CRPE’s research examines both the promise and the challenges of charter schools and school choice, with a focus on how they can expand opportunity, drive innovation, and better serve diverse student needs. We study charter schools alongside district schools and other models, highlighting lessons that can inform the broader system. New data and evidence help innovators across the country collaborate, communicate, and develop best practices.
Charter schools have come under fire recently around student discipline. As someone who spent a decade working with children at the tragic end of the school-to-prison pipeline, I’m deeply concerned about the real-world ramifications of suspensions and expulsions on students.
District-charter collaboration can be a valuable tool for both sides, not to mention for students and families. Collaboration can result in important work on issues like whether charter schools can use district buildings, how to create effective programs for students with disabilities, how schools are held accountable, or what happens to an expelled student.
The big question about a portfolio school system—where all schools operate under strong performance and equity oversight, but are free to innovate and provide coherent instruction without fear of constant re-regulation—is whether that vision can be accomplished under a locally elected school board’s control.
Reorganizing time, talent, technology, and physical space to support personalized learning takes money, planning, and time. Dozens of philanthropies, new support organizations, and policy groups are dedicated to helping schools implement this model.
Too often, well-intended systemic school reform initiatives in this country have been largely top-down affairs. Typical community engagement in these efforts might include holding meetings with residents, community groups, and families to solicit buy-in for plans and changes already well underway.
This paper takes the first systematic look at costs associated with implementing personalized learning schools, how leaders of these schools choose to allocate their funds, and what it might take to make personalized learning financially sustainable on public dollars.
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