The Texas Education Agency (TEA) hired Safal to evaluate the impact of their Charter School Start-Up (CSP) program. This program grants funds to eligible applicants to build new charter schools across the state. Safal was the prime evaluator for this contract and partnered with Mathematica Policy Research and Gibson Consulting to conduct the mixed-method evaluation. Safal completed the evaluation of TEA’s CSP grantee performance and practices. Safal defined high-quality charter schools and identified best practices of high-quality charter schools. In addition to developing this benchmark, Safal evaluated how Start-Up grantees perform compared to their best-in-class peers. Safal developed interim and final reports describing the quantitative and qualitative data analysis results. These reports will influence the start-up of new charter schools in the future, as well as decisions around their funding.

‍