Emerging research suggests
that most charter schools that fail
are forced to close for non-academic
reasons, most often because of organizational
mismanagement and financial difficulties.
The National Resource Center on Charter
School Finance and Governance has
been inaugurated to address these
issues. It will undertake to develop
and disseminate information, tools,
and technical assistance, helping
charter leaders at all levels to
take steps to improve charter school
finance and governance. The project
is a collaboration between the Center
on Educational Governance (Los
Angeles, CA); The
Finance Project (Washington,
DC); and WestEd (San
Francisco, CA).
The National Resource Center
on Charter School Finance and Governance will
provide information on:
- the charter school
legislative and policy context;
- critical finance
and governance issues that face
state education policy makers,
local charter authorizers, and
charter school operators;
- promising practices
and innovations across the country
to better inform charter school
leaders at all levels about successful
models that address salient finance
and governance issues;
- tools to help charter
leaders design, implement, monitor
and evaluate innovative systems
and practices to improve charter
school finance and governance;
- technical assistance – including
broad-based and customized support – that
will help leaders who are charged
with encouraging, supporting and
strengthening charter schools.
The National Resource
Center will help achieve improvements
in the quality of charter school
finance and governance, and offer
a keener understanding of how to
build and strengthen the capacity
of charter schools.
Co-Principal Investigator: Priscilla
Wohlstetter, USC Rossier School of
Education
Funding Source: U.S. Department of
Education, Office of Innovation and
Improvement, Charter Schools Program
The Center on Educational Governance is developing the first interactive Web site dedicated to reporting on the performance of California charter schools. CSI-USC is a database of multiple indices for evaluating school, staff, and student performance.
Performance of charter schools are reported out in two forms. The first is an Annual State of the State Report comparing California charter schools with other public schools. The report, CSI-USC 2007, is available here. Secondly, CEG is developing an online, interactive Web site that can be used by individual charter schools to track year-to-year progress, as well as to compare their performance with other similar California public schools. Individual school reports will become operational during the summer of 2008.
The database of indices is intended for use by educators, researchers, policymakers, and corporate partners and foundations. To ensure its usefulness, CSI-USC was developed in collaboration with a diverse group of representatives from the charter school community (click here for the link to our Statewide Advisory Board; click here for the link to our Charter School Partners).
CSI-USC was launched with a two-year grant from USC Trustee, William E.B. Siart, and has received generous financial support from The Ahmanson Foundation, The John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation, and the Weingart Foundation.
Stakeholder Satisfaction Surveys (2005 to present)
The Center on Educational Governance (CEG) at USC has developed online stakeholder satisfaction surveys to assist charter schools in assessing their performance from the perspectives of parents, students and staff.
As a charter school leader, we realize you are highly accountable for proving your school's overall effectiveness. The requirements to provide formal evidence are increasing. Test scores are only one measurement strategy. Assessing the satisfaction of parents, students, and staff provides a broader range of performance indicators to respond to increased demands for external and internal accountability.
Once stakeholder feedback on school strengths and areas in need of improvement is gathered, it can give you insight to priorities for improving school management. Results can be used to guide you in your strategic planning, fundraising efforts, and student recruitment. In addition, charter schools have used results from the satisfaction surveys in their applications for state accreditation renewal.
Sample survey questions can be found here.
Sample of an individual school survey report here.
Charter schools that have used the Stakeholder Satisfaction Surveys
Sign-up online Or contact Tamara McKenzie at the USC Center on Educational Governance at (213) 740–1759.
More information
Principal Investigator: Priscilla Wohlstetter, USC Rossier School of Education
Project Specialist: Tamara McKenzie, USC Rossier School of Education
Funding Sources: The Ahmanson Foundation; The John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation; William E. B. Siart; and the Weingart Foundation
USC's
Compendium of Promising Practices:
Innovations in Charter Schools
(2005 to present)
How can schools increase parental involvement, create partnerships with universities, or better integrate technology into classroom practice? The Center on Educational Governance at USC has developed an interactive, Web-based compendium of promising educational practices that offers the educational community evidence-based strategies for improving school and student performance. Based on an extensive process, charter schools with promising educational practices were nominated and selected for the compendium.
CEG is now requesting nominations of charter schools that have made distinct contributions in of the following 8 areas:
- Adult mentoring of at-risk students
- Increasing redesignation rates of English-language learners
- Integrating academics into career/technical education
- School leaders’ use of data for planning and school improvement
- Teacher evaluation
- Use of technology to increase parent involvement
- Uses of school time
- Writing across the curriculum
Please click here to nominate a California charter school for USC’s Compendium.
To date, promising practices in the following areas have been collected from charter schools throughout California. Click on any of the following themes to see school summaries and profiles:
To review a comprehensive list of all of the schools which have been recognized for their promising practices relating to the foregoing themes, please click here for the individual school names, locations, contact persons and telephone numbers.
Through the compendium, new ideas and details about implementation are available to encourage replication and adaptation of promising practices in a variety of educational settings. To read more about the compendium, follow this link to our executive summary.
Please click here to read an interview about the compendium with Priscilla Wohlstetter, Director of CEG.
Principal Investigator: Priscilla Wohlstetter, USC Rossier School of Education
Research Associates: Rayna Cervantes, Gary Finkel, Kevin Kaemingk, Grace Kim, Chuan Ally Kuzin, Michelle Nayfack, Bobby Ojose, Vicki Park, Tami Pearson, Jennifer Prager, Amber Prince, John Purcell, and Jennifer Welsh.
Funding Sources: The Ahmanson Foundation; The John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation; the Weingart Foundation; and William E.B. Siart.
We designed a national research project
in 10-12 states to examine the impact
of cross-sectoral alliances on new-start
schools, to identify the factors
that might motivate organizations
across sectors to develop strategic
alliances, and to discover the conditions
that support and impede such alliances.
The project also included legislative
analysis for all the 36 states that
permit new-start charter schools
to capture the national perspective
on cross-sectoral alliances and to
identify policy conditions affecting
the development of alliances in new-start
charter schools. Our research built
upon the existing knowledge concerning
strategic alliances among business
enterprises and extended it to education.
Principal Investigator: Priscilla
Wohlstetter, USC Rossier School of
Education Co-Principal Investigator:
Guilbert Hentschke, USC Rossier School
of Education Funding Source: United
States Department of Education
The Committee on Urban Problem Solving
was initiated in 2000 as a part of
the Provost's Urban Initiative to
examine the extent to which partnerships
and alliances are a general strategy
for urban problem solving. This inquiry
involved four substantive policy
areas--education, health, housing,
and social services and sought to
understand how alliances between
public, private, nonprofit, and philanthropic
organizations work to improve the
quality of life for those in urban
areas, particularly the underserved.
Principal Investigator:
Priscilla Wohlstetter, USC Rossier
School of Education
Funding Source: USC
Provost's Urban Initiative
This study examined the implementation
and impact of innovations aimed at
improving elementary school reading
instruction in six Los Angeles-area
charter schools. Innovations in management
structures, such as decision-making
teams and school-based councils,
and in organizational processes,
such as novel professional development
and parent involvement, were studied.
Results of this study provided information
useful to both charter and non-charter
schools in their attempts to improve
student learning and achievement
in the area of reading.
Principal Investigator:
Priscilla Wohlstetter, USC Rossier
School of Education
Funding Source: The
John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes
Foundation
The Center on Educational Governance
collaborated with WestEd on the evaluation
of 14 Los Angeles area charter schools.
This evaluation used both qualitative
and quantitative methods to assess
the extent to which charter schools
met the goals of their charter agreements.
Interviews were conducted with charter
school educators and parents. Surveys
of teachers, principals and parents
were also administered. The evaluation
focus included the following areas:
governance; budget, accounting and
business practices; staffing and
personnel policies; educational programs
and accountability; parent choice
and involvement; and outcomes (educational
achievement and other).
Principal Investigator:
WestEd Co-Principal Investigator:
Priscilla Wohlstetter, USC Rossier
School of Education
Funding Source: Los
Angeles Unified School District
This project investigated how learning
communities were created and sustained
in 17 charter schools in three states
(California, Massachusetts and Minnesota).
Through focus groups with charter
school participants including founders,
administrators and teachers, the
study examined: (a) how school missions
were developed and translated into
classroom practice, (b) how charter
schools learned from what they were
doing and (c) what factors seemed
to produce high quality teaching
and learning.
Principal Investigator:
Priscilla Wohlstetter, USC Rossier
School of Education
Funding Source: Danforth
Foundation
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