Controversy rages over the overall contribution of charter schools to education reform. And while charter schools have produced mixed results, that is for a simple reason: not all charter schools are created equal.
Some charter schools do produce poor results. But other charter schools receive extraordinary results, turning around the lives of low-income children.
Rather than group all charter schools together and debate the wisdom of charter schools generally, here’s a better question to ask: How do we facilitate growth of the charter schools that work? How do we bring the effective teaching strategies from the most successful charter schools to more students?
That’s the question that Emily Ayscue Hassel, Bryan C. Hassel and Joe Ableidinger tackle in a new report for the Progressive Policy Institute, entitled “Going Exponential: Growing the Charter School Sector’s Best.”
The report outlines nine lessons from fast-growing organizations that can be applied to charter schools. You can read it here.
But the big lesson is simple:
Charter leaders who want to pursue exponential growth and funders who want to support them must become much more familiar with the rapid-growth strategies used in other sectors and apply them to education. In addition, policymakers must prioritize removing any barriers to growth by the best – while also creating new incentives and avenues for excellent programs to reach more children.
Bryan Hassel will be on hand tomorrow (Feb. 17) at the National Press Club, to discuss the paper, along with R. Brooks Garber of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Eva Moskowitz of the Success Charter Network, and Andrew Rotherham of Bellwether Education Partners. For more details, click here.
