Welcome to Charter School Capital’s weekly round-up where our team will feature news about charter school operations, policy, funding for charter school, facilities financing, and other trends.
As charter school leaders and their teams prepare for students to return to school this Fall, at lot is going on in the charter school world. We hope you’ll find this round-up valuable. Read on!
New Report Shows Encouraging Improvement in Arizona Charter Schools
The Arizona Department of Education’s recent release of the 2014 AIMS test scores show that more than 70% of Arizona charter schools have improved in math and reading. The Phoenix Business Journal interviewed Ildi Laczko-Kerr, vice president of academics for Arizona Charter School Association, who noted:
“The fact that we saw such a large number of our schools improve from one year to the next is reflective of the changing systems in their schools and designing them to meet the needs of their students.”
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Strong Reactions to University of Arkansas’ Report on Charter School Productivity
Last week in our charter schools news roundup, we featured a new report released by the University of Arkansas that looked specifically at cost effectiveness and ROI when comparing the productivity of public charter schools to traditional school districts.
The report has stirred-up some debate among public charter school and traditional school district experts. NPR’s All Things Considered interview education policy experts Ted Kolderie and Joe Nathan who argue that the comparison made by the University of Arkansas doesn’t actually add up.
But Eric Hanushek, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, voices his support for the report after reviewing the report’s methodology and key findings. “This study is path breaking and is likely to spearhead a new and important policy debate. Until the 2008 recession, schools largely acted as if they were immune from considering finances and returns on expenditures, but we now know that this is no longer possible. This timely study invites a more rational discussion of policy choices, not just with respect to charter schools, but also in a wider context.”
Patrick Wolf, the University of Arkansas head researcher, gets into more detail about the study he lead with his team in a Wall Street Journal interview and an Education Next response piece.
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Washington Post: D.C. Charter Schools Sue City, Alleging Unequal Funding
The D.C. Association of Chartered Public Schools filed a federal lawsuit last Wednesday under the grounds that the city has provided unequal funding to charter schools. According to the Association, since 2008 charter school students have received roughly $2,150 less each year from District of Columbia than the district students.
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