Resources

Colorado League of Charter Schools Publications and Reports

Shortchanged Charters: How Funding Disparities Hurt Colorado's Charter Schools

We are pleased to announce the release of "Shortchanged Charters: How Funding Disparities Hurt Colorado's Charter Schools," a detailed report about the state of charter school facilities in Colorado. With the help of over 60 local charter schools that completed the Facilities 2010 Questionnaire between December 2007-March 2008, we were able to gather enough data to analyze and publish seven key findings, which clearly demonstrate that the sources of funding for charter schools and their facilities are inadequate.

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools Publications and Reports

A Framework for Academic Quality: A Report from the National Consensus Panel on Charter School Academic Quality

The charter school idea is based on a simple, compelling bargain: greater autonomy in exchange for greater accountability for student achievement. Sixteen years after the nation’s first charter school opened in Minnesota, there are 4,300 charter schools serving 1.2 million students in 40 states and the District of Columbia. Yet the quality of these schools across the country varies greatly, ranging from those that rank among the nation’s finest schools to some that serve their students poorly and improve little over time. Thus, the powerful potential of the charter movement – to increase quality public school options for all children, particularly for the minority and disadvantaged students “left behind” in traditional school systems – is compromised.

A key challenge that has limited the charter movement’s success to date is the broad misalignment in expectations among charter operators, authorizers, funders and other stakeholders about how to measure and judge school quality. Indeed, many believe that the vast diversity in charter school missions, educational models, and student populations -- as well as differences in state accountability requirements and individual authorizer expectations – makes it impossible to establish common standards and measures of quality that are applicable and meaningful to all kinds of charter schools. The charter sector today has no basic, universal measures of school quality other than those shared with other public schools under the No Child Left Behind Act. It is no wonder that judgments about the performance of charter schools are so frequently ill-informed.

Of course, this weakness in performance evaluation is not confined to charter schools; it afflicts public education as whole, greatly hobbling and constraining efforts to improve schools. Too often, current approaches to evaluating school performance rely on data that are seriously limited and misleading, unhelpful to schools, and inappropriate for high-stakes judgments. To fulfill the promise of the charter school movement and maximize its success and impact, the charter sector nationwide needs to clarify and commit to a common set of basic quality expectations and performance measures to define and assess charter school success. This report responds to this strong need. At the same time, the framework shared in this report can help to advance standards-setting and performance evaluation for all public schools.Click here to access the report.

Studying Achievement in Charter Schools: What Do We Know?

More and more data has become available over time about how well individual charter schools are doing. This report by Bryan Hassel summarizes and provides commentary on 38 comparative analyses of charter and district performance, including a study-by-study look at central findings and methodological strengths and weaknesses.Click here to access the report.