Download or read book Improving Charter School Accountability written by David Osborne and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today some 5,600 charter schools are in operation, with more than two million students. Some critics persist in a fruitless argument that these schools have failed, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. But regardless of your opinion about them, charter schools are here to stay. Those concerned about public education should quit debating whether we should have charter schools and instead focus on improving their quality. That will require us to do at least two big things. We must replicate the most successful charter models--the subject of a Progressive Policy Institute paper last year, "Going Exponential: Growing the Charter School Sector's Best"--and we must close down the worst charter schools--the subject of this report. From the beginning, the charter concept was to give schools more autonomy--freedom to hire and fire their staffs and control their own budgets and curriculum--while still holding them accountable for performance. No charter would be allowed to fail its students year after year, as traditional public schools are often permitted to do. If their students were not learning, they would close. This promise has not always been fulfilled. Hundreds of school districts have authorized charters then failed to invest in oversight. Even some statewide authorizers report that they have insufficient data to make merit-based renewal and revocation decisions. Failing charter schools are at much greater risk of closing than other failing public schools. Still, if we are to harness their true potential, many states need to heighten that risk. In its first 10 years, the charter community focused mostly on "quantity": getting charters open. Over the past ten years, it has focused increasingly on charter school "quality". Today, it is time to open a third frontier: "authorizer quality". The key to quality in the charter sector is quality authorizing. In this report the author discusses why it is so important that authorizers close failing charters, reviews the facts about charter and authorizer performance, examines why some authorizers fail to close underperforming charters, and proposes solutions to these problems. To answer such questions, the author has reviewed the literature and interviewed fifteen current or former charter authorizers and another ten experts on charter schools. In addition, thanks to the generosity of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), the author has reviewed the data accumulated by its annual surveys of authorizers. (Contains 2 figures and 83 endnotes.).
Download or read book Charter Schools and Accountability in Public Education written by Paul Thomas Hill and published by Brookings Inst Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book examines charter school accountability in theory and in fact. It represents an early effort to understand how new forms of accountability for public education actually work, in the process drawing lessons that are especially relevant to the standards-based reform movement.".
Download or read book Improving School Accountability Check Ups or Choice written by Timothy J. Gronberg and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2006-07-12 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brings together ten papers by researchers who tackle economic issues surrounding school accountability reforms. The papers in this volume employ relevant microeconomic analysis and econometric techniques to provide an understanding of the vital economic and public policy issues. It is aimed at researchers in business, economics, and other fields.
Download or read book School and District Leadership in an Era of Accountability written by Bruce G. Barnett and published by IAP. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our fourth book in the International Research on School Leadership series focuses on school leadership in an era of high stakes accountability. Fueled by sweeping federal education accountability reforms, such as the United States’ No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top (R2T) and Australia’s Performance Measurement and Reporting Taskforce, school systems around the world are being forced to increase academic standards, participate in high-stakes testing, and raise evaluation standards for teachers and principals. These results-driven reforms are intended to hold educators “accountable for student learning and accountable to the public” (Anderson, 2005, p. 2, emphasis in original). While policymakers and the public debate the merits of student achievement accountability measures, P-12 educational leaders do not have the luxury to wait for clear guidance and resources to improve their schools and operating systems. Instead, successful leaders must balance the need to create learning communities, manage the organizational climate, and encourage community involvement with the consequences testing has on teacher morale and public scrutiny. The chapters in this volume clearly indicate that as school leaders attend to these potentially competing forces, this affects their problem-solving strategies, ability to facilitate change, and encourage community involvement. We were delighted with the responses from colleagues around the world who were eager to share their research dealing with how leaders are functioning effectively within a high-accountability environment. The nine chapters in this volume provide empirical evidence of the strategies school leaders use to cope with problems and negotiate external demands while improving student performance. In particular, the voices and actions of principals, superintendents, and school board members are captured in a blend of quantitative and qualitative studies. The breadth of studies is impressive, ranging from case studies of individual principals to cross-district comparisons to national data from the National Center for Education Statistics. To highlight important findings, we have organized the book into five sections. The first section (Chapters 2, 3, and 4) highlights the problem-solving strategies used by principals and superintendents when pressured to turn around low-performing schools. In the second section (Chapters 5 and 6), attention is devoted to ways in which school leaders act as “buffers” by reducing the impact of external demands within their local school contexts. Next, Chapters 7 and 8 explore creative ways in which financial analyses can be used to assess the cost effectiveness of programs and services. Chapters 9 and 10 examine how principals enact their instructional leadership roles in managing curriculum reforms and evaluating teachers. Finally, in the last section (Chapter 11), Kenneth Leithwood synthesizes the major themes and ideas emerging across these chapters, paying particular attention to practical issues influencing school leaders in this era of school reform and accountability as well as promising areas for future research.
Download or read book Where Charter School Policy Fails written by Amy Stuart Wells and published by Teachers College Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative volume, Amy Stuart Wells and her co-authors provide evidence that the laissez-faire policies of charter school reform often exacerbate existing inequalities in our schools. Providing the most comprehensive, critical review of charter schools to date, this timely volume is based on the authors’ in-depth study of 10 urban, suburban, and rural school districts and 17 diverse charter schools in California, plus their analysis of other charter school studies from around the country. Focusing on two central issues—accountability and equity—they explore how charter school policies affect the lives of children, educators, and parents in diverse social, economic, and political contexts. The authors conclude that although the quality and experiences of charter schools is highly varied across different contexts, the laws that allow these schools to exist fail to assure meaningful accountability. Meanwhile, these policies increase inequality and stratification by pushing the educational system toward privatization in terms of finance and admissions while failing to target much-needed resources toward low-income communities. This dynamic book will help educators and policymakers develop a future policy agenda for charter school reform that will be more responsive to the needs of all children. “The authors, for the first time, make sense of the diverse and diffuse charter school ‘movement.’ They argue that the lack of support, the absence of equity provisions in state laws, and the burnout of many charter school personnel have led to the beginning of the end of this—yet another—school reform. This book provides important lessons for all who care about public education.” —Jean Anyon, Graduate Center, City University of New York
Download or read book Charter Schools and Accountability in Public Education written by Paul T. Hill and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2004-05-13 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charter schools are among the most debated and least understood phenomena in American education today. At the heart of these matters is a contested question of accountability. To survive, charter schools must make and keep promises about what students will experience and learn under their purview. However, unlike public schools, charter schools do not rely exclusively on their relationship with school districts. They must also look to parents, teachers, and donors to cooperatively establish expectations of a particular school and its mission. Aimed toward elected officials, school reform activists, and educators, this book is the result of the first national-scale study of charter school accountability. The authors researched one hundred-fifty schools and sixty authorizing agencies in Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Michigan. These states contain the majority of charter schools that have been operating for three years or more and represent the major differences in state charter school legislation. The authors include interviews from a range of participants in the field©¡from state legislators and administrators to principals, teachers, and parents. In assessing the structure of accountability as it works internally to bolster external confidence, Hill and Lake suggest the struggle of charter schools actually complements those of standards based reform. Both seek to transform public education to make schools responsible for performance, not compliance.
Download or read book D C charter schools strengthening monitoring and process when schools close could improve accountability and ease student transitions report to congressional committees written by United States. Government Accountability Office and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Charter School Accountability written by Chester E. Finn (Jr.) and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploration into charter schools; what they are, who they serve, and how successful they are.
Download or read book No Child Left Behind written by Paul E. Peterson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2003-11-18 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2002 No Child Left Behind Act is the most important legislation in American education since the 1960s. The law requires states to put into place a set of standards together with a comprehensive testing plan designed to ensure these standards are met. Students at schools that fail to meet those standards may leave for other schools, and schools not progressing adequately become subject to reorganization. The significance of the law lies less with federal dollar contributions than with the direction it gives to federal, state, and local school spending. It helps codify the movement toward common standards and school accountability. Yet NCLB will not transform American schools overnight. The first scholarly assessment of the new legislation, No Child Left Behind? breaks new ground in the ongoing debate over accountability. Contributors examine the law's origins, the political and social forces that gave it shape, the potential issues that will surface with its implementation, and finally, the law's likely consequences for American education.
Download or read book OPPAGA written by and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 7 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Charter Schools written by US Government Accountability Office and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 2004-2005 school year, District of Columbia (D.C.) charter schools enrolled more than 15,000 students, or approximately 21 percent of D.C.?s public school population--one of the highest proportions in the nation. Charter schools are public schools that are exempt from certain regulations in exchange for accountability in improving student achievement. Charter school authorizers--the entities that approve and oversee charter schools--are responsible for ensuring that charter schools achieve expected student outcomes and comply with applicable laws. In D.C., two entities, the D.C. Board of Education (BOE) and the D.C. Public Charter School Board (PCSB), were established by the School Reform Act as charter school authorizers. The law requires the authorizers to monitor charter schools, but little information is available about the performance of the BOE and PCSB in providing such oversight. As required by the 2005 D.C. Appropriations Act, we examined the performance of D.C. charter school authorizers in their approval and oversight roles.
Download or read book Charter Schools written by United States. Government Accountability Office and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Infrastructure of Accountability written by Dorothea Anagnostopoulos and published by Harvard Education Press. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Infrastructure of Accountability brings together leading and emerging scholars who set forth an ambitious conceptual framework for understanding the full impact of large-scale, performance-based accountability systems on education. Over the past 20 years, schools and school systems have been utterly reshaped by the demands of test-based accountability. Interest in large-scale performance data has reached an unprecedented high point. Yet most education researchers focus primarily on questions of data quality and the effectiveness of data use. In this bold and thought-provoking volume, the contributors look beneath the surface of all this activity to uncover the hidden infrastructure that supports the production, flow, and use of data in education, and explore the impact of these large-scale information systems on American schooling. These systems, the editors note, “sit at the juncture of technical networks, work practices, knowledge production, and moral order.
Download or read book Alaska s Charter Schools written by Gordon Castanza and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The public cares so much about the education of its children that schooling frequently becomes a political issue as partisans propose means for improving schools and support them with appealing rationale. This has certainly been the case with the charter school movement Proponents have seen charter schools as a means to improve student achievement and make schools more accountable to the public. The charter school movement has swept across the country powered by the momentum of these appealing ideas, even without data demonstrating these much touted benefits. Gordon Castanza provides an analysis of the history of the charter school movement and of school accountability. His original research reveals the answer to the question, "Are charter schools more accountable to the public than other schools?" Carolyn H. Chapman, Professor Emerita, U. of Nevada, Reno
Download or read book A Study of Charter School Accountability written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses how the relationships of charter schools with authorizers affect their day-to-day operations and how they develop relationships of trust and confidence with parents, teachers, and other community members.
Download or read book Increasing Charter School Accountability Through Interventions and Closures written by Joey Gustafson and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A basic premise of charter school reform in public education is offering more autonomy in the use of funds and the design of curriculum in exchange for greater accountability in academic and financial outcomes. This premise poses a significant policy challenge for state policymakers to establish an appropriate level of regulation; charter schools must be sufficiently independent yet still conform to most state and federal education and financial management laws. This guide examines the laws, policies, and programs that states use to establish consequences for financial mismanagement in charter schools. It discusses how states define the financial conditions for intervention. It also describes the approaches to corrective actions for deficient charter schools and the procedures for closing charter schools. The guide reviews the prevalent policy options and provides examples from existing state laws and practices. It also raises issues that state policymakers may want to consider when adopting or amending approaches to establishing consequences for charter school financial mismanagement. Specifically, this guide will help state policymakers consider the various policy options for defining financial conditions for state intervention, determining appropriate corrective actions for deficient schools, and establishing procedures for closing schools. The guide concludes by stating that policymakers must create appropriate oversight procedures and processes for intervention and closure that are clear, fair, and effective. (Contains 4 footnotes and a list of resources.) [This publication was written with Nina Salomon and William Schmid and produced by the National Resource Center on Charter School Finance and Governance, a collaborative effort of the Center on Educational Governance at the University of Southern California, The Finance Project, and WestEd.].
Download or read book What s Public About Charter Schools written by Gary Miron and published by Corwin Press. This book was released on 2002-03-19 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains evidence about charter schools that can provide important data on evaluating this new public-private hybrid and its success at serving the core purpose of public education. The book focuses on charter schools in Michigan, which is regarded as having one of the most permissive charter laws in the country. The first three chapters provide a theoretical framework for, and the descriptive context of, the charter-school reform in Michigan. Chapter 4 analyzes charter-school finance in Michigan. The remainder of the book seeks to evaluate the "public-ness" of Michigan charter schools according to the definitions introduced in the first chapter. The last chapter summarizes evidence and provides an answer to the question, "What's public about charter schools?" These schools appear to be doing a reasonably good job of creating communities of teachers with commonly held educational viewpoints, but may be doing so at the expense of equitable access to the schools and student-achievement gains. Three appendices contain key historical developments in Michigan that affected public and private schooling, background and documentation for analysis of student achievement, and a list of education-management organizations and schools they operated in 2000-01. (Contains 157 references.) (RT)
