Outside Publications:

Publications picked up from our colleagues featuring our clients, projects, and outcomes happening everyday.

Educators at This School Give Students a Choice and Voice in How They Want to Learn

Schools providing personalized learning integrate student interests and self-pacing into their curriculum by combining student-centered practices with technology. There are many approaches to personalized learning, and schools may incorporate various degrees of personalized learning methods.

Opinion: Now More Than Ever, Diverse Charter Schools Are Essential

America grows more diverse every day. In the future, today’s young people will need to be able to thrive amid a multiplicity of nationalities, perspectives and practices; our society and economy count on it.

Here’s Why One Charter School Believes Diversity Is the Future

There is a small but growing number of leaders engaging in intentionally diverse charter schools. To understand these schools and everything they are trying to achieve, it helps to listen to people creating, working in and sending their children to them.

The New Model Law: A Tool for Advancing a Strong Charter School Sector

Last week the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools released the latest version of the model charter school law. Like its predecessor, this is an important and pragmatic document.

Considering Discipline as a Student Outcome Could Change the Debate

Much of the conflict over school discipline stems from whether you treat student discipline as a school practice or a student outcome. Discipline has parts of both. We should treat the parts differently. The charter concept has two related assumptions: autonomy and accountability.

When It Comes to Choice, Small Grants Can Make a Big Difference

I nominate one of the smallest pieces of the ESSA as a potential high-leverage point for choice. Hidden in the Charter School Program (CSP) amid language shaping the grants administered by State Education Agencies (SEAs) is a little provision that could eventually lead to big changes regarding school choice.

Child-Centered School Proposals Should Prompt Rigorous Authorizing—Not Lazy Denials

A recent Fordham Institute study, Three Signs That a Proposed Charter School Is at Risk of Failing, compared the details of charter school applications to the performance of the resulting schools.

Here’s Why One Charter School Believes Diversity Is the Future

High Standards for Financial Stewardship Are Essential for Charter School Success

Simply put, charter school governing boards and authorizers need to take responsibility for strong oversight of financial matters. This means appropriately overseeing a school’s financial operations, including responsible budgeting, financial controls, and procedures, as well as preventing, identifying and remedying fraud.

How Charter School Leaders Improved Their Approaches to Discipline

In the debate about charter school discipline, the voices of people who work in charter schools deserve more attention. Many charter school leaders have improved their approach to discipline to help more kids learn while reducing exclusionary practices like suspension and expulsion.

Charter Schools Are Graduating Students in High Numbers, But Here Are Some That Aren’t

If you need a pick-me-up inspiration after a long hard year of working on education, nothing lifts your spirits like the images of proud young men and women from urban high schools who are headed to college.