Our Publications

Safal has created hundreds of publications, webinars, multi-media case studies as part of its work running various technical assistance centers in education and workforce. A sampling of publications is included below.

New School Development: A Toolkit for Charter Support Organizations and Charter School Founders

The National Charter School Resource Center (NCSRC) released a new toolkit aimed at providing Charter Support Organizations (CSOs) and charter school founders with new resources on what it takes to open a new charter school.

Case Study: Charter Schools Intentionally Designed to Serve Diverse Students and Families

This case study features Valor Collegiate Academies, an intentionally diverse charter management organization (CMO) that operates two high-performing charter schools in Nashville, Tennessee.

An Analysis of the Charter School Facility Landscape in Delaware

This report explores charter school facility and policy-related issues in the state of Delaware, including shared use information, facility amenities, ownership, financing, grade levels, and waiting lists. Findings are based on a 2016 survey completed by all eligible charter school facilities in the state.

Webinar: Exploring the Role of the SEA in Promoting Local District Charter Collaboration

This webinar provided attendees with a real-time update on the state of district charter collaboration nationally as well as preliminary findings from a series of interviews CRPE conducted with SEA leaders.

Roscoe Collegiate ISD Early College/T-STEM Academy Lessons Learned

Safal performed an analysis of key documents and interviewed the school’s leadership, teachers, board members, students, and members of the community to synthesize the factors that made the transformation possible. Safal supported the school in sharing its lessons learned with other districts and educators.

Webinar: Recruitment for Governing Boards

Having the right skills, experiences, perspectives, and networks among board members is essential to help the charter school achieve its goals.

Case Study: Personalized Learning at Cornville Regional Charter School

Cornville Regional Charter School has fully integrated proficiency-based personalized learning into their curriculum. Personalized learning is a philosophy that uses student-centered practices and technology to integrate individual student interests and pacing into the curriculum, while following state and federal learning standards.

Finding Space: Charters in District Facilities.

Acquiring a facility is one of a charter school’s greatest initial challenges. This paper explores the data and experiences of charter school acquiring and using district-owned facilities.

SEA Webinar: Logic Models as Living Documents: Updating and Applying Tools

These tools present concise, visual representations of the thinking behind a proposal and the work required to execute it. This second webinar continued the discussion started in the 2017 CSP SEA Meeting of Project Directors in a round-table format.

Special Education Video Case Studies

Two Rivers Charter School and Brooke Roslindale Charter: Special education practices at these schools have yielded impressive results. Safal Partners visited the schools and got footage from interviews with the staff and students and documented their models in action.

Student Achievement in Charter Schools: What the Research Shows

This report examines recent research and identifies common findings for policymakers, parents, educators, and other stakeholders seeking to gain a better understanding of the effectiveness of charter schools.

Charter Schools and Military Communities: A Toolkit.

This resource features information on charter schools serving the needs of military families and tools to help additional military communities strengthen their local school options with new charter schools.

District-Charter Collaboration: A User’s Guide.

Safal conducted field research on collaborations in the country for this toolkit. The report is written to assist district and charter representatives interested in establishing a new collaboration or in increasing the effectiveness of an existing collaboration.

Legal Guidelines for Educating English Learners in Charter Schools.

Schools need to know the federal and state legal frame- work requirements, issues related to data, and reporting policies as they attempt to serve the needs of ELs.

Serving Students with Disabilities in Charter Schools Webinar.

This webinar focuses on the state of special education in charter schools, how charter schools can create partnerships to expand capacity for special education, and other ways to improve services to students with disabilities.

Serving English Language Learners and Families Webinar.

This webinar focused on the research Safal did to publish the two EL reports above. Counting live participants and visitors to its online posting, the webinar has been viewed over one thousand times.

English Learners Video Case Studies: El Sol, Alma del Mar, and Folk Arts

These schools across the nation have made remark- able strides in the achievement of their EL students. With the objective of promoting best practices, Safal interviewed school leaders and showed their models in action.

Dollars for Degrees.

This report describes the sources and types of financial aid available to post-secondary students in Texas, how financial aid is packaged at different types of institutions, and the effects of financial aid on post-secondary persistence and completion.

Educate Texas Case Study

Safal Partners was commissioned to evaluate and outline the progress of Educate Texas’s post-secondary programs, such as Early College High Schools (ECHS) and Texas Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (T-STEM) Academies.

Engaging English Learner Families in Charter Schools.

This report highlights a range of practices and funding strategies used by charter schools to improve the achievement of EL students in the wider community.