How Public Charter Schools Are Designed to Meet the Diverse Demands of Our Communities

Today, NAPCS is proud to release our newest issue brief, A Mission to Serve: How Public Charter Schools Are Designed to Meet the Diverse Demands of Our Communities. By looking at high performing public charter schools that are consciously designed to serve their students–whether in homogenous or diverse environments–this issue brief underscores that public charter schools can accommodate both models and, in the process, provide more high quality public school options to our nation’s students.

One of the most exceptional developments within the first two decades of the movement has been the rise of high performing public charter schools with missions intently focused on educating students from traditionally underserved communities. While much media attention rightly has been given to these schools, the past decade or so also has seen a noteworthy rise in high-performing public charter schools with missions intentionally designed to serve economically integrated student populations.  These schools are utilizing their autonomy to achieve a diverse student population through location-based strategies, recruitment efforts and enrollment processes.

Perhaps most notably, a growing number of cities – and the parents and educators in them – are welcoming both types of public charter school models for their respective (and in some cases unprecedented) contributions to raising student achievement, particularly for students who have previously struggled in school.  Our issue brief showcases this development in three such cities:  Denver, Washington, D.C., and San Diego.

The Challenge of Filling Charter School Governing Board Positions

This is my third year serving on a public charter school governing board. The school, Pioneer Charter School, is a PreK-7 school in Denver serving a large proportion of students who are at-risk for academic failure. Over 90 percent of Pioneer's students are Latino, 70 percent are English Language Learners, and 90 percent receive free or reduced lunch. Pioneer opened in 1997, making it one of the first Denver Public Schools (DPS) charter schools.

For the first decade of operation, it would have been difficult to distinguish Pioneer from one of the neighborhood district schools (the district maintained control over the school’s budget, hiring of the school leader, and other duties that the school’s governing board should have had responsibility for). One consequence of this ‘charter school in name only’ management was that most parents believed that the school was their neighborhood school. About five years ago, during Pioneer’s charter renewal, DPS made the Pioneer board decide between becoming a district school or firmly establishing itself as a charter school. The governing board decided to become a full-fledged charter school, taking on fiduciary responsibility for Pioneer.

Pioneer has struggled academically, which has been quite a challenge for me as a board member. During my first year on the board, we contemplated recommending closure. Instead, we made a change in school leadership, hiring a dynamic leader who had previous success as the founder of a KIPP school in Colorado. We are in the second year of our self-imposed turnaround, a process that has included: a nearly 50 percent turnover in teachers; a complete overhaul of the curriculum (from inconsistent use of Success for All and Everyday Math to a customized, in-house standards-based curriculum based on the Common Core); the implementation of regular benchmark assessments and data-driven decision-making; and changes in school policies to ensure that we have a culture of high expectations. As a board, we are cautiously optimistic that we will see academic gains on this year’s state assessments. But we are also realistic in understanding that it may take another year or two to see real improvements (fingers crossed that it will happen before we come up for renewal again).

Serving on a charter school governing board has been incredibly demanding and amazingly rewarding. I truly love the work. However, it is a yearly challenge for our board to find new board members. We work with local organizations, like the Colorado League of Charter Schools and Get Smart Schools, to find new board members. But we have had to balance seeking out individuals who have the expertise we need with simply finding individuals who are willing to volunteer their time to the school (and twisting their arms to do so…). And this is not a unique problem for our charter school (the National Charter School Resource Center examines recruiting board members in D.C. and Maine here).

For many new charter school board members, this is the first time they have served on a board (that was my experience). Fortunately, there are some great resources for governing board professional development in Colorado through the CO League and the CO Department of Education. Other states have similar resources for governing boards. There are also national organizations that provide assistance and quality guidelines.

As a researcher, I am interested in the role that charter governing boards play in the charter sector. However, there is very little research on charter boards and many unanswered questions: Who serves on charter boards and for how long? What are the most common decisions that charter boards undertake? What types of board decisions have the most impact on school performance? How do founding boards differ from boards of charter schools that have been around for many years? How involved are boards in the strategic vision of their charters? This is certainly an untapped area for potential charter school research. I hope future studies can shed light and provide solutions for the questions, so that schools like mine can effectively propel themselves to a higher level of board operation and student academic achievement.


Photo: Older students read to the younger students on Reading Day at Pioneer Charter School (PCS).

What is a public charter school?

During National Charter Schools Week, we celebrate achievements in the school house and the state house. These achievements could not have been possible without the commitment of teachers, leaders, parents and advocates from all parts of the country. We asked some of these individuals to tell us why they are a part of the charter schools movement.

As executive director of the Public Charter Schools Alliance of South Carolina, Mary Carmichael gets asked all the time about charter schools.  Here’s her answer to the most basic, but most important question: What is a public charter school? 

It is a community where teachers are empowered to foster a lifelong love of discovering and applying new knowledge.

It is a community where families have the opportunity to see their children flourish in a learning environment aligned to their needs.

It is a community where school leaders are educational entrepreneurs allocating resources and developing a faculty of instructional innovators to advance the mission of the school.

It is a community where boards are held accountable for being excellent stewards of public funds and improving students’ academic achievement.

What is a public charter school?
Public charter schools embody our American ideals of independent, innovative thinkers and doers.  They are public schools with the freedom to be more innovative while being held accountable for improving student achievement.

National Charter School Week is an exciting time to be joining charter school leaders from across the country in Washington, D.C. to celebrate 20 years of innovation in public charter schools and to share knowledge on how to transform public education for all children in all of our communities.

What is a public charter school?
It is a community where we all can make a difference in the life of a child and impact in our collective future.

20 Years of Innovation towards Eliminating the Achievement Gap

During National Charter Schools Week, we celebrate achievements in the school house and the state house. These achievements could not have been possible without the commitment of teachers, leaders, parents and advocates from all parts of the country. We asked some of these individuals to tell us why they are a part of the charter schools movement.

While college and graduate student loan debt and interest rates have made headlines recently (and with good reason), we should not forget that many of the children in this country do not reach college because of the shortcomings of our national public education system. Indeed, the most important civil rights issue challenging our country today is the equal right to and the availability of a high quality k-12 education for all children, regardless of their ethnic background or socio-economic status. 

As we approach the end of the school year and reflect on public education in the United States, this week, we celebrate National Charter Schools Week, and the upcoming 20th anniversary of the first public  charter school (founded in Minnesota in 1992). The development of public charter schools in the early 1990s was rooted in a quest to, provide parents with a variety of public school options, free schools from bureaucracies and bring accountability to a long-ailing system of education. 

In my 14 years at Jumoke Academy, a public K-8 charter school in Hartford, CT, I have seen what can happen when committed teachers and school administrators confront the high needs of a low-income and minority population head on. Jumoke was founded in 1997 by my mother, Thelma Ellis Dickerson, a lifelong advocate for education reform and former president of the Hartford Board of Education, to eliminate the achievement gap for the city of Hartford. It was her fervent belief that, “if we provided a safe, supportive but rigorous learning environment for children, staffed with high-quality teachers who challenged students to learn at the highest levels, we could change the face of public education in the city of Hartford for the absolute better.” My mother passed away this February, however Jumoke continues to represent all that she thought public school education can be for urban children. Our students consistently score on the list of top ten performing urban schools in Connecticut, according to an independent report by ConnCan. Our academic results clearly demonstrate that an urban school with a 100 percent minority population can not only close the achievement gap, it can also equal and often outperform more affluent communities.

Jumoke is just one of the more than 5,000 public charter schools seeking to change the outcomes of the over two million students they serve across the country. In low-income, urban communities, public charter schools are targeting those most in need and working to raise the bar on public education through innovation, choice and parental empowerment. In Detroit, the high school graduation rate for charter schools was 80 percent, compared to 60 percent from traditional public schools. In Los Angeles, charter schools outperformed the Los Angeles Unified School District traditional public schools, on average, across all grade levels on the Academic Performance Index in the 2010-11 school year. In Washington, D.C., charter schools have a 21 percent higher graduation rate than Washington DC Public Schools. Studies out of charter-rich states like Arizona and California show that public charter schools are producing innovations that are being adopted by traditional schools districts. And in some districts, increased student achievement in neighboring traditional public schools suggests charter competition is raising the bar for all schools.

Despite the success that the charter movement has seen, there is still considerable inequity between charter and traditional public schools when it comes to per student state and federal appropriations. Charters are, on average, receiving less money per-pupil than the corresponding public schools in their areas. Additionally, there are still nine states that lack charter school laws, leaving families in those states without adequate public education alternatives for their children.

Let us seize National Charter School Week as an opportunity to celebrate the efforts of lifelong civil rights and education reform advocates like my mother, reflect on the successes and lessons learned from the charter school movement, expose the still present, still painful, inequalities in our public education system, and continue to strive for something better for America’s children. 



Author: Michael Sharpe is the Chief Executive Officer of Jumoke Academy in Hartford, CT. He is the president of the Connecticut Charter School Association, board member of the National Charter School Leadership Council, and founding member of the Legacy Project and Family Urban Schools of Excellence, (F.U.S.E).

Why I Decided to Become an Advocate for Public Charter Schools

Charter Schools are an Option for Parents that Enhance a Child’s Educational Experience

Achievement and Innovation as Mission Critical: Reflections from a Charter School Founder

During National Charter Schools Week, we celebrate achievements in the school house and the state house. These achievements could not have been possible without the commitment of teachers, leaders, parents and advocates from all parts of the country. We asked some of these individuals to tell us why they are a part of the charter schools movement.

The future is uncertain.  Our world is rapidly changing.  What we do, what we know, and our general way of being is fantastically different today than it was ten years ago, and will be different ten years from now than it is today.  We, as a movement and profession, must operate innovatively to ensure our children can keep pace with our changing world.  With this message, I’ll depart Music City for our nation’s capital and meet with congressional leaders during National Charter Schools Week. 

Innovation has always been a key attribute of the charter school movement; however, now more than ever, we have the responsibility to progressively push education reform forward in ways that both advance the field but also, and more importantly, get results – significant results.  Innovation devoid of achievement is for naught.

As a professional field, we know a great deal about what works in educating children.  For instance, we know direct, systematic, explicit instruction is the most effective practice in teaching basic skills and advancing the learning of struggling readers, students with disabilities, and English Language Learners.  We also know teachers who formatively measure performance are more effective in raising student achievement.  We know investing students in their education is critical.  At STEM Prep, we believe these and related practices are simply best practice.  We’ve implemented every scientifically researched-based practice that aligns to our mission and model.  However, we don’t believe these practices are innovative; we believe they’re responsible and simply what good schools do every day. 

While “innovation” can be defined and operationalized in numerous ways, we believe innovation is the development of more effective practices and processes that not only result in advancing student achievement, but also instill the habits of mind required for our children to access the college and career pathways of the 21st Century.  This is, in fact, our mission and the mindset undergirding the STEM Prep model.

To this end, the principle questions since STEM Prep’s inception have been:  How do we educate children to keep pace with our rapidly changing environment?  What are the requisite habits of mind that must transcend time, discipline, and reform effort in ways that ensure our children can compete?  How do we move beyond mastery of very basic, rudimentary skills to more rigorous modes of thinking and problem solving? 

These are the discussions in which my charter school colleagues are engaged across the country.  As I prepare to meet with congressional leaders next week, I’m energized by the opportunity to dive deeply into these mission critical questions.  Achievement and innovation, after all, are the drivers of this movement and our country.

Kristin McGraner, Ed.D., is the Founder & Executive Director of STEM Preparatory Academy in Nashville, TN. To learn more about STEM Prep Academy, please see their website and video.

Hope Academy Charter School's Drop out Recovery and Prevention Program Surpasses State Graduation Rate

Public Charter Schools Represent Opportunity

After earning my teaching degree, I spent a year as a substitute teacher.  To say that that was an unrewarding experience would be an understatement.  By the end of that year, after multiple applications to school districts around Rhode Island, I found myself without a single interview.  I expanded my search to include community-based organizations and was soon hired to teach computers to unemployed and underemployed adults.  Eventually, I would be designing employment training programs for adults and teens whose families were struggling to make ends meet.  This position allowed me to hone many of the skills that would later serve me well as a public school teacher.

After four years in this position, I found myself longing to continue my education.  I moved to Southern California to pursue a masters in screenwriting.  This is what I often called a personal enrichment degree.  In addition to teaching, my other passion was independent filmmaking.  While pursuing this degree, I took a job as an administrator in a proprietary school in the Los Angeles area.  While this work seems a long way from teaching in a public school, many of the students enrolling in proprietary schools are those who achieved less success while they were in high school.  Reaching them and ensuring their success motivated me every day.

Family matters brought me back to Rhode Island and a community-based organization.  Within a couple of years, Beacon Charter School opened down the street and I got myself an interview.   I include this employment history as a way to shed light on one of the great things about charters.  While charters serve as a second chance for students to be successful, I feel that the faculty and staff of the schools are no different.  I was certainly never a failure as a public school teacher; I was never given the chance to be one.  That is, of course, until I was hired at Beacon as a social studies teacher.

In eight years at Beacon, I went from teaching all levels of history and civics courses to creating the school's performance-based graduation system (including digital portfolios and an innovative senior film requirement for all students), serving an internship as principal-in-residence and, finally, this past year, being appointed principal and earning my doctorate. 

For me, charter schools will always represent opportunity; an opportunity for adults to make a difference in the lives of students and for students to explore skills and talents they didn't know they had.  Many of our students could be classified as small fish in the big ponds of traditional public schools.  At a charter school, they are in a smaller pond with a better chance for engaging with key aspects of the high school experience.  Many of my teachers have never been given the opportunity to use their talents in traditional public schools.  Their reward for getting hired at a charter school: greater freedoms to implement standards-based instruction. The cost: greater accountability for the teaching and learning at the school.  This is true for charter schools in general: greater freedoms and increased accountability.  None of us would have it any other way.  For more information on Beacon Charter High School for the Arts, please visit www.beaconart.org.

Michael Skeldon, Ed.D. is the Principal of Beacon Charter High School for the Arts in Woonsocket, RI.



Beacon Charter High School for the Arts students in the theater arts program.

A Teacher’s Dream-Come-True

During National Charter Schools Week, we celebrate achievements in the school house and the state house. These achievements could not have been possible without the commitment of teachers, leaders, parents and advocates from all parts of the country. We asked some of these individuals to tell us why they are a part of the charter schools movement.

My name is Joy Souza, and I’m a Kindergarten Teacher and the Kindergarten Chair at Blackstone Valley Prep Mayoral Academy (BVP) in Cumberland, Rhode Island.  I left my traditional public school teaching position three years ago to become a founding teacher of BVP.  With very little knowledge of what public charter schools were about, and no exposure to a high expectations model, I accepted a teaching position based solely on the fact that my mission as an educator, and the mission of Blackstone Valley Prep were the same: To put 100 percent of our scholars on a path to college. 

Over the past three years, I have watched BVP grow into an organization that now consists of three campuses, serving scholars in grades K-2 and 5-6, with the intent of becoming a K-12 organization within the next six years.  Our schools educate children from four Rhode Island communities that provide rich economic and cultural diversity.  This urban-suburban mix of scholars consists of 43 percent of who speak a language other than English at home and 65 percent who qualify for free or reduced lunch.  The same high expectations, however, apply to all. And 100 percent are now college bound.
Our scholars’ levels of achievement have been nothing short of impressive.  Last year, Rhode Island’s Commissioner of Education, Deborah Gist, recognized BVP by stating the following: “All 152 of the kindergarten and first grade students at Blackstone Valley Prep Mayoral Academy who took the Developmental Reading Assessment this year scored proficient or better.  To our knowledge, this is the first time in Rhode Island that every student at a school scored proficient or better on this early-grade assessment!”  Equally as impressive is the fact that in just one year, BVP sixth graders required to take the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP), showed a 25 percent gain in reading and a 41 percent gain in math from the year before, ranking well above the state averages.

Such successes as these do not come easy.  Blackstone Valley Prep scholars attend school for over eight hours a day, 190 days a year.  Teachers work tirelessly by planning and delivering the highest level of instruction.  Our commitment to our scholars and their families means that teachers are on call every night and do home visits that allow us to make valuable family connections.  Our systematic data collection is used informatively and strategically to drive our instruction and identify the individual needs of our scholars.  Our school’s high expectations for all our scholars, and unwillingness to fail at getting them to meet those expectations, are commonalities shared by teachers, staff, and parents at BVP.  Beginning with the first day of kindergarten, our scholars are introduced to our school’s core values of perseverance, respect, integrity, discipline and enthusiasm, PRIDE as we call it, which contributes to a positive school culture that is experienced by scholars, staff and families, alike.

Although my high expectations and desire to see all my scholars go to college certainly keeps me at BVP, I choose to teach there for selfish reasons, too.  I participate and lead weekly professional development. I regularly visit successful schools to learn what others are doing. I am a part of a culture that includes teachers in decisions that are typically reserved only for administrators.  I collaborate daily with a staff of educators in which 100 percent of them share the same values and high expectations that I do, and are aligned to a common mission.  Does it sound like a teacher’s Dream-Come-True?  Well, it absolutely is.  Charter schools not only provide choice for parents wanting something different for their child than what their traditional public school system offers, it also gives choice to teachers, like me, who have unique and innovative ideas about education.



Author: Joy Souza, Kindergarten Teacher and Kindergarten Chair, Blackstone Valley Prep Mayoral Academy (BVP) in Cumberland, Rhode Island.