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.
Several months ago I critiqued a report by Dr. Gordon Lafer and published by In the Public Interest (ITPI). Unfortunately, the report continues to inform policy deliberations in California, where a commission is weighing charter school policy changes and lawmakers are considering a five-year moratorium on new charter schools.
A recent analysis from Education Week carried a grim headline: “In Many Charter High Schools, Graduation Odds Are Slim.” Its core finding, “Charter high schools make up an outsized share of the number of public schools persistently graduating less than half of their students,” led the authors to question why charter high school graduation rates lag so far behind other public schools.
This report examines how New Orleans education officials have managed the return of nearly all of the city’s public schools to the control of the local elected school board for the first time since the state takeover of public schools in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
As teacher strikes swept across the country this year, union leaders in many cities painted charter schools as the enemy. But the narrative that pits charter schools against unions largely ignores the fact that district teachers aren’t the only ones walking off the job; charter school teachers in Chicago and Los Angeles went on strike earlier this year, too.
