TheApple

Each charter school has the autonomy to hire staff that fit its program. Gates, for example, hires teachers with specialized certification to work with English language learners. The school also hires a number of part-time teachers to reduce group sizes during core academic instruction and created a position for a teacher leader to oversee the school's complex array of programs. One ...

Annually, charter schools are expected to evaluate their school program, quality of teaching, and student outcome measures in light of the mission and goals defined in the charter document. All charter schools publish an annual report or a school improvement accountability plan outlining specific goals to be accomplished each year. Over a longer time frame, typically three to five years, a ...

Charter schools are public schools that operate with freedom from many of the local and state regulations that apply to traditional public schools. Charter schools allow parents, community leaders, educational entrepreneurs, and others the flexibility to innovate and provide students with increased educational options within the public school system. Charter schools are sponsored by local, state, or other organizations that monitor ...

The freedom to innovate with governance models is a signal feature of charter schools. Each has a governing board of directors that is responsible for school policy-making and oversight. Those serving on governing boards are stakeholders in the truest sense of the word, people not only attuned to the school's mission, but also highly familiar with its daily operations. Including teachers ...

In most charter schools, the whole accountability process, from end-of-term comprehensive exams, to weekly teacher sessions sharing student work, is used to steadily improve teaching and learning. Yearly analysis of progress, taking a hard look at what's working well and what isn't, becomes the basis for a schoolwide improvement plan with new goals for the coming year. Schools give constant attention ...

At each of these schools, the culture forged around a shared educational vision creates a strong sense of community. Parents choose to send their children, and students know why they are there. The schools tend to be small, which itself allows an intimacy and face-to-face recognition not possible in larger schools. The fact that students are never assigned to a charter ...

At the heart of each charter school is a well-conceived and powerful mission, a shared educational philosophy that guides decision-making at every level. The spirit of the mission appears in slogans on hall placards, banners, and T-shirts and resounds in chants, assemblies, and informal conversations. In some schools, the mission is to prepare low-income, urban students for higher education, students, for ...

Parents choose to enroll their children in charter schools, usually entering a lottery for selection when schools are oversubscribed. The schools are free to determine their own governing structures, which include parents and teachers as active members. In all these configurations, autonomy gives charter schools the flexibility to allocate their budgets; hire staff; and create educational programs with curriculum, pedagogy, organizational ...

Thoughtful community members, concerned parents, dedicated teachers, university educators, and political and business people are among those who have come together to create charter schools. KIPP Academy Houston was started by two former Teach For America teachers using two classrooms within a pre-existing public school. The BASIS School in Tucson was started by a husband and wife team of college educators. ...

The promise charter schools hold for public school innovation and reform lies in an unprecedented combination of freedom and accountability. Underwritten with public funds but run independently, charter schools are free from a range of state laws and district policies stipulating what and how they teach, where they can spend their money, and who they can hire and fire. In return, ...

Magnet schools in comparison with nonmagnet specialty schools and programs of choice Taking both magnet and nonmagnet programs into account, 43% of the students in multischool public school systems are in districts with specialty schools or school choice programs. Among the 6,400 multischool districts nationwide, over one in six (18%) offered nonmagnet specialty programs (i.e., programs with a distinctive curriculum or ...

Federal support for magnet programs has increased dramatically over the past decade. Since the inception of the Magnet Schools Assistance Program in 1985, over $739 million in MSAP grants has been awarded to a total of 117 school districts (half of all districts having magnet schools). MSAP funding has been effective in encouraging and enabling districts to establish or expand magnet ...

Magnet schools offer a wide range of distinctive programs, including programs emphasizing academic subjects such as math, science, aerospace technology, language immersion, or humanities (37%); instructional approaches such as basic skills, open classrooms, individualized instruction, Montessori, or enriched curricula (27%); career/vocational education (14%); gifted-talented programs (12%); and the arts (11%). Most magnet school programs (58%) were whole school magnets, where all ...

The number of magnet school programs has increased dramatically over the past decade, with one in two large urban districts currently offering magnet school programs. The number of individual magnet schools has more than doubled over the past decade, with a total of 2,400 magnet schools and 3,200 individual magnet programs (some schools house more than one magnet program) being offered ...

Magnet schools represent an effort to promote school desegregation and enhance educational quality. The word "magnet" is used because it brings students together at a school that might not normally attend due to distance or district boundaries. Magnet schools are public schools at the elementary, middle or high school level that can be centered around a certain discipline or reform focus, ...

One of the more consistent, ongoing suggestions for improving America’s educational system centers upon the creation of greater competition amongst public schools. The reason for the steady drumbeat centers upon a belief that a change to the free market system would be one of the best methods for creating better educational opportunities for children. In direct response to the push for ...

For months I have been over hearing colleagues talking about Michelle Rhee, the Chancellor of Washington D.C. schools. The word is she is bad. She is out-of-control. What is not spoken, but clearly understood is she (and what she represents) is a threat to the teacher unions. I started to investigate this Rhee character, read her interviews, and reviewed the criticism ...

We all know how the system is supposed to work. You start your school year right after Labor Day. You attend school Monday through Friday, usually from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., for the next 10 months or so, with breaks for Christmas and the spring and most of the major holidays. You wrap up in early June, with students planning ...