruitment, due to their familiarity with recruiting similar students for Wildcat Academy. Scheduling and increasing the number of students enrolled from year to year are also important elements of the prospectus. The reviewers need to see that we can amend a school schedule to address the needs of a continuously increasing student population.

A strong budget, which balances from year to year indicates to the reviewers that the founding group understands how the state budgets and federal funding formulas work. This means that the budget doesn’t rely solely on state released funds and grants and has the capacity to generate income to accommodate the needs of the building. This is a tricky piece often, and truly showcases the handicaps that charter school operate under. Public schools are given buildings. Charter schools, if they are lucky, can get approved in sharing space with a district school to avoid the rent payment, but often the shared space issue is acrimonious. Rents are a huge issue for many mom and pop schools. You’re looking at over a million dollars per year in market share rent (in New York City and other major metropolitan areas) plus all of the things that go with it--building maintenance, utilities, etc. Without funding from outside sources, getting a building right from the start independent of district space is next to impossible. Also, with the economy the way it is, loan agencies and banks are not willing to extend lines of credit to a school to get a building, furniture, etc, unless they have been operating in some cases as long as three years.

Writing the prospectus really forces you to take all of the big ideas that your team developed and show evidence that these ideas are going to work. Student and staff recruitment plans, strong budgeting over a five-year period (the life of the charter in the case of New Dawn's application) and a solid instructional plan for the students, complete with plans for differentiation, staff development and capacity building are all factors that evaluators review when moving on to the full application phase. Thankfully, after much nail biting, New Dawn was approved to move to the full application, followed by the capacity interview. Coming up in my next blog entry: Preparing for the big application, meeting the guidelines put out by the authorizer, and then defending your views to the review panel.

Download a copy of New Dawn's Prospectus now >>

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This blog post is part of the Charter Notebook, sponsored by the Network of Independent Charter Schools, a project of the Center for Educational Innovation - Public Education Association.

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.

My suggestion is simple. We can erase the battle lines. We can suspend the name calling. Perhaps there’s no need to fight.

I propose that independent charter schools and traditional public schools can work together to improve educational outcomes for all students. Indeed, independent charter schools and traditional public schools can not only co-exist (even in the same buildings), but can also learn from each other and become very effective collaborators. The fact is that independent, “mom and pop” charter schools are uniquely positioned to design and showcase effective practices that other schools, including public school districts and traditional public schools, can adapt to improve student outcomes at their schools. 

From the outset, charter schools were envisioned to be “engines of innovation” that would stimulate change across the entire educational system. The original design for public charter schools was very straight-forward. Charter schools are granted freedom to foster innovation and, in return, are subjected to heightened accountability by their authorizers and/or state educational departments. As Professor Gary Miron of the College of Education and Human Development at Western Michigan University says in a filmed interview on the home page of this website, “The original mission of charter schools…what was intended in the 1990s when we first started seeing charter school laws passed, [was that charter schools] were going to be locally-run and innovative.” I would argue that the independent “mom and pop” segment of the charter school community remains “locally run and innovative,” and that the innovations established in these charter schools can be shared and adapted not just by other charter schools, but by traditional public schools as well.

Let me point to an outstanding example. In the economically distressed community of East Harlem, NY, the New York Center for Autism Charter School (NYCA Charter School) shares a public school building with PS 50, and New York City public school. The NYCA Charter School is the only charter school in New York—and one of very few schools in the country—that provides academic programs exclusively to students with autism or other severe developmental disabilities. Operating literally in the middle of a large urban public elementary/middle school, the NYCA Charter School has taken a proactive approach to connecting and collaborating with the public school with which it is “co-located.” While many charter schools “co-located” with traditional public schools in New York City school buildings have encountered conflict (and, indeed, been the subject of intense litigation), the NYCA Charter School has developed a positive and collaborative relationship with its traditional public school host. The result has been a unique “win-win” experience that could serve as a model for charter schools and traditional public schools across the country.

So what makes the NYCA Charter School relationship with its co-located public school work?

Well, it starts with the charter school’s proactive approach to building mutual understanding and respect with the co-located school. As NYCA Charter School founder and Board member has said, it was important for the charter school to “become part of the community”  and “to make bridges” to the traditional public school. The charter school has also worked hard to share its promising practices with the co-located traditional public school.

 At the heart of the charter school-traditional public school collaboration is an innovative program called    the Peer Mentoring Program. This program trains students in the traditional public school to work with students with autism and supports them in interacting and helping the charter school’s students.  A key part of the program is a presentation by the participating traditional public school students to their fellow traditional public school students about the experience of working with children with autism. As the program’s coordinator Moira Cray says, the program has yielded benefits for the charter school and the traditional public school.

 What’s most impressive about the NYCA Charter School’s Peer Mentor Program—in addition to the hugely positive impact on the charter school’s students—is the positive change the program has promoted in the culture of the co-located traditional public school. As described in the following video, the program has not only helped the charter school’s students with autism interact with students from the traditional public school, but it has also promoted increased understanding and tolerance within the traditional public school.

 It’s clear from the experience of the NYCA Charter School and PS 50 in New York City that charter schools and traditional schools can not only “get along,” but can thrive through interaction and collaboration.  Obviously, it takes serious commitment on the part of each entity. It also requires the charter school to make a concerted effort to share information and, as appropriate, resources and programs with the traditional public school. Ideally, the charter school will become part of the “community” of the traditional public school, and vice versa.

So let’s consider once again that charter schools can be “engines of innovation”  that will establish promising practices for other schools—including traditional public schools—to implement. Let’s consider once again that charter schools and traditional public schools can work together to improve student achievement.

And with this understanding, let’s try to establish new ways for charter schools and traditional public schools to work together to help our children succeed.

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This blog post is part of the Charter Notebook, sponsored by the Network of Independent Charter Schools, a project of the Center for Educational Innovation - Public Education Association.

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.