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 Achieving Excellence at Scale: State Support for High-Performing Charter School Expansion
While not every charter school is successful, the charter movement has produced several outstanding schools that consistently demonstrate high levels of academic growth and success for all their students, regardless of race or family income. Given these exemplary models and the increased demand for high-performing charter schools, many state policymakers want to accelerate the replication of such schools.
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Overview The NGA Center for Best Practices has identified the provision of quality choices in education as a crucial issue for states as they move forward in meeting higher expectations for student achievement and graduation rates for all students. To achieve these critical goals, governors must find ways to create a myriad of high quality choices from which families and parents can select, using a mix of finance policies, program design elements, and accountability measures that create incentives for choice. Focus of Center Activities State Leadership for High-Quality Charter Schools
With support from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Innovation and Improvement's National Charter School Program, the NGA Center and Center for School Change at the University of Minnesota Humphrey Institute (CSC) invited governors' offices to apply for $20,000 competitive technical assistance allocations to support up to six states in development, adoption and implementation of state policies that lead to more high quality charter schools. The six states chosen were: Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Nevada, New Mexico and New York. Summaries of state projects can be found here.
Improving School Choice Options for All Students
From March 2005 through September 2006, the NGA Center for Best Practices engaged with the Center for School Change at the University of Minnesota on the Improving School Choice Options for All Students project. In partnership with Center for School Change, the NGA Center provided timely, useful information to state policymakers about using school choice as one tool to increase student achievement and reduce the achievement gap. Funded with the support of the U.S. Department of Education, the project provided in-depth technical assistance to governors in six states working to expand and improve their school choice system(s). Governors in the project states–Arizona, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Utah–convened teams of educators, legislators, and other state policymakers to help them modify and expand choice options in their states. Providing Quality Choice Options in Education
The NGA Center and the Center for School Change, with the assistance of an advisory board composed of educators, policymakers, parents, researchers and community group representatives, developed a primer Providing Quality Choice Options in Education that identifies state best practices. The report highlights several innovative school choice policies and offers recommendations for governors to consider when they create or refine state policies for education options, including charter schools, vouchers, tax credits, distance-learning opportunities and inter- and intradistrict enrollment.
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