Welcome to Charter School Capital’s weekly round-up where we feature charter school news about operations, policy, funding for charter schools, charter school facilities financing, and other trends.
This week we have two fascinating reports released by experts at the forefront of the school choice movement. Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!
Fact or Fiction? New Report from National Alliance of Public Charter Schools (NAPCS)
The National Alliance recently released a report that examines some myths and inaccuracies about public charter schools.
Here’s a summary of the topic found on the first page of the report:
“Between the 2008–09 and 2013–14 school years, the public charter school movement experienced a dramatic 80 percent increase in the number of students and an astounding 40 percent increase in the number of schools.
Despite this growth, there is still an overwhelming unmet parental demand for quality school options, with more than 1 million student names on charter school waiting lists. While charter schools enjoy tremendous bipartisan support among policymakers and the general public, they also have some vocal critics who perpetuate a number of myths about charters. This paper lays out some of these myths and provides responses based on facts and independent research findings.”
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2014 Education Next Survey Report Released
Education Next’s yearly survey on education policy was released this week. There are over 50 questions in total. They cover a wide range of topics such as American school performance compared to other countries, school spending, school choice and college readiness.
The survey, in it’s eighth year, is administered to a representative sample of American adults and public school teachers.
The report points out that the public is gaining awareness of school choice, and continuing to support it. “The practice of school choice has now spread to such an extent that more than one-fourth of all American families have a school-age child who has been educated elsewhere than in a traditional public school. Many American families are ignoring the bright lines routinely drawn between traditional public schools on the one hand and charter schools, private schools, and home schooling on the other. ”
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Independent Charter-Approval Boards Being Opened in More States
An article in Education Week examines the growing number of states that are creating independent charter school authorization boards.
“Such boards go by different names but are generally authorizing bodies separate from other state and local agencies whose sole purpose is to authorize charter schools statewide. The press for quality—a recurring theme in the charter school debate—has pushed authorizing to the center of the discussion because, many argue, charter schools ultimately reflect the caliber of their authorizer.”
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