Your Guide to Year-Round Charter School Leader Support & Evaluation

Editor’s note: This post was originally written by our friends and partners, BoardOnTrack, and published here. We are so proud to partner with these charter school board experts to help provide charter leaders with the tools and resources they need to thrive. Having an efficient and effective board is essential to the success and longevity of your school, so we hope you find this resource helpful.

YEAR-ROUND CHARTER SCHOOL LEADER SUPPORT & EVALUATION

Having worked with over 500 charter school boards, here at BoardOnTrack we know that the most effective charter school organizations have a strong partnership between the Board and their CEO that is built on mutual trust and respect.

Our year-round charter CEO evaluation cycle allows you to get a bead on how your partnership is doing and touch points throughout the year and then the end of year evaluation.

We’re all in this charter world to build great public schools across the country. And having a really effective leader is an important part of making great schools for the kids and families you’re serving. Your board’s responsibilities include making your leader feel valued, giving them great feedback, and showing them ways to improve as a leader.

We have pretty high standards about how to go about governing — and that includes how to support your leader. If you find you’re not able to do all the steps we recommend just yet, take this approach as a vision of what you’re aiming for.

Quick reminder: we use the term CEO to denote the person at the very top of the organization, who reports directly to the board. Some call this the head of school, principal, or executive director.

EFFECTIVE LEADERS ACTUALLY WANT THEIR BOARD TO EVALUATE THEM.

Effectively executing an excellent CEO evaluation process can lead to higher engagement, productivity, and retention of your CEO. And ultimately, that all contribute to a stronger organization.

Charter school leaders spend a huge amount of time training, coaching, and supporting their staff. They have really robust feedback loops and end-of-year performance reviews.

Your CEO can feel slighted if the board doesn’t do an evaluation of their performance.

Board members are sometimes surprised to know that CEOs really want to be evaluated. But leaders do, and they want an effective one.

BEFORE YOU BEGIN, MAKE SURE YOUR CEO’S JOB DESCRIPTION AND GOALS ARE IN ORDER.

Your CEO needs a job description that sets clear expectations from the outset. The job description must be approved by the board and reviewed annually. Here’s a sample charter school CEO job description that you’re welcome to use as the basis for your own.

And while the job description sets expectations, the goals are the metric against which a CEO’s performance must be measured.

SET UP AND FOLLOW A PROVEN YEAR-ROUND PROCESS

Your process must be clear, consistent, and year-round.

There shouldn’t be a scramble to determine when or how to evaluate the CEO at the last minute. And the actual annual evaluation shouldn’t be the only opportunity for the board to help the CEO raise the bar for themselves or the organization.

And you don’t need to make it up from scratch. We’ve helped hundreds of charter school leaders effectively utilize our proven CEO evaluation process. With access to the BoardOnTrack platform, you can even be guided through the process, step by step, along with given tools to track evaluation results year over year.

Here are some of the key steps to follow, whether you’re setting up an evaluation process for the first time or refining a process you’ve led over time.

FORM A CEO SUPPORT & EVALUATION COMMITTEE.

Who should serve on this committee? We recommend the board chair, and preferably someone with HR or managerial experience. You might be lucky enough to have someone on the board who works in HR as their day job. They help design and implement performance reviews all day long in their professional life. It would be great to have someone with that background on this committee.

Three members tends to be the right number of people, with the board chair appointing one person to be the chair. One person will be the evaluation coordinator, it’s better if it’s not the board chair. It’s okay if it is the board chair if you’re a very lean board or that’s the only person who can do it. But it’s better to have some checks and balances in play here. Usually, the chair knows the CEO really well; they have a closer relationship than the CEO might with the other trustees. So it’s great to add someone else into the mix.

Learn more about how to successfully form and run your CEO Support & Evaluation Committee here.

DEVELOP A TIMELINE.

Map backward from your desired end date and write down the process steps in the timeline. Make sure you understand all the steps, who’s going to do what, and when each step will be completed. Definitely get input from the CEO here. We’ve seen a lot of boards come up with a timeline and then just hand it down to the CEO. And, in most cases, this results in a plan that doesn’t mesh with the CEO’s realities. Maybe it conflicts with spring break or when the state testing is or things that the CEO would know. So work with the CEO on the timeline and plan your process to allow the CEO to devote the time and energy to make a good process. For instance, the due date for their self-evaluation needs to be doable for them. Note that your timeline will be approved by the full board. So put it on the agenda for a vote, and submit it as a document so the board has what they need to approve it.

DETERMINE WHAT TOOL OR INSTRUMENT YOU’LL USE.

How will you actually measure your evaluation, and do so consistently, with the same tool from one year to the next? The same survey instrument should be completed by the CEO, the full board and the direct reports. You could use a homegrown tool. That’s a lot of work. But we’ve seen people do it. There are other options out there. Ideally, you’ll choose one that’s been road-tested with charter schools nationwide. Because the charter school CEO job is unique. And the other tools that we’ve seen really

focus on a superintendent role, like a district superintendent or the principal job only. The district public school principal doesn’t have fundraising and financial oversight and other things like that. And the superintendent job just vastly different from that of a charter CEO. Of course, we strongly recommend our own online tool, which is built into the BoardOnTrack platform. It’s been built on the lessons learned from our work with hundreds of charter school boards across the country. And it’s the only one exclusively designed for charter schools.

DETERMINE WHAT ADDITIONAL DATA POINTS WILL BE USED.

Even once you’ve chosen your evaluation instrument, you probably want to include some other data that’s specific to your organization. For example the state test scores, annual parent satisfaction surveys, staff satisfaction surveys. Or there might be a report from your CEO on the board-approved goals that you set for the year — and how they’re doing towards completing them. Think of it as if you’re building a portfolio of data points. In the survey instrument, you’re asking questions; maybe rating on a scale of one to five how the CEO has performed. Then, the CEO will evaluate themselves using the same tool. And we want the CEO to ask themselves: what evidence is there to show that I have achieved this rating. And then come up with the additional data points to support that rating. For example a CEO might rate themselves high on financial oversight. And the data to support this could be your clean audit and the fact that you managed to a surplus. One survey instrument isn’t going to capture or document everything that needs to be collected. This portfolio approach helps allow for that.

THE CEO COMPLETES A SELF-EVALUATION.

The CEO should complete a self-evaluation and share it with the board before the trustees begin their evaluation of the CEO.

Understanding how the CEO is feeling about their own performance can be really helpful before each trustee completes the evaluation survey. When you sit down to do your evaluation of the CEO, you can look at the CEO’s self-evaluation and see if they’re being too hard on themselves — and you want to give them a pat on the back. Or, if they’re giving themselves a pass, rating themselves too high, and the board has to correct their assumptions. The self-evaluation can also be shared with the CEO’s direct reports. That’s optional. But it’s helpful for the direct reports to understand how the CEO rates themselves before they weigh in with their own responses to your evaluation survey.

THE BOARD AND THE DIRECT REPORTS COMPLETE THEIR EVALUATION OF THE CEO.

Have the full board complete the evaluation by the agreed upon time. Sometimes, boards choose to have just the chair or just the officers complete the evaluation. But you really want every trustee to weigh in, as well as direct reports.

DISCUSS THE RESULTS WITH THE FULL BOARD.

The key here is to agree to speak with one voice. Even if you don’t all agree. There can be areas where your split. There may maybe nine of you who feel the CEO’s doing really well on one thing; and one or two people who don’t. The majority rules. Just talk that through. Create a summary memo to communicate the results to the CEO. The memo highlights the things that the board feels are going well; and what they want to be improved. The committee will draft the memo for the full board’s review to ensure it reflects the board’s unified voice. Hold an in-person meeting with the CEO to share the memo and discuss the overall evaluation results. During this meeting, you’ll also come up with goals and an action plan for the next year. Ideally, this is a smaller subset of the full board — perhaps only the committee. Note that some CEOs are adamant that they want to read and digest the feedback prior to the meeting. You’ll need to decide what works best for your team. We strongly recommend sharing the written feedback after the meeting.

ESTABLISH AN ACTION PLAN AND GOALS FOR THE NEXT YEAR.

This is a really important step that often gets left out. Once you give the feedback, what are those measurable goals? What’s the improvement plan? Perhaps there are both personal and professional development goals, alongside overarching organizational goals.

In some cases, the CEO drafts their own goals for next year and reviews these with the CEO Support & Evaluation Committee. Either way, the committee will present the CEO goals to the full board for approval.

AND THE PROCESS STARTS ALL OVER AGAIN.

The CEO will now spend the next 12 months pursuing their approved goals, reporting out at board and committee meetings on their progress, and receiving regular support and check-ins from the CEO Support and Evaluation Committee.

This Charter school leader support and evaluation is essential for success as an organization. Learn more about best practices in this Board-CEO partnership in a recent webinar with BoardOnTrack.

For your school to reach its goals, meet its mission, and be set up for success, you need to build a well-structured, well-staffed, and well-trained Board of Directors. In this important webinar, our partners and industry experts on Board Governance, BoardOnTrack, joined with us to share their expertise on the ins and outs of recruiting, building, and managing your governance team as you grow.

In this guide you’ll learn:

· Board basics: Who should be on your governance team and what should they do?

· How to build a strong board: Strategically recruiting for diversity and skills

· Tips to govern for growth: How to face challenges and changes at any stage

Download it now and get the tools to be more strategic about your school’s board governance practices!

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CHARTER EDtalk: The State of Florida Charter Schools

We wanted to check in on the state of Florida charter schools, so in this CHARTER EDtalk, Matthew Gardner, Charter School Capital Client Service Representative, had the privilege of sitting down with Larry Williams, Owner and Managing Partner at Larry Williams Consulting, LLC. Larry shares his expert insights on the state of Florida Charter Schools including their history and growth trajectories, performance rankings, obstacles they’re facing, and what the future looks like for charter schools in Florida.

To learn more about the state of Florida’s charter schools, please watch the video below or read the complete transcript below.

Matthew Gardner: Hello there, and thank you for joining us for this episode of Charter Ed Talks. I’m Matthew Gardner at Charter School Capital, and today we’re honored to be joined by Larry Williams to discuss the state of charter schools in sunny Florida.

So thank you for joining us, and we’re going to go ahead and just jump right in and kick things off.

So, Larry, taking the temperature of Florida, when did charter schools first appear on Florida’s educational landscape?

Larry Williams: The first charter school law for Florida was passed in 1996, which was also the same year that the first charter school opened, which was in Liberty City in the Miami area.

Actually, a group of parents there, in partnership with the future Florida governor Jeb Bush, opened that charter school in Florida. So that became the first charter school.

After that, then charter schools continued to grow. Somewhat at a slow pace there, but that was the very first one, the same year as the first charter school law was passed.

Gardner: Excellent, excellent. Thank you. What’s been the path of charter school growth since first being introduced in the state?

Williams: The charter school growth in Florida over the course of time, from 1996 to present, has been very good. From 1996 to probably 2012, 2014, that time frame there, almost a rocket pace. I mean, very steep growth rate.

Since then, over the last several years, we continue to see charter schools open. However, the rate of growth has slowed down somewhat, so we’re not seeing as many charter schools open every year. Net positive, though. We’re still seeing more charter schools open than we are seeing closed.

Gardner: Okay.

Williams: So, overall, our growth rate has gone down, but we still have significant numbers. We’re probably the third largest state. Well, we’re the third largest state, population. We have the third largest total of charter schools – over 660 charter schools servicing about 295,000 students in the state of Florida.

Gardner: Right. Wow. Excellent. How would you say the Florida charter school performance ranks with charter schools in other states?

Williams: They’re probably right around … probably very similar to their ranking with the National Charter School Alliance data on the model laws, right around number seven. So they’re in the top ten. So their performance is within top ten of other charter schools in the country.

Washington, D.C. pretty much leads the nation, but certainly with more charter schools, then we have a lot more accountability issues that we have to deal with.

Gardner: Right.

Williams: We can talk about some particular problems there. But, overall, about number six or number seven, compared to other schools in the country.

Gardner: That’s great. What do you feel is the biggest obstacle for new charter schools opening in the state?

Williams: Very interesting. If you listened to Nina Rees’s comments [at the National Charter Schools Conference] about how first people ignore you, then they’ll make fun of you, then they’ll try to brush you away, then they start fighting you, and then you try to win, we are now at a stage where we’re, in the charter school environment, having to take on the traditional public schools, the teachers’ unions, and others.

Gardner: Right.

Williams: Very, very serious. They put significant money, put significant resources behind advocating for traditional schools, as opposed to charters – not just allowing charters to be part of their portfolios, but, actually, it’s an us against them, more so than we’ve ever seen.

So that’s a very big obstacle. Another obstacle is the folks that they’re advocating to – traditionally those that are on the left side of the aisle, where you would think that those folks would be more supportive of charter schools, particularly into the student population that these folks generally represent.

But it’s not. It’s definitely a Republican vs. Democrat issue, with Republicans being solidly behind it, Democrats not, because they’re supported a lot by teachers’ unions and school districts and school board members and so forth.

Gardner: Right.

Williams: So that’s probably the biggest obstacle that I see right now, is an elevated effort by traditional public schools and traditional districts to really limit charter schools – new charter schools and present charter schools.

Gardner: Okay. That was definitely leading into my next question. So does that also affect schools that are currently in operation and open right now?

Williams: Yes, and the Florida legislature has worked very hard to walk right I call kind of a tightrope, but being in favor of strong accountability measures, but not wanting to kill the gnat with a sledgehammer type of attitude.

We have one of the statues in Florida … or the charter statute in Florida says when you get a second F, two Fs on a charter school, you have to close the charter school.

Gardner: Right.

Williams: We have a number of traditional schools in Florida who have received F, F, F, F, F, F. They may have a turnaround plan, but they just continue to operate. The legislature’s tried to kind of move that, kind of limit their choices in doing that, having certain turnaround plans, and one of those is opening up to a charter school.

We did that in Jefferson County. The State Board of Education saw just persistently failing schools there and finally toward the school board of Jefferson County … It’s like, “You have no choice. You have to turn this into a charter district. That’s the only thing we can approve.”

Since then, they’ve gone from an F to a C in their first year of operation, on less dollars than what the school district was operating on before.

Gardner: Right.

Williams: So we’ve seen where, with the right environment, that those kids are certainly capable of learning. Also, kids that were leaving Jefferson County, going to Leon County and other counties to get to better schools, where their parents were sending them, are now coming back to Jefferson. So they’re seeing their student populations increase. So we’ve proven that we can do that.

Gardner: True.

Williams: So the legislature’s worked very hard to make it as level a playing field as possible and then hold districts more accountable for those persistently low failing schools that they have.

Gardner: That’s excellent. All right. So, lastly, what do you see for the future of charter schools in Florida?

Williams: I see tremendous opportunity in terms of its growth, personally. The folks that I work with on a regular basis, the members of the legislature, and the Florida Department of Education …

We have a unique situation in Florida, where our former Speaker of the House, Richard Corcoran, who was a very, very, very big proponent of charter schools and, under his watch, passed some very significant legislation in regard to Schools of Hope, Hope Scholarships.

Gardner: Right.

Williams: Very, very, very pro-choice. After his Speaker term ended along with his legislative term, we got a new governor, Ron DeSantis, who then appointed him, essentially, as our new education commissioner.

So now we have, within the Department of Education, a very strong choice department, particularly for charter schools, and we’ve seen a lot go on recently that has certainly indicated that that’s the direction that the Department of Education’s going to go in.

The legislature continues to be very strong on choice and very strong on charter schools. We’ve strengthened the Schools of Hope legislation we passed two years ago. We’ve done some other changes to the statute that make it even more enhanced, better incentives for Schools of Hope.

We’re seeing the results of that right now. KIPP Schools is coming into Hillsborough County. They’re starting this year. IDEA schools are starting in Miami Bay. Those are already on the books. Now just had announced about in the last week or so that KIPP’s now going to open several in Duval County.

Gardner: Oh, wow.

Williams: I mean, so they’re seeing that opportunity there. So this is going to be a major influx of schools, from a world-renowned group like IDEA Schools.

Gardner: That’s good.

Williams: So I think you’re going to continue to see the legislature work both on fine-tuning the accountability measures – certainly holding those schools that are not doing as well as they should accountable, but recognizing those schools that are outperforming their traditional partners and recognizing them.

So I think the attitude and the environment is very strongly for charter schools.

Gardner: Excellent. All right. Thank you for your time.

Williams: You’re welcome.

The 2020 Election Charter School Divide: White Dems v. Minority Dems

Editor’s Note: This article discussing the political charter school divide, was originally published here on May 23rd by the Washington Free Beacon and was written by Charles Fain Lehman, a staff writer for the Washington Free Beacon.

Across the U.S., the charter school debate rolls on. Democrats are often broadly painted as opponents to school choice. But the story is not nearly so simple. This article shows an evident divide between white democrats, who are more often against charter schools, and minority democrats, who are much more inclined to be in favor of charter schools and school choice.

We think it’s vital to keep tabs on the pulse of all things related to charter schools, including informational resources, and how to support school choice, charter school growth, and the advancement of the charter school movement as a whole. We hope you find this—and any other article we curate—both interesting and valuable.

Read the full article below to learn more about the racial disparity around the charter school divide.

White Dems Oppose Charter Schools; Minority Dems Support

New data shows likely fault line in 2020 primary

While Democrats are often thought of as opponents of school choice, new data show the story is not so simple: an examination of trends from 2016 through 2018 revealed that while white Democrats have grown staunchly opposed, their Black and Hispanic peers remain in favor of charter schools.

In an already hot 2020 campaign, charters have become targets for left-leaning candidates. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) in a speech Saturday called for an end to federal funding of for-profit charter schools, and a prohibition on funding of new charter schools, including not-for-profits. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) sided with Sanders, calling for-profit charters in particular “a real problem right now.”

Sanders and Warren are, broadly speaking, in line with the majority view of their party. Education Next, a pro-reform journal, has polled Americans on their views on charter schools since 2013, providing detailed data on party breakdown since 2015. Their polls indicate that charters are consistently more popular with Republicans than with Democrats, and that the schools have slipped to being net unfavorable with the latter group in recent years.

However, this overall unpopularity hides a surprising trend within Democrats. Chalkbeat, an education news site, asked Education Next to provide it with racial decomposition of support for charters within Democrats. The results were startling.

Charter schools have enjoyed net support among Hispanic and Black Democrats for at least the past two years, the Education Next data indicate. But support has cratered among white Democrats. In fact, as of 2018, nearly twice as many (50 percent) of white Democrats opposed charters as supported them (27 percent).

The reason for the emergence of this racial disparity is unclear. Chalkbeat speculated that it may be because Black and Hispanic parents have more direct exposure to charter schools: The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools estimates that compared to regular public schools, public charters enroll more Black (27 percent versus 15 percent) and Hispanic (26 percent versus 22 percent) students.

It could also be because Black and Hispanic parents are more dissatisfied with their current school options. Chalkbeat pointed to a recent Pew poll finding that black voters tend to care about access to school diversity over local schooling, while white voters prefer the opposite, signaling that white respondents are happy with what they have while black respondents want better opportunities. (Hispanic and Asian parents were evenly divided.)

Regardless of the underlying cause, this divide over charter schools will likely prove important in Democratic politics in the near future. This is especially the case because, as recent research from the American Enterprise Institute shows, most figures in the “school reform” movement are Democrats. Notwithstanding broad Republican support for charters, conflict between major players in the school reform movement and their opponents is essentially an intra-party fight.

That fight will likely have consequences for the 2020 primary. Charter-opponent Sanders struggled to garner the support of black primary voters in 2016. His choice of “teachers unions over black voters,” as the Wall Street Journal framed it, may further cement his second-place status compared to front-runner Joe Biden (D., Del.), who has taken the lead among even younger black voters.

In fact, opposition to charters may have already cost Democrats not only votes, but at least one major election. Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R.) narrow victory over Andrew Gillum (D.) in Florida’s 2018 gubernatorial election was partially thanks to a surprisingly high number of votes from Black women: 18 percent gave him their support, double the backing Sen. Rick Scott (R.) received.

The reason for this, William Mattox of the Marshall Center for Educational Options argued in the Wall Street Journal, was DeSantis’s support for school choice.

“More than 100,000 low-income students in Florida participate in the Step Up For Students program, which grants tax-credit funded scholarships to attend private schools. Even more students are currently enrolled in the state’s 650 charter schools,” Mattox wrote. “Most Step Up students are minorities whose mothers are registered Democrats. Yet many of these ‘school-choice moms’ vote for gubernatorial candidates committed to protecting their ability to choose where their child goes to school.”

DeSantis has responded to this signal: earlier this month, he signed a new school voucher program for low-income Floridians into law.

Data, meanwhile, continue to support the efficacy of charter schools over traditional public education. A recent study of Boston’s expansion of its charter program found that previously successful charters were able to “scale up,” serving more kids without losing any of their benefits to SAT scores and college enrollment compared to non-charter schools.

Up Your Charter School Digital Marketing Game!

Charter school growth requires solid student enrollment and retention programs that position their school for future replication or program growth. Having at least some digital marketing prowess can help you reach and exceed your school’s growth and/or expansion goals.

If you’ve been interested in upping your digital marketing game for your charter school, watch our Digital Marketing for Charter Schools webinar! You can begin to fill your toolbox with some actionable tips and basic strategies that can help you get noticed, attract more families and increase your school’s enrollment.

In this webinar, we cover:

Strategy: Developing a digital marketing plan;
Tactics: The best tools for charter schools; and
Resources: Where can you learn more?

You’ll learn: How digital marketing efforts can help your charter schools build a solid digital footprint, different approaches to help develop and maintain your charter school’s reputation, as well as how to leverage marketing to grow student enrollment.

We also provide an overview of the digital landscape, discuss what digital tools are relevant, how best to implement programs, and we cover the various platforms and how to effectively use them to maintain your charter’s reputation and increase awareness.

Digital Marketing for Charter Schools: An Actionable Workbook to Help You Achieve Your School’s Goals!

Scratching your head as to how to go about implementing digital marketing for your charter school? You’re not alone! This free manual will be your go-to guide for all of your school’s digital marketing needs! Download this actionable workbook to help get your marketing plans started, guide you as you define your audience and key differentiators, choose your tactics, and start to build your campaigns.

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Charter School Facilities: Overlooked and Underfunded

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published here on May 17, 2019 by the Washington Examiner and was written by Nina Rees, CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and Ramona Edelin, Executive Director of the DC Association of Chartered Public Schools.

Across the U.S., accessing charter school facilities is, by far, the greatest challenge faced by charter schools. With more than 1 million students across the country on charter school waitlists and the fact that many charters operate in suboptimal buildings, we know that the lack of facilities is a serious obstacle to charter growth.

Charter school facilities are still overlooked and underfunded

It’s National Charter Schools Week, when advocates speak out for the 3.2 million students — 6% of all public school students — educated at charter schools, a thriving public education option that is increasingly popular with families.

Since the first public charter school opened one quarter of a century ago, the charter school reform has spread to 47 states and U.S. territories. In historically troubled school districts, student enrollment has grown dramatically. In New Orleans, Detroit and Washington, D.C., the share of students enrolled in public charter schools is 92%, 53%, and 47%, respectively.

Taxpayer-funded and tuition-free, charters develop their educational programs independently of school districts while being held accountable for improved student performance. This autonomy enables these unique public schools to adopt approaches that boost student outcomes. But it also creates a challenge: unlike traditional public schools, charters do not receive a schoolhouse upon opening. This makes acquiring adequate school space a constant challenge.

Nationwide, charter school leaders report that lack of access to suitable school facilities is one of their primary concerns—and one of the biggest barriers to expanding student enrollment. Nearly 1 in 5 charters had to delay opening by a year or more due to facilities-related issues.

While public school buildings paid for by taxpayers should be available to all public school students, the reality is that many school districts, including Detroit, Indianapolis, and Minneapolis, refuse to allow charter schools to lease or buy even vacant school buildings. Sadly, this results in many schools operating out of shopping malls, office buildings and repurposed industrial facilities.

Accordingly, around 40% of charters lack essential amenities such as gymnasiums, libraries, science labs, cafeterias and outdoor space, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools research finds.

This is a vital issue. Why? Because demand for charter schools from parents and guardians significantly exceeds supply. Indeed, if all families seeking a place for their child could secure one, the total number of charter students would be 8.5 million — almost three times today’s actual enrollment — according to research by Phi Delta Kappa International, a professional organization for educators. Of parents who would like to send their child to a public charter school, over half cited lack of access — the school is too distant or has a waitlist — as the reason why their children did not attend one, PDK found.

Importantly, over half of the nation’s charter students live in economically-disadvantaged homes eligible for federal lunch subsidies.

In Washington, D.C., the government spends three times the amount per student on school properties for traditional schools compared to the facility funding it makes available to their charter school counterparts, even though the charters serve a higher share of needy students. Local charters receive a per-student allowance for school facilities that varies each year through city budget wrangling and election cycles, and consequently lacks appeal to the private sector loan market to which charters must turn in a city with a red-hot real estate market.

Meanwhile, the District government has proved an appalling steward of its own property: for decades, scores of surplus school buildings have been sold to private developers, often for luxury uses, or simply left to rot. Only months ago, developers acquired five historic schoolhouses at a time when 11,000 students are on waitlists for city charters.

The District’s own laws actually require it to offer surplus school property to charters to lease or buy before developers can. This mandate is flouted more often than not, an injustice one finds repeated in the minority of other jurisdictions whose laws ostensibly protect charter students’ interests.

While four in five D.C. charter students are economically disadvantaged, those representing the city’s most vulnerable communities are twice as likely to meet college and career readiness benchmarks as their peers in the traditional school system.

At the federal level, the Charter Schools Program helps charters access space and overcome other start-up hurdles. But funding amounts to less than 1% of the U.S. Department of Education’s budget, which does not reflect the extent of charter school enrollment — or demand — today.

Because parent demand indicates millions more students would attend a charter school if one were available to them, local jurisdictions need to allow charters access to surplus public school buildings and space before developers can bid for them. Prioritizing equality in per-student facilities funding also is essential. Federal education grants could encourage this best practice.

America’s public charter schools have significantly enhanced public education quality, especially for the nation’s most disadvantaged students. Federal, state, and local government should step up to back them.

The Ultimate Guide to Charter School Facility Financing:

Thinking about a new facility for your charter school or enhancing your current one? This guide shares straightforward and actionable advice on facilities planning, financing options, getting approved, choosing a partner, and much more! Download it here.

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The Ultimate Guide to Charter School Board Governance: How to Recruit, Build, and Manage Your Board

For your school to reach its goals, meet its mission, and be set up for success, you need to build a well-structured, well-staffed, and well-trained Board of Directors. In this brand new guide, our partners and industry experts on Board Governance, BoardOnTrack, share their expertise on the ins and outs of recruiting, building, and managing your governance team as you grow.

We’ve seen the difference in outcomes when schools have highly strategic boards that work in close collaboration with their management teams.

An effective board needs more than enthusiastic volunteers who believe in your mission.

They need to possess the skills, experience, temperament, and time to govern a multimillion-dollar enterprise.

Great boards govern in partnership with the CEO and the management team to develop a vision of excellence, work toward near-term goals, and create realistic plans for the future.

Effective boards include individuals from a range of professions, with diverse backgrounds and skills that align with the school’s immediate and future objectives. We’ve seen boards achieve ambitious goals thanks to trustees with expertise in finance, real estate, fundraising, marketing, human resources, and executive leadership.

In this guide, we’ll cover best practices for charter school governance, including the essential roles and responsibilities on your school’s governance board, how to recruit the right people, and governing for growth at every stage. This guide is intended for charter school leaders and board members who want to be strategic about governance.

Download this guide to learn:

Board Basics: Who should be on your governance team and what should they do?
How to build a strong board: Strategically recruiting for diversity and skills
Tips to govern for growth: How to face challenges and changes at any stage

Get the Resource

Having One or More Teachers of Same Race Benefits Students

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published here on June 4, 2019 by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. It looks at the evidence that shows how having teachers of the same race impacts a student’s educational career and makes a positive impact. It shares the disparities in teacher/student race-matches in traditional public schools and public charter schools.

Read on for more details.

Student-Teacher Race Match in Charter and Traditional Public Schools

There’s mounting evidence that, for children of color especially, having one or more teachers of the same race over the course of students’ educational careers seems to make a positive difference.

But to what extent, if any, do the benefits of having a same-race teacher vary by type of school?

Existing “race-match” studies fail to distinguish among the traditional district and charter school sectors. Knowing whether differences exist across school types could improve how we recruit and develop educators, as well as shed light on whether the success of urban charter schools is due in part to their greater success in recruiting a diverse teaching staff—an explanation that’s received short shrift in research and policy circles.

“Student-Teacher Race Match in Charter and Traditional Public Schools,” authored by Dr. Seth Gershenson of American University, uses student-level data for all public school students in North Carolina from grades three to five between 2006 and 2013. The analysis yielded five findings:

Traditional public schools and charter schools serve the same proportion of black students, but charter schools have about 35 percent more black teachers.
Black students in charter schools are about 50 percent more likely to have a black teacher than their traditional public school counterparts, but white students are equally likely to have a white teacher across the two sectors.
Race-match effects are nearly twice as large in the charter school sector as in traditional public schools, though these differences are statistically insignificant, likely due to small sample sizes.
In charter schools, race-match effects are twice as large for nonwhite as for white students, while no such difference exists in traditional public schools.
Race-match effects are relatively constant across school locales, enrollments, and compositions.

Since the effects of having a same-race teacher appear stronger in charter schools than in the district sector—and stronger still for nonwhite students—it’s encouraging that the charter sector has more of these matches between black students and teachers, due largely to having more black teachers in the first place. This is clearly an overlooked dimension of charter effectiveness.

Moreover, traditional public schools might seek to emulate their charter school counterparts when it comes to boosting the number of teachers of color they hire, though there remains room for improving teacher diversity, not to mention academic achievement, in both sectors.

Since the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We help schools access, leverage, and sustain the resources charter schools need to thrive, allowing them to focus on what matters most – educating students. Our depth of experience working with charter school leaders and our knowledge of how to address charter school financial and operational needs have allowed us to provide over $1.8 billion in support of 600 charter schools that have educated over 1,027,000 students across the country. For more information on how we can support your charter school, contact us. We’d love to work with you!

BIG NEWS! Charter School Capital Has a New Look!

What do you think of our new look?

We are so excited that Charter School Capital has a shiny new website that we wanted to share it with everyone!

Our marketing team has been hard at work over the past several months with design, planning, copy, resources, and more, to ensure that our updated website is easy to navigate and the information you’re looking for is right at your fingertips. We hope you find our new look warm and welcoming and that it clearly conveys our mission—we are 100% dedicated to charter school success.

We also wanted it to be easy for you to navigate to our extensive toolbox of innovative solutions designed exclusively for charter schools:

In addition, don’t miss checking out our Resources, Blog, Partners, and Events pages which have all been updated with both improved functionality and design!

Want to learn more about us? Check out our About Us and Team pages too!

We hope you like what you see! If you do find anything amiss, or find yourself on any 404 error pages, that is often to be expected with a project of this magnitude. Please do let us know by emailing us at growcharters@charterschoolcapital.com so we can get it on our radar to fix. We appreciate your input!

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