Category: Charter school News and Trends

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How Charter Schools Can Foster Integration

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published here on July 23, 2019 by The 74 and written by Sonia Park, the executive director of the Diverse Charter Schools Coalition. 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.

Charter Schools Can Be an Important New Tool for Fostering Integration. Our New Coalition Is Working to Make That Happen

It’s been almost 50 years since Kamala Harris stepped onto a school bus and out of her racially redlined neighborhood amid the desegregation of the Berkeley, California, schools. Five decades later, the question of who goes to school where remains pivotal to kids’ and families’ lives and to the communities we build in this country.

In those years, much has changed. School segregation has gotten worse. Yet our understanding of the issue has changed for the better, and the evolving picture of public schooling offers new solutions. One important, and overlooked, element is charter schools, which are numerous in many places where segregation is common. Charter schools, independently managed public schools, are offering new approaches to this decades-old issue.

America’s painful history with segregation was injected anew into America’s dinner-table conversations after Harris’s exchange with Joe Biden at the second Democratic presidential debate. Finding solutions to this persistent problem remains fundamental to justice and opportunity in this country — and in an increasingly diverse nation, it’s more pressing than ever. Desegregation in America’s schools peaked in 1988; since then, the proportion of schools that are intensely segregated — more than 90 percent nonwhite — has tripled. This, in a country where most public school students are children of color.

But evidence shows that racial and socioeconomic integration offer benefits not just to children of color and low-income students but to all, ranging from test scores to college attendance to critical thinking skills. Scholar Richard Kahlenberg wrote after the debate, “If we want to break the cycle of poverty, few interventions are as important as efforts to give children a chance to attend high-quality integrated schools.”

High-quality public charter schools are among the new tools we have to advance desegregation and deepen our understanding of successful diversity.

Public schooling in 2019 looks far different than it did in Harris’s day – in part because charter schools have opened in places where there are large numbers of low-income students and students of color. Our student bodies are more diverse; so are the choices their families can make.

Charter schools are open to whoever chooses them, and some reflect the highly segregated neighborhoods in which they exist. As a consequence, some have criticized charters for supposedly worsening segregation, though that confuses correlation with causation. (There is also a vast difference between being placed in a school based on your zip code and choosing a school because it’s culturally affirming.) Charters offer choice to families that haven’t had that in the past.

The Diverse Charter Schools Coalition is proud to have assembled charter leaders determined to work with school boards and to recruit intensively to make their schools a force for diversity of all kinds and at all levels. We’re a small but rapidly growing alliance representing more than 175 schools nationwide that have a vision of what education should look like in today’s society — encompassing families, students, staff and leadership. We are determined to take on not just learning gaps but also an empathy gap that is far too clear.

It takes expertise and planning to create such schools successfully. Intentional diversity goes far beyond simply enrolling students of different races, wealth levels and other socioeconomic markers; it embraces a deepening understanding of an inclusive school community. Too often, desegregation means only that students attend school in the same building — often experiencing separate and unequal education under the same roof. We’re working to help schools not just attain diverse enrollment, staff and leadership, but foster inspiring communities where students can form bonds that cross boundaries, learn from one another and together develop a vision for their world.

We’re seeking to grow the number of these schools, in part by recruiting and preparing future leaders with a clear vision for new diverse-by-design charter schools. Our fellows are matched with a host school, exposed to exemplary models, given access to experts and resources, offered a tailored residency and provided with individualized learning. Leaders of our member schools receive coaching and support, which we plan to expand to district leaders as well.

America is a different and more diverse place than it was when Harris started school, yet our schools are just as segregated. We need to use every tool possible to change that, and charter schools must be part of that.

Charter School Capital logoSince 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 $2 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!

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How the Charter-School Backlash Will Hurt American Kids

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published here, on June 21st, 2019 by New York Daily News and was written by Nina Rees, the president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

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.

The charter-school backlash will hurt kids across America

This graduation season, millions of students are celebrating as years of hard work finally pay off in high school diplomas and college degrees. But the feeling isn’t universal. For many students, graduation season is a reminder that they haven’t reached their goals. A combination of inadequate schools, limited economic circumstances and troubled social conditions drive students off track. Even for many high school graduates going on to college, the cruel reality is that, for those from the lowest-income families, they’re unlikely to graduate from college. The next few years may lead to more debt, but not more opportunity.

We should be incensed by this heartbreaking reality. We should be demanding solutions. Instead, political leaders, including presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, want to close off one of the few paths that lead disadvantaged students to college success.

The facts are laid out in a new book, “The B.A. Breakthrough: How Ending Diploma Disparities Can Change the Face of America.” Author Richard Whitmire identifies high schools that are helping students beat the college odds. Despite educating students from predominately low-income backgrounds, these schools are preparing students to graduate not just from high school but from college.

Whitmire shows that networks of charter schools — public, but independent of local bureaucracies and unions — are producing college graduates at a rate two to four times higher than the average for all students from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. A few novel things are happening in charter schools to produce these positive outcomes.

One is that many charter schools instill a college-going mindset early. College banners line hallways and homerooms are named after colleges — even in elementary school. Students have their sights set on college and are continually told they have the power to reach their goal.

A second factor driving college success is that charter schools have continuous improvement in their DNA. Some of the most successful charter school networks found that they were getting students to college but that their students were struggling when they got there, undermined by the lack of support and supervision on campus. So these networks have put an emphasis on supporting students in college, for instance by extending the guidance relationship with students into college and by plugging graduates into alumni networks on campus.

A third factor is that charter schools are focusing more of their counseling on helping students find the right college fit for them. Historically black colleges and universities, smaller colleges, schools with strong alumni networks, schools closer to home or farther from home depending on the circumstances: Finding the right fit can make a huge difference for students who are the first in their family to go to college or who are from underrepresented backgrounds and report feeling isolated when they go to majority white and wealthy campuses.

Rich Buery, a former deputy mayor of New York City who now heads policy for KIPP, identifies college counseling as a major driver of KIPP’s successful efforts to help more alumni graduate from college. He notes that the average student-to-counselor ratio nationwide is 482 to 1 — and often higher in urban public high schools. It’s almost impossible for students to get the attention they need to identify schools where they can be successful, let alone apply to them and gain admission.

At KIPP, the average student-to-counselor ratio is 100 to 1. According to Buery, “This is a significant resource commitment and we have seen it pay off.” Forty-five percent of students who graduate from KIPP high schools graduate from college, compared to 11% of students from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. One of the great benefits of charter schools is that they have more freedom to direct resources to areas where they see the greatest need, not necessarily where the district bureaucracy decides the money should be spent.

The college success rates for graduates of KIPP, Uncommon Schools, Yes Prep and others are reason to celebrate, to share new approaches with other schools, and to keep pressing until we close the college gap completely.

Unfortunately, the latest trend — from New York City to California and several places in between — has been to halt charter school growth. Sanders has even put charter-bashing at the center of his presidential campaign platform. He wants to make college free, but won’t support the schools that are making college accessible to students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

It’s odd, to say the least, that some adults are more concerned with supporting bureaucracies than with supporting students — especially when there are millions of black and brown students who can’t even dream of college because their schools aren’t preparing them to get there, and when wealthy kids are six times more likely to graduate from college than poor kids.

Charter schools are making college success a real possibility for the 3.2 million students attending them today. Anybody truly committed to upending the status quo in our country and extending opportunity to more Americans should be asking how we can help more students access life-changing charter schools and feel the pride of college graduation.

Charter School Capital logoSince 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!

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Charter School Students

CHARTER EDtalk: How to Prepare Your Charter School Students for College Readiness

In this CHARTER EDtalk, Charter School Capital Inside Sales Manager, Shannon Schrencengost had the pleasure of sitting down with Director of The Early College High School at Delaware State University, Evelyn Edney, to discuss how their school’s curriculum, programs, and staff help underrepresented charter school students become college-ready. Watch the video and read the complete transcript below to hear the whole story.

Shannon Schrencengost: Hi, I’m Shannon Schrencengost with Charter School Capital, and I’m here today with Evelyn Edney from the Early College High School in Delaware. We’re going to be chatting a bit about college readiness. So Evelyn, tell me little bit about what Early College High School is doing to measure college readiness.

Evelyn Edney: So, we are a very small charter school, and we are affiliated with Delaware State University. The whole premise of our school is to allow underrepresented youth to have kind of get a leg up and be able to start taking college classes while they’re in high school. So, we needed to come up with a way to determine who gets to take the college classes and when, because we want to make sure that they’re ready. Most tools out there are always looking at things like just SAT scores, or just this. And I created a tool that allows us to look at the whole student to be able to gauge how well they’re doing and to give students points to say, “Hey, here’s where I can improve.” And that sort of thing.

So, our college readiness rubric measures the categories that we thought went into college readiness. Of course grades. We need to see that our students are able to do college level work. Their attendance, because college professors care if you show up. And we look at their behavior. If you’re a student who knows that I have a bathroom in my office, you’ve been in there too many times, and maybe you’re not quite ready to be sitting in a college classroom taking college classes just yet. And we look at how well students do on bigger assessments. We have some school level assessments, we have some common assessments through grade levels, we have some state level assessments. And so, we look at those assessments in conjunction with the other things. And then we also ask our teachers to recommend the students. So, those are the five factors that kind of go into our college readiness rubric.

Now, it sounds like we’re just looking to measure the college readiness, and we are, it works in our particular situation, but this tool can be something that anybody could tweak and then make it their own to measure something that may be a priority in their schools.

Schrecengost: What personally motivates you in working with the school that has a mission and vision college readiness and the college going mindset?

Edney: Well, growing up I would have been one of those underrepresented students, and had I not had some educators in the school that I was in work with me to be able to get to a point where I could do college level work and to help me actually get there, I don’t think I would have made it and I might be a different kind of statistic right now than the one that I am. So, that personal story keeps me motivated to want to help other students who may be in the same boat.

Schrecengost: I’d love to hear some kind of success stories. Students who’ve gone on to college and what they’re doing now.

Edney: Well, our school is small and it did just start a few years ago. So, we just graduated our first class, the class of 2018 last year. And the valedictorian went to Stanford on a free ride. The salutatorian went to University of Pennsylvania on a free ride. And a lot of the other students went to other smatterings of school, but the majority of them went to Delaware State University, the school who started at all with us. And so, that makes me excited to now see the students on campus. When I was their high school principal, they tried to run from me when they saw me on campus, but now they’re freshmen in college, but with credits. A lot of those students started at Delaware State University as a first year student, but they’re coming in with almost over a year and some of them up to two years worth of college credits under their belts to kind of keep them going. And so, that’s exciting to us.

Schrecengost: That’s very exciting. I think, there’s a lot of national conversation around college debt right now. So, thinking of the savings for those students, I’m jealous. I wish I had done a program like that when I was in high school, so that’s really neat.

Edney: A lot of adults say the same things. A lot of the parents of these students, they get it. Not all of the students are all wanting and willing to go to an early college program. I think some of their parents kind of drag them by the ear, but because they know what the opportunity involves. And our partner at Delaware State University is phenomenal. I mean we would not be able to do what we do. They literally provide a building for us to be in tuition free for our students. This high school pays for the student’s books, and so this whole track for our students, it’s free. And so, it really helps them get that leg up, and most of them are going to graduate from college in literally a year, almost two years earlier than their peers in other schools.

Schrecengost: I know there’s a significant amount of work that goes into building a charter school. What did that feel like for you when you saw that first round of graduates walk across that stage?

Edney: That was an exciting moment for me. I was very excited, and our legislators are very, very supportive. Our Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester was our keynote speaker that evening, and Senator Carper, Thomas Carper, he came up through a monsoon in Washington and they weren’t in session just to attend to our graduation. And so, that made us kind of excited that we had people who were supporting us. And it is hard.

You must have that kind of support in going through, and again and I mentioned Delaware State University as being a partner, they’re not only a partner in things like the tuition or the building they provide us, but their professors will create opportunities for our students to kind of experience going into their labs and working alongside of real college students to be able to show students another side of things that they would want to kind of pursue.

Schrecengost: What do you think other charters who might want to start doing dual college programming, want to implement that, what advice do you have for them?

Edney: To sit down and look at what factors they believe go into college readiness, and figure out a way to put that onus on the students and give them a tool that helps them measure where they are, and set goals on where they want to be so that they can do well in a program like ours.

Schrecengost: All right, everyone. How do you ensure that you’re meeting the needs of all students to ensure that they’re college ready?

Edney: Well, the way our rubric works, it measures the student’s college readiness eight times a year so that it coincides with grade reporting. When we get back these really great reports that we use, working through Performance Plus Power School, we are able to look at the rubric and the report and on it we can kind of see the student’s score. And if it’s at a score that kind of deems them not quite college ready, but more at potential, we look at what the factors are and based off of their score, we kind of create a system of supporting the student.

One layer could be for the students who are most needy, I usually will personally meet with them or my assistant principal. We sit down, have a meeting with myself, the school counselor, that parent, that student and we map out kind of a plan of success. Whether we put supports in place like get them a tutor, have them use resources at the college that we’re affiliated with. We also have an after school extra help program, but we put supports in place around the subject area or the factors that they need help in the most. And then we try to map out that plan and then we check on it periodically to see that they’re doing. A student’s score may yield that they meet with their advisor. Each student has an advisor and that advisor advisee relationship’s really important in our school. And so they sit with them and meet with them and do kind of the same thing that we’re doing, but it’s kind of done with their advisor.

We use that to kind of put those supports in place so that those students can reach that and be able to do the college courses.

Schrecengost: Got it. And tell me about your relationship with key community stakeholders and ensuring that they’re bought into the college going vision.

Edney: It’s not hard to sell it because a lot of businesses as well as our immediate school stakeholders, like our parents are very involved. We try to streamline this whole college readiness program in everything that we do. For instance, our positive behavior support program, horn at pride, catch it. That’s a big thing. If you walk up to one of my students and say that, they will say that back to you. But we take that and we look for a way the students who are deemed college ready, we want to make sure even though we have a plan to put in place for those students who don’t quite make it each time that we’re doing, for the students who do, we want to celebrate it.

We try to do some celebrations every single month to celebrate the students who are there. And the PTSA will sponsor one or two. They sponsored a skating party or we get stakeholders in the community to maybe sponsor a, what we would call dinner and a movie and we would show movie at school and they sponsor a dinner there. Or we take the students to the movies and so forth. We try to bring the community in that way. We also create field trips that are educationally sound, and so the students may be able to go to one of the field trips that are sponsored by the university and community members.

Schrecengost: That’s great. It sounds like you have a lot of support and that’s fantastic.

Edney: We do. It’s really great.

Schrecengost: Awesome. What am I not asking that you want people to know about your school?

Edney: It’s great. I love going there every single day. It’s been wonderful and hard at the same time. Everyone knows in little tiny charter schools you all have to wear a million hats, and I am lucky enough to have a staff who really believes in our model, and that they will go over to our wall of invisible hats and grab whatever one’s needed to make sure that these students are succeeding. And really trying to work, let that be our mission every single day.

Schrecengost: Thank you Evelyn. I appreciate you taking the time with me.

Edney: Thank you.

Charter School Capital logoSince 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!

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Charter School Security

Charter School Security: Keys to Preventing School Violence

In this CHARTER EDtalk, Janet Johnson, Charter School Capital’s Chief Growth Officer, had the honor of sitting down with school safety expert, Gary Sigrist, President and CEO, Safeguard Risk Solutions.

Gary Sigrist is a nationally known speaker, consultant, author and expert on emergency preparedness. His career spans more than 30 years as an educator, administrator and police officer. Sigrist’s background in both education and law enforcement gives him a unique perspective on safety and preparedness, which he brings to his work with clients of Safeguard Risk Solutions.

We were so pleased that Gary took some time to share his insights and some simple tips on how to build a positive school culture and how that can, in turn, help prevent school violence. Watch the video and read the complete transcript below.

TRANSCRIPT:

Janet Johnson: Good day. This is Janet Johnson. I’m with Charter School Capital and we’re fortunate enough to be here today with Gary Sigrist from Safeguard Risk Solutions, talking about a pretty topical subject that can be a little bit nerve-wracking, which is school security.

Gary Sigrist: Yes. Good morning.

Johnson: Good morning and thank you for joining us.

Sigrist: Glad to be here.

Johnson: We really appreciate it. We thought we’d talk a little bit about school security and frankly, I think the question that most people really want to know is how do we prevent issues from happening?

Sigrist: So there’s a wide range of things you can do, and almost all of them are inexpensive, which is important. It’s the prevention aspect. In the United States, we spend about $6 billion a year on school safety and security, and most of it is response. Whereas with prevention, if you’re in the response phase, you’re already that school. Okay. So if we’re in the prevention phase, it’ll never happen. You’ll never get that negative recognition.

And prevention as everything from a positive school culture to having threat assessment teams, to just making sure that all of your students are engaged in your school. And that more than anything, that engagement where they feel like they belong, will prevent them from doing things because they want to get back at someone. Or they’re on a pathway to justification that it’s okay that I do this to you because you did this to me, or a pathway to violence. So, in that prevention phase, you keep that student engaged in the school because then they don’t want to harm the school or anybody in it because they belong to that school.

Johnson: And so when you are on this path to prevention through the students, that’s teachers, right? Are you talking about teachers, mostly?

Sigrist: It is going to have to be driven actually from the administrators who are creating that positive school climate with their staff. Because it’s not just teachers. It’s cooks, it’s custodians, it’s the secretary, it’s everybody who creates this positive school climate where … there’s never going to be a day where a student is going to say, “Yippity, I get to come to school today.” But you don’t want them to get up in the morning and say, “Oh my God, I don’t know if I can take another day there.”

So if they are engaged with the school, because every adult in that building sees and smiles, welcomes them, and creates that positive “I’m glad you’re here” feeling, that’s going to help reduce it. We’re also going to have to make sure that there’s no culture of bullying. Where kids know that they feel accepted.

When you talk about this pathway of violence, pathway of justification, it’s a dynamic process. A child may actually be on a pathway, but if you intervene, help that child change their circumstances, they get off that pathway. So you can control what happens in your school simply by controlling the culture of your school.

Johnson: So how do you establish the positive culture?

Sigrist: Well, one of the things that I think is so easy is during class changes, when you’re talking about middle school and high school, because that’s when your most likely offender is going to be out, teachers should be out in the hallway. And they’re out in the hallway for a lot of reasons. One is they can manage the students. If they see bullying behavior, they can stop it. If they see behavior that’s not acceptable, they can stop it.

But they can also engage the students as they see them in the hallway. “Hi, how are you doing? Nice job on your math test. Really liked you in the play yesterday. Looking forward to the school concert.” All those things that make the students feel like they belong. And they set the tone for that positive school climate.

We know that children are less likely to make a mistake if they have a caring adult in their home, their neighborhood, their church or their school. And so the school is a very big part of that, of making that child feel like they belong and they’re part of the school.

Johnson: So sometimes just a smile and a comment.

Yet positive school climate is the least expensive and the most effective thing you could do to keep your students and staff safe.

Sigrist: Just a smile, and the thing is, money is tight in every school. Yet positive school climate is the least expensive and the most effective thing you could do to keep your students and staff safe.

Johnson: Are there resources that you would recommend for school leaders to look at, establishing this positive climate that are accessible to folks?

Sigrist: There are thousands of resources online. One of my favorite resources is the United States Department of Education and the REMS Technical Assistance Center, the REMS TA center. They have everything that you might consider for helping your school remain safe, and all of those resources are free, which is huge. They’ll even come out and do free training.

Johnson: Really?

Sigrist: So it’s the REMS TA center. You just Google REMS, Readiness and Emergency Management Schools TA, technical assistance center, and you’ll pop up with blogs that you can go to. There are exercises, there are memorandums of understanding it, everything they lay out for what schools need to be safe. They have emergency operation plans that are free, that almost every state requires. So to me, if you’re looking for free resources that have the backing of the United States Department of Education, the REMS technical center is the place to go.

Johnson: That’s the place. And we will post the link to that in our blog. So please visit us and take a look at that. So positive school culture. Let’s talk about preventing bullying a little bit if you don’t mind.

Sigrist: You know, that’s, unfortunately, one of the areas we have to look for bullying first is within our staff.

Johnson: Really?

Sigrist: I can see a lot of that kind of behavior. I hear a lot of that behavior where teachers bully or are not being kind to each other. And your students will model that behavior. So-

Johnson: That’s a surprise to me.

Sigrist: Statistically 20, I always, when I’m giving a presentation, I’ll ask how many people have been bullied when they were in school? A lot of people raise their hand. And I say, where are those bullies now? And statistically, 25% are in prison or jail. So where are the other 75%? They’re in the workplace. And so if you don’t address that behavior, if staff members were being negative towards each other, then as an administrator, you’re going to have to address that because that’s unacceptable behavior.

And I’ve seen in my teaching career, teachers throw other teachers, for lack of a better word, under the bus in front of the students.

Johnson: Really?

Sigrist: And so the students say, “Well, if it’s okay for that teacher to pick on that teacher, why is it not okay for me to pick on that student?” So modeling that positive behavior of what you want to see.

Johnson: Wow. I’m surprised.

Sigrist: Most people are.

Johnson: No kidding. Are there any other just quick hints in terms of the positive school culture and climate?

Sigrist: No. I think it’s just an easy thing. You set up methods to recognize your students whenever they do well, and you reward them for doing good things.

Johnson: That’s right. That’s fabulous. Gary, thank you so much.

Sigrist: You’re welcome.

Johnson: Appreciate it.

Sigrist: Alrighty.

To learn more about school safety and security, check out this webinar-on-demand. In it, we cover important topics around safety and security for schools, specifically looking at security challenges in charter schools. Access the slides and recording of this webinar to learn about school safety measures, emergency planning, threat assessment, and more.

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charter school results

Charter Schools Are Getting Results

Editor’s Note: This article on charter school results was initially published here on May 15, 2019 by The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and written by Nathan Barrett, Ph.D., the Senior Director, Research and Evaluation at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

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.

Charter Schools Are Getting Results

The charter school sector has much to celebrate.

In an education system that has been equally quick to end reforms as it is to introduce them, for over 25 years the charter sector has seen significant growth. This is due in no small part to the fact that parents want charter schools as an option for their children because charter schools, on average, generate positive results for their students.

Measured by improvement on test outcomes, study after study across methods and samples, has shown that the average student in a public charter school experiences equal or higher achievement growth in English and/or math than that of a district school peer (more on research methodology) This is true for “gold-standard” randomized-assignment designs (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, etc.) and for quasi-experimental designs (here, here, here, here, etc.). Research has also demonstrated that charter schools perform well with traditionally underserved student populations. For example, a recent study found that Black students in charter schools gained an additional 89 days of learning in math.

To be clear, these are average effects on test-scores. There is certainly variance among charter schools in their ability to affect student outcomes with some schools performing below expectations. However, part of the charter school sector model is addressing these failures and closing schools that fail to perform. Indeed, there is research (here and here) suggesting that some of the positive effects we see from the charter sector are due to school closures. This research suggests the importance of looking at the charter sector over time, so the mechanisms of accountability can have time to influence the composition of the charter school sector. Perhaps even more important is research on policy implementation that suggests the importance of giving enough time for policies to develop and improve as implementation is better understood. This is evident in studies of Texas and North Carolina. These studies find that, over time, the charter sector improved to a point that students enrolled in charter schools, on average, outperformed their traditional school counterparts. The authors caution that this effect could be due to student sorting patterns. However, thoughtful treatment of these assumptions suggest that it is unlikely that student sorting accounts for the entirety of the effects and encourages further work on the matter.

The use of test scores to measure performance is a factor of both convenience and an assumption that test scores are related to attainment. Indeed, some of the best research available has demonstrated a strong relationship between test scores and longer-term outcomes such as graduation and early-career earnings. However, there is also evidence of schools influencing attainment outcomes without influencing test scores and vice versa. Because we are ultimately interested in longer-term outcomes for our students, the research base evaluating these outcomes has grown over the past decade. This is largely because as the charter school movement ages, we can track students through high school, college, and career, but also due to better data systems allowing researchers to follow students through these transitions. Research has shown that students attending charter schools are more likely to graduate from high school (7-11% higher), attend and persist in college (10-11% and 6-13% higher, respectively), and have higher future earnings (over 12% higher). Studies have also found that female students are less likely to become pregnant in their teens, male students are less likely to be incarcerated, and students are less likely to be absent.

It is certainly worth noting that these outcomes are driven by charter schools that, on average, receive 20-40% less funding than their traditional school counterparts. These figures are even more striking when one considers that 18 states pay for the pension system before allocating funds to schools, charter schools typically must pay for facilities expenses through their operating budget, and many states have hold harmless policies that subsidize districts for students that move to a charter school. A recent study of the charter sectors in eight cities confirms the funding inequity and found that charter schools are more cost-effective and provide a larger return-on-investment than their traditional school counterparts. Though caution should be used about making linear assumption between increasing funding and student outcomes, the findings still suggest that even at lower funding levels, charter schools are delivering on their commitment to better serving their students.

Taken together, it is easy to say that, on average, charter schools are doing what they set out to do—improving educational opportunities for students. This is evidenced by the myriad of studies finding positive effects on outcomes from test-scores to future-earnings, all while operating with fewer resources. If that wasn’t enough, we estimate that there are approximately 5 million students who would attend a charter school if one was available.

Charter School Capital logoSince 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!

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teachers of same race

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.

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 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:

  1. Traditional public schools and charter schools serve the same proportion of black students, but charter schools have about 35 percent more black teachers.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.

Charter School Capital logoSince 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!

Charter School ProgramNew 2019 Charter School Program Grants Now Available for Developers

This information was shared by The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. 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.

The US Department of Education published a notice inviting applications for grants to Charter School Developers for the Opening of New Charter Schools and for the Replication and Expansion of High-Quality Charter Schools.

This notice includes applications for developers of new charter schools (84.282B) and for developers replicating and expanding existing charter schools (84.282E). Charter school developers in states that do not currently have a Charter Schools Program (CSP) State Entity grant are eligible to apply. Read more information about this grant competition, including webinar recording for interested applicants, or contact the CSP team at charterschools@ed.gov.

Applications are due before midnight Eastern time
on August 2.

 

The Charter School Movement

The Charter School Movement Thriving: A look at the Growing Numbers

Editor’s Note: This information/report about the growth of the charter school movement was published by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools on March 11, 2019 and can be found here. 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.

Over the past ten years, enrollment in charter schools has increased by nearly 2 million students—and the number of school districts with a significant charter school presence continues to grow, too. When the National Alliance published the first edition of this report in 2006, only one district—New Orleans—had more than 30 percent of its students enrolled in charter schools. In 2017-18, 21 districts had at least 30 percent of their students attending charter schools.

Public charter schools are unique public schools that foster innovative approaches to solving some of today’s most difficult educational challenges. Over the past ten years, enrollment in charter schools has increased from 1.3 million in 2007-08 to nearly 3.2 million in 2017-18.

In addition, the number of school districts with a significant charter school presence continues to grow. In 2017-18, 21 districts had 30 percent or more of their students enrolled in charter schools, and 214 districts had at least 10 percent of their students enrolled in charter schools. In 2017-18, more than 10.5 million public school students, or one in five, attended school in a district with at least 10,000 total students and 10 percent or more charter school enrollment share.

Free from many of the constraints that traditional schools face, the charter school movement has been a leader in innovation, school choice, and education reform for more than 25 years. At the same time, charter schools are held accountable for advancing student achievement by the communities and states they serve.

The unique combination of innovation and accountability have allowed charter schools to demonstrate that all children are capable of academic achievement that prepares them to succeed in college, their career, and their life. Charter schools have led efforts to eliminate achievement gaps, boost graduation rates, and revitalize communities.

Because charter schools have a successful track record of meeting students’ specific needs, parental demand for them remains high. In fact, a 2016 survey commissioned by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools shows that 78 percent of parents support a new charter school opening in their neighborhood.1 In addition, most parents, regardless of background, support public school choice.

This report identifies communities that have the highest percentage and the highest number of students enrolled in charter schools. The National Alliance collected public school enrollment data from 2017-18 to identify communities across the country where the highest proportions of students were enrolled in charter schools.

To calculate these proportions, charter schools were mapped to geographic school district boundaries based on their address. This report compares the enrollment of charter schools located within geographic school district boundaries with district run schools in the same area, resulting in “enrollment share.”

To download the full report, click here.

Charter School Capital logoSince 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!

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charter school graduation rates
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published here on March 26, 2019, by The 74 and written by Richard Whitmire. Whitmire is author of several books, most recently “The B.A. Breakthrough: How “Ending Diploma Disparities Can Change the Face of America.” Whitmire is a member of the Journalism Advisory Board of The 74.
We are always thrilled to highlight the exceptional work that charter schools are doing, and this story exemplifies the opportunities that charter schools are creating, especially for low-income students across our country. This report specifically looks at college success records at the major charter networks serving low-income students.
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

New Numbers Show Low-Income Students at Most of America’s Largest Charter School Networks Graduating College at Two to Four Times the National Average

By Richard Whitmire
A fresh look at the college success records at the major charter networks serving low-income students shows alumni earning bachelor’s degrees at rates up to four times as high as the 11 percent rate expected for that student population.
The ability of the high-performing networks to make good on the promise their founders made to struggling parents years ago — Send us your kids and we will get them to and through college — was something I first reported on two years ago in The Alumni.
Writing the new book I’m about to publish with The 74, The B.A. Breakthrough: How Ending the Diploma Disparity Can Change the Face of America, provided the chance to go back and revisit those results. (You can track B.A. Breakthrough updates here.)
The baseline comparison number is slightly different but still dismal — just 11 percent of low-income students will graduate from college within six years — while for the big, nonprofit charter networks that serve high-poverty, minority students, most of them in major cities, the rates range from somewhat better to four times better and, in some cases, even higher.
The improved chances of earning a degree held while the ranks of charter alumni grew and the data became more robust. In some cases, the numbers are getting stronger and at least one prominent network, Uncommon Schools, predicts its graduates will close the college completion gap with affluent students in the next several years and surpass it a few years after that.
“Our mission is to get students to graduate from college, and that has influenced everything we do while we have students in elementary, middle and high school,” said Uncommon CEO Brett Peiser. “We’ve learned a lot about what works in helping students succeed in college, and everyone is focused on that goal.”
Ever since the first charter school was launched in Minnesota 27 years ago, educators watching the experiment have asked the same question: What lessons do they offer traditional school districts? Now, we may have that answer: Greatly improved odds that their alumni will earn college degrees.
Assuming that the charter completion rates persist, there’s a reasonable chance that their lessons learned could transform the way traditional school districts see their obligations to their graduates: How do they fare in college, and what effective methods from the charters could they start adopting to improve their outcomes later in life? Currently, almost no traditional districts track their alumni through college, although those in New York, Miami and Newark are moving in that direction.
All these issues get laid out in The B.A. Breakthrough. The book’s theme: The college success strategies pioneered by these charter networks are combining with entrepreneurial programs to spread data-driven college advising to high school students who lack it and with a growing commitment from colleges and universities to embrace low-income, first-generation students and ensure they walk away with degrees despite their vulnerabilities. Together these efforts add up to a breakthrough.

The charter network leg of the breakthrough

Given that college success is measured at the six-year mark, only recently has it become possible to evaluate the charter networks. In 2017, The 74 published a first-ever look at those rates as part of its series, The Alumni.
As with that project, the 11 percent college success rate used for comparison comes from The Pell Institute. That statistic provides an imprecise measurement, however, because it doesn’t take into account that most of these charter students are not just low-income, but also minority students living in urban neighborhoods whose college completion odds are even more daunting.
Comparing college graduation rates across charter networks is not easily done. KIPP, for example, tracks all alumni who completed eighth grade with KIPP, regardless of whether they go on to a KIPP high school. That puts KIPP in a category by itself. The other networks use the traditional approach of tracking only their high school graduates.
Even among the charter networks that track their high schoolers from graduation day, there are significant variations. While all the networks draw on the same foundational source, the National Student Clearinghouse, which matches the IDs of high school graduates to enrolled college students, some networks invest in their own tracking system, which picks up students missed by the Clearinghouse system. That makes their data more accurate and likely to produce higher rates.
Given the complexities, I divide the charter data into three groups:

Category 1 — Tracking from eighth grade, record-keeping that KIPP says is necessary to account for dropouts:

KIPP (national): As of the fall of 2017, KIPP had 3,200 alumni who were six years out of high school. The network’s national college completion rate is 36 percent for all alumni who completed eighth grade at a KIPP school and 45 percent for those who graduated from a KIPP high school. That counts students who entered a KIPP high school in ninth grade and stayed a year or more. In the national group, another 5 percent earned two-year degrees; in the group that graduated from a KIPP high school, another 6 percent earned two-year degrees.

Category 2 — Networks that use both Clearinghouse and internal tracking data:

Uplift Education (North Texas): Thirty-seven percent of the 1,075 graduates of the classes of 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 earned bachelor’s degrees within six years. When associate’s degrees are included, that climbs to 40 percent. If calculated just on the classes of 2011 and 2012, the rate would be 57 percent.
Uncommon Schools (New Jersey and New York): Fifty-four percent of their alumni earn a bachelor’s degree within six years. Among those, 39 percent earn a bachelor’s within four years. Drawing on data that track students currently enrolled, Uncommon predicts that it will close the college graduation gap with high-income students (58 percent) in the next few years. Within six years, Uncommon expects to hit a success rate of 70 percent.
DSST Public Schools (Denver): Among the 1,075 alumni, starting with the class of 2011, half earned bachelor’s degrees within six years.
YES Prep (Houston): The network has 974 alumni from the graduating classes of 2001-2012. Among the earliest graduating classes (2001-2008), 52 percent earned a two- or four-year degree within six years of high school graduation. Of the most recent graduating classes (2009-2012), 40 percent earned a four-year degree and 6 percent earned a two-year degree within six years of high school graduation.
Noble Network of Charter Schools (Chicago): Noble has 2,259 alumni who are six years or more out of high school. Among that group, 35 percent have bachelor’s degrees, 7 percent have associate’s degrees and 9 percent are still in college.

Category 3 — Charter networks that rely solely on National Student Clearinghouse data:

Achievement First (New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island): There were 74 alumni from the classes of 2010-12. Of those, 34 percent earned bachelor’s degrees within six years. Another 2 percent earned associate’s degrees.
Green Dot Public Schools (California): Green Dot has 6,601 alumni from the classes of 2004-2012. Of those, 14 percent earned bachelor’s degrees by the six-year mark. Another 15 percent completed two-year degrees. (Green Dot has a less aggressive college success program than other networks, and, as seen in its absorption of the failing Locke High School in Watts, it takes on significant challenges.)
Aspire Public Schools (California and Tennessee): Aspire has 619 alumni from the classes of 2007-2012 who have reached the six-year point. Of those, 26 percent earned bachelor’s degrees, a rate that rises to 36 percent when associate’s degrees and certificates are included.
Alliance College-Ready Public Schools (California): At Alliance, 610 of their 2,617 alumni have reached the six-year point. Of those, 23 percent have earned four-year degrees. When two-year degrees are added in, the percentage rises to 27.
IDEA Public Schools (Texas, Louisiana): At IDEA, 508 alumni have reached the six-year mark. Of those, 38 percent earned bachelor’s degrees. Another 4 percent earned associate’s degrees in that time. (Another 2 percent earned either a bachelor’s degree or an associate’s, but it’s unclear which, due to reporting issues.) The network says it is experiencing steady improvements: Whereas only 31 percent of 2009 IDEA graduates completed college in six years, 50 percent of its 2012 graduates did.

Single charter schools:

There are a few solo charters, not part of networks, with significant numbers of alumni who have passed the six-year mark.
One example from Boston, a city which has some of the longest-running charters, is Boston Collegiate Charter School. There, 51 percent of the 177 alumni six years out earned bachelor’s degrees; another 8 percent earned two-year degrees. The school appears to be experiencing sharp increases in success rates: For the class of 2014, 79 percent graduated from college within four years.

More on the data

Consider this an early take on the promise charters made to offer better odds on college success. For many of the networks, the number of alumni who have reached the six-year mark is modest. We’ll know more as larger classes graduate and reach that milestone.
Comparing the networks is difficult because some use internal tracking systems that pick up students missed by the Clearinghouse. For example, networks using only Clearinghouse data miss students exercising their privacy rights, known as “FERPA blocks” for the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. That shields their college transcripts from outside review. In a time when immigration issues are contentious and parents (and some students) could face deportation, FERPA blocks are an attractive option for families. The number of blocks varies greatly by region, with few on the East Coast exercising the option and as high as 6 percent of all students attending West Coast colleges opting to shield their records, according to the Clearinghouse.
Translation: Charter networks such as IDEA Public Schools, with many of its schools located in Texas border towns, that also rely only the Clearinghouse data, are likely to show lower success rates.
Also tricky: When comparing the charter alumni to the broader student population, what’s the right comparison number to choose? The 11 percent Pell number I’m using should be viewed as a rough marker. First, that makes the denominator all low-income students — not just low-income high school graduates — which suggests the 11 percent figure is low. But the fact that most of these networks enroll minority students from urban neighborhoods suggests 11 percent is high because the Pell number would include low-income Asian and white students, who across income levels have higher college graduation rates than black and Hispanic students. Bottom line: The 11 percent emerges as a useful if imprecise comparison figure.

Watching a network do the math

By necessity, all the college graduation data are self-reported. Outcome figures from the National Student Clearinghouse, which is private, are proprietary to the networks, which pay the Clearinghouse for the information. For the sake of transparency, I asked one network, Uncommon Schools, to open up its books for me so I could observe both processes, the Clearinghouse data combined with its own tracking data.
In April 2018, I met Ken Herrera, Uncommon’s senior director of data analytics, in Newark at North Star Academy Charter School. There, Herrera clicked on his laptop and showed me a listing of alumni. For privacy reasons, the students had been “de-identified” and showed up only as numbers on the modified Salesforce (the customized business software Uncommon and other networks use to track their alumni) program. Twice a year, said Herrera, usually in March and October, Uncommon sends a list of alumni names and their dates of birth to the Clearinghouse for tracking. Why just some? Because Uncommon saves money by omitting names of alumni who, for example, already had their college graduation confirmed through a university. In about two weeks, the Clearinghouse sends back an Excel sheet with the information it collected on the asked-about students: where they are in school and what term — fall semester, for example — they are in.
If Herrera sees a “no match,” which happens about 10 percent of the time, he and the counselors investigate. At networks that don’t track alumni individually, that student would be counted as a dropout. When digging into it further, Uncommon finds out whether they truly have dropped out by contacting the university or the family or the student, whatever means is available. They also track down whether it’s just a matter of having entered the wrong birth date or a name mix-up, such as a nickname used when enrolling in college. If it is just a bookkeeping issue, the counselors request a copy of the college transcript so the error can get fixed.
Another reason for the “no match” might be the FERPA block, which prompts the Uncommon team to contact the students and convince them to unblock their records. Some universities make records disclosure an opt-in process, done every semester, which makes life especially difficult for Herrera, because if the student fails to take action the default status is a FERPA block.
In early April each year, Herrera meets with the counseling team to sort out data omissions, a painstaking, student-by-student process. “We’ll say, ‘This is what the Clearinghouse says about the student, here’s what Salesforce says about the student. What are we going to do about this conflict?’” That leads to a counselor personally investigating: Where is the student? When all the data issues get settled, Uncommon can calculate its college success figure.
Now the trickier issue: Unlike most other networks, Uncommon predicts where its college success rate is headed. Here’s what Uncommon predicts, as noted above: In roughly six years, the college success rate will rise to about 70 percent. Given that 70 percent exceeds the rate for well-off white students, that’s a remarkable prediction. What’s it based on? Uncommon tracks its alumni by cohorts, so it can establish a historical rate for, let’s say, how many students drop out between their freshman and sophomore year in college.
“When we look at each of those [dropout points] we can predict where an individual cohort is going, based on those historical rates, and predict what we think their graduation rate is going to be,” Herrera said.
Currently, Uncommon is seeing significant improvements, such as half the historical rate of dropouts between the sophomore and junior years. Also an issue: Uncommon is growing. By the year 2022, it projects 1,000 graduates a year, compared with the roughly 400 current graduates. That also figures into the math, because younger cohorts, which are showing better persistence rates, have a bigger impact on the overall college success math. The newer cohort, for example, is showing a 50 percent success rate at the four-year mark (older cohorts achieved that only at the six-year mark). Thus the prediction: 70 percent overall success rate within six years.
So why the improved persistence? Most of that, says Herrera, comes from strengthening the high school curriculum and programs such as Target 3.0, a mandatory class to boost the grade point averages for all students with a GPA less than 2.5.
“What we found, perhaps unsurprisingly to many people, but I think really profoundly for us, was that students with higher GPAs were more likely to graduate from college,” he said. “When we cut the data, getting above a 3.0 GPA [in high school] was very significantly correlated with future college success.”

Where all this leads

Yes, it is early to be judging college success among these networks, but not premature. There are thousands of alumni in these calculations, and their academic outcomes are crucial. If their success persists and, more importantly, if their lessons learned are picked up by the far larger traditional school districts, we could be looking at one of the most successful anti-poverty programs ever seen in this country.
There’s no guarantee it will happen, but the seeds are there, all explained in the upcoming The B.A. Breakthrough.

Charter School Capital logoSince 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!

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charter schools

Charter Schools: Parents Deserve the Right to Choose

Editor’s Note: This is an insightful opinion piece written by Raymond J. Ankrum, and was originally published on March 18,2019 by Citizen Ed, here. Mr. Ankrum is the current Superintendent of the Riverhead Charter School. Mr. Ankrum has gained notoriety as a school turnaround expert. He is enthusiastic about helping students from low (SES) find ways to end generational poverty through educational advocacy.
We think it’s vital to keep tabs on the pulse of all things related to charter schools, including informational resources, 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.

Stop Blaming Charter Schools for the Failures of Traditional Public Schools

Let’s please stop blaming charter schools for school failure.  I know we’re easy targets, but I assure you  that education is just outright bad for [People of Color] PoC.
Pundits that are against charter schools and school choice have stated: “Black and LatinX parents aren’t smart enough to choose schools for their children.”  To the individuals that are shaming these parents for choosing for their children, I say, “we’ve been down this road before.” Historically, we have always had folks telling us what’s best for us.
Regardless of where you stand on the school choice argument, the one fact we can’t debate is that parents have the absolute right to choose the education that best fits their children.

Healthy Competition.

Sports, occupations, politics, everyone has competition. The beauty of education is that no one model works for 100% of students. We are continually practicing new strategies to teach students.

“Parents are fed up with traditional public schools. They have watched these same schools fail generations.”

Recently, some have said that parents choose charter schools because they “don’t do their due diligence.” In fact, It’s 100% the opposite. Parents are fed up with traditional public schools. They have watched these same schools fail generations. Due diligence comes in the form of the generational poverty experienced by relatives that attended and continue to participate in these failure mills disguised as educational institutions. There is no better spokesperson than someone that has continuously failed at a task. The lived experience of these parents has to account for something.

Agree to Disagree.

We can agree to disagree on the intellectual prowess of those that seek school choice. As a parent that has chosen to educate my child in a charter school, I find it somewhat non-sensical that folks have the nerve to question me about my child and my decision. I’ve done my “due diligence.” Now what? You want me to put my baby, in a school that has failed generations? But, I’m the crazy one?
For the last three years, we’ve spent close to undergraduate tuition at a state school in NY, to ensure our daughter was ready for pre-K. I know many families are not as blessed to be able to allocate that kind of money towards their child’s education. However, these are the very families that need more than just a status quo education for their children. A quality education should help to break cycles of poverty, not continue to create them.

The Story.

Every school choice parent has a story. Every child of a “choice” parent that has attended a public school and no longer attends that school also has a story to tell. Instead of persecuting these parents, let’s find out their stories. Have you ever asked a school choice parent why they chose the school they selected? This type of dialogue would be far more engaging. It may also help to get to the root of the problem, and learn why certain schools no longer work for certain types of students.

The Nuance of Blame.

Let’s be real here. Charter schools are relatively new. Experts may disagree on the era in which public schools began to deteriorate. You have some that say public schools were never intentioned for Black and LatinX students. Wherever folks reside in the argument, we should all agree that public schools need to improve for minority students.
If you’ve never stared poverty in the face, don’t talk to me about the choices I make for my child.

Enough of the Blame Game.

Okay, people. Let’s grow up. We have identified the problem. It isn’t charter schools. It is terrible schools. Now that we’ve identified the problem as bad schools, how do we fix them? Blaming the competition is not the answer. Admitting there is a problem, and committing to addressing the issue is the first step towards resolving it.  Stop blaming charter schools.
We need genuine and thoughtful dialogue. Enough with this “let’s blame charters” argument because it is getting tired.

Charter School Capital logoSince the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We provide growth capital and facilities financing to charter schools nationwide. 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!

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