Robin Lake

The Charter School Catch-22

When charter schools first emerged nearly two decades ago, critics claimed they would promote segregation by serving privileged white students whose families take advantage of choice. But state laws, philanthropists, and charter school founders targeted these new schools to serve disadvantaged students in urban districts. Critics then tried to show that charter schools serve fewer poor and minority students than neighboring public schools. In fact, enrollment variations by neighborhood appear to be no differently distributed in charter schools than in district-run schools. Now, critics claim charter schools worsen segregation by serving too high a proportion of minority students, essentially making the charter movement a civil rights failure for failing to achieve racially mixed schools. Authors Hill and Lake argue that there is a more important civil rights issue: ensuring good schools and opportunities for high school, college, and beyond for poor and minority students. As charter schools further develop and succeed, they will likely attract a more diverse population of students. In the meantime, their success in serving the most disadvantaged students should be cause for praise, not criticism.

Standards and Accountability in Washington State

In the early 1990s, Washington State was in the vanguard of the standards movement. Democratic governor Booth Gardner and leaders of the Washington Roundtable?a coalition of business leaders? agreed to press for a comprehensive statewide education reform package modeled after Kentuckys. David Hornbeck, who drafted the Kentucky con sent decree that started the standards-based reform movement, advised on drafting of the states reform bill. An omnibus reform package was passed in early 1993. By 1994, the National Business Roundtable rated Washington as one of four states that had enacted the most complete standards-based reform program. Washington political and business leaders intended to transform public education from a bureaucracy controlled by mandates and enforced compli ance into a performance-based system. They envisioned standards-based reform as a rational approach to improving public education. They sought to set standards that define what children need to know and be able to do, develop measurement systems to test performance against those standards, help schools find and use methods of instruction effective enough to allow them to meet the standards, give schools the freedom of action necessary to adjust their methods of instruction to meet student needs, and reward schools that meet standards and punish those that do not. Like proponents of standards-based reform in other states, Washington State policy and business leaders assumed that establishment of a perfor mance-based system would change the behavior of teachers, parents, school administrators, and students.1 Teachers and parents, informed by the stan 199

In the Eye of the Beholder: Charter Schools and Innovation.

ABSTRACT Many expect that charter schools will produce innovations, but it is unclear what kinds and how much innovation is desirable. This paper summarizes the research evidence on charter school innovation to date and suggests ways to more productively pursue future research and development in the charter sector. The paper addresses three main questions: In what ways are charters being innovative? How can we assess the value of charter school innovations? And how might we encourage and enable charter schools to innovate more aggressively regarding instructional methods and uses of technology?

Federal School Improvement Grants (SIGs): How Capacity and Local Conditions Matter

In 2009, the federal government committed over

Effective Charter and Traditional School Characteristics: Aligning Findings for Informed Policy Making

3 billion nationwide to help states and districts turn around their worst-performing schools. The U.S. Department of Education intended for the School Improvement Grants (SIGs) to spur dramatic change.This report looks at the results of a field study of the first-year implementation of those grants in Washington State, which received

Charter-School Management Organizations: Diverse Strategies and Diverse Student Impacts

50 million in SIG funding over three years. Researchers hoped to see what school-level changes were underway, how they compared to the intent of the grants, and the early role that districts played in SIG implementation.The report provides findings from the state, district, and school level. Researchers found that, with some exceptions, districts and schools in Washington State are approaching the turnaround work in ways only marginally different from past school improvement efforts. Despite the hard work of administrators, principals, and especially teachers, the majority of schools studied show little evidence of the type of bold and transformative changes the SIGs were intended to produce.The report offers recommendations regarding the roles that federal, state, and local education agencies should play in support of school turnaround work. Those administering future grants targeted at the nations lowest-performing schools could avoid the problems described here and improve their chances of affecting dramatic, not incremental, change.

Charter schools and accountability in public education

This literature review compares the current knowledge about the characteristics of effective charter schools to findings from the broader body of effective school research. We find that lists of effectiveness characteristics from the charter and traditional literatures are well aligned: good schools seem to look the same, regardless of governance model. This finding has meaningful implications. Charter authorizers, district portfolio managers, and funders should look for these critical elements in new school applications, grant applications, or school improvement plans, as well as a well thought-out theory of how they will work together coherently. In addition, knowing that effective school characteristics are consistent across sectors, scholars should now direct their attention to examining how to implement, sustain, and replicate these conditions through actions at the school and systems levels.