Sean Gill is an education policy expert, with a focus on personalized learning, school finance, portfolio management, and district-charter collaboration. As a research analyst at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, Sean has led research projects, managed outreach, and planned & facilitated practitioner convenings. He began his career at the California State Auditor’s Office leading legislative audits/program evaluations. He subsequently provided research and policy support for school choice and education finance legislation across 18 states at StudentsFirst (now 50CAN). Originally from Carlsbad, California, Sean holds a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of California, Davis and a master’s degree in public policy from Pepperdine University.
This brief outlines the ongoing challenges and offers recommendations to reshape how America’s schools serve students with disabilities.
Charters and traditional schools are often portrayed as at odds with each other. But this collaboration shows that isn’t always the case—and it shows promise for the future.
This brief highlights six promising practices for serving students with disabilities after the pandemic.
As districts move to offer more in-person learning this spring, many teachers, parents and students remain hesitant, worrying whether schools — and their specific campuses and classrooms — are safe.
COVID-19 disrupted the already tenuous system of support for students graduating high school and going on to college or career. Students from low-income households and students of color have been hit hardest.
In this brief, we set out to understand how unionization may or may not shape practices central to charter schools’ ability to serve students.
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted public education in ways that were unimaginable at the beginning of the year. Students, parents, and teachers have struggled to make remote learning work.
In-depth case studies of five charter schools reveal lessons learned on educating students with disabilities remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Schools around the country are shuttered again this fall as school systems continue to face chaotic conditions as result of the pandemic.
Eighteen leading charter school organizations are strengthening curriculum offerings and modifying schedules — although their plans are less detailed than districts’ on remote learning improvements or lessons learned from the spring.
Note from the authors: We share our most recent COVID-19 findings during a critical moment, as the recurring impact of systemic violence against Black people devastates our communities and the nation.
The COVID-19 crisis has laid bare some old truths: where you live and what school you attend has profound impacts on what students can expect to get out of public education.
The end of an unusual school year is on the horizon, yet few districts have provided details on what, if any, summer learning opportunities their students will have.
Last week, Fairfax County in Virginia delayed the launch of remote learning due to technical challenges. Earlier in the month, Los Angeles Unified School District reported that about one third of their over 600,000 students were not logging into their online learning platforms regularly, and that about 15,000 had been completely absent since online learning began.
In this brief, we explore evidence related to the causes of OUSD’s financial crisis and why previous efforts to right the ship have failed.
This report is the first step in developing an evidence base about how charter schools meet the needs of unique learners, how they can improve in this work, and what aspects of chartering as a governance model support or impede their ability to do so.
Last fall, NBA star LeBron James and his foundation received a lot of attention for opening the I Promise Academy in partnership with Akron Public Schools.
It’s perhaps no surprise that Mayor Muriel Bowser selected Lewis Ferebee to be the next chancellor of D.C. Public Schools. His work at Indianapolis Public Schools made him a rising star nationally.
Samantha Olson is the Vice President of Strategy for the Colorado Education Initiative (CEI), which supports districts and schools in personalized learning and systems change.
A 15-minute drive from the Alamo, Ira C. Ogden Elementary School is in its first year of an ambitious turnaround effort.
The State of Texas passed an innovation law (Senate Bill 1882) in summer 2017 to foster partnership schools, much like those profiled in CRPE’s recent brief.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently announced a new focus on supporting networks of middle and high schools. These Networks for School Improvement are intended to support continuous improvement—built on collecting data and testing solutions—in order to tackle some of public education’s most pressing challenges.
This paper reviews state policies on providing charter schools with facilities and recommends better incentives for districts to share space.
In 1997, Paul Hill published his book Reinventing Public Education: How Contracting Can Transform America’s Schools (the center where I work at the University of Washington was founded on the ideas presented).
This brief examines a promising new “third way” approach to school improvement and provides guidance for district and charter leaders and policymakers considering partnership schools.
Based on six years of research, this report explores why a growing number of districts and charter schools are choosing to work together, the costs and benefits of different types of cooperation, and the real impacts of successful collaboration on students and families.
This paper looks at why many cities have missed opportunities to create more lasting relationships between their district and charter sectors, and offers suggestions for fostering stronger partnerships that could help improve outcomes for all of the students in their cities.
The Florida Department of Education has provided two competitive grants to Duval County and Miami-Dade County to foster district-charter collaboration. CRPE research analyst Sean Gill spoke with Adam Emerson, the Florida Department of Education’s charter schools director, about his thoughts on how the collaboration work is progressing.
This paper reviews trends around changing student populations in suburban America and the accompanying demands facing suburban public school systems.
With the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, there are now 21 cities in which leaders have signed official District-Charter Collaboration Compacts.
