Working Smarter: How Charter School Leaders Can Get the Help They Need
Targeted at current and future charter school leaders, charter management organizations (CMOs), and charter governing boards, this brief outlines the challenges faced by current charter school leaders and provides practical recommendations for strengthening school leadership.
Community College Transfer and Articulation Policies: Looking Beneath the Surface
This paper explores the relative importance of specific policy components on post-secondary outcomes, and how such policies impact students with different aspirations or economic and ethnic backgrounds.
Seniority-Based Layoffs Will Exacerbate Job Loss in Public Education
In this brief, Marguerite Roza explains why K-12 school districts that lay off personnel according to seniority cause disproportionate damage to their programs and students than if layoffs were determined on a seniority-neutral basis.
Projections of State Budget Shortfalls on K-12 Public Education Spending and Job Loss
This brief makes early projections of of what state budget cuts might mean for education spending and job losses.
Teacher Union Contracts and High School Reform
Are teachers unions and collective bargaining agreements barriers to high school reform and redesign efforts in Washington, California, and Ohio? The report offers an overview of real and perceived barriers to reform, along with an overview of flexible provisions culled from various collective bargaining agreements.
Overview – Should Charter Schools Be More Different Than Alike? (HFR ’08)
This overview of Hopes, Fears, & Reality: A Balanced Look at American Charters Schools in 2008 introduces the key areas explored in this year’s volume and notes that charter schools are more different than alike, not only in terms of the populations they serve, the academic missions they pursue, and the results they produce, but also in their response to local need and capacity.
Ch. 1 – Charter Schools and Student Achievement: A Review of the Evidence (HFR ’08)
This paper analyzes existing charter outcome studies and finds that there is great variety in charter school performance, with charters outperforming in some grade spans/subjects and underperforming in others.
Ch. 2 – How Charter Schools Organize for Instruction (HFR ’08)
This chapter presents national data showing how charter schools differ from traditional public schools in their approaches to teaching and learning.
Ch. 3 – Equal Opportunity: Preparing Urban Youth for College (HFR ’08)
By providing access to proven college-prep models (and suburban school performance expectations), charter schools appear to be offering something not otherwise available in many communities. In this chapter, Paul Hill explains this important trend in charter high schools.
Ch. 4 – New Options for Serving Special-Needs Students (HFR ’08)
Due to the special vulnerability of their children and the due process rights built into special education statutes, parents of special-needs children are extreme choosers. They seek—and have the power of law behind them—the precise fit for their children’s unique, and often highly complex, needs. By increasing the number and type of options available, charter […]