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Jeff Bernstein

Learning from Charter School Management Organizations: Strategies for Student Behavior ... - 0 views

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    The National Study of CMO Effectiveness is a four-year study designed to assess the impact of CMOs on student achievement and to identify CMO structures and practices that are most effective in raising achievement. Earlier reports from the study documented substantial variation in CMOs' student achievement impacts and in CMOs' use of particular educational strategies and practices. The last report from the study found that the most effective CMOs tend to emphasize two practices in particular: high expectations for student behavior and intensive teacher coaching and monitoring. This report provides a more in-depth description of these two promising CMO practices, drawing on surveys and interviews with staff in high-performing CMOs that emphasize one or both practices.
Jeff Bernstein

Review of Charter-School Management Organizations: Diverse Strategies and Diverse Stude... - 0 views

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    This report details how charter schools are increasingly run by private, nonprofit management organizations called charter school management organizations (CMOs). The researchers find that most CMOs serve urban students from low-income families, operate small schools that offer more instructional time, and attract teachers loyal to each school's mission, based on survey data and site visits. The authors conducted an impact analysis focused only on middle school grades, finding that a small fraction of CMO-run middle schools boosted achievement growth at notable levels. But on average, student performance in the CMO-run schools did not outpace achievement growth in other charters or in host districts for a statistically matched set of students. This review finds that the report offers an objective assessment of the comparative benefits for middle-school students of a highly select set of CMOs. It also helps to identify organizational features that operate in successful CMO-run schools that are modestly associated with stronger student growth in the middle grades. However, the authors downplay aspects of their methodology that resulted in significant selectivity concerning which CMOs were studied, raising questions regarding the population of charter schools to which they hope to generalize.
Jeff Bernstein

Charter-School Management Organizations: Diverse Strategies and Diverse Student Impacts - 1 views

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    The National Study of CMO Effectiveness is a longitudinal research effort designed to measure how nonprofit charter school management organizations (CMOs) affect student achievement and to examine the internal structures, practices, and policy contexts that may influence these outcomes. The study began in May 2008 and will conclude in 2012.   This report presents findings on CMO students, resources, and  practices  as well as CMO impacts on student  achievement in middle school. It also examines the relationships  between CMO  practices and impacts. A subsequent version of this report will include findings on CMO impacts on high school graduation and postsecondary enrollment.   The study is being conducted by Mathematica Policy Research and the University of Washington's Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE). It was commissioned by NewSchools Venture Fund, with the generous support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. 
Jeff Bernstein

Robin Lake: Teacher Evaluations: We Need Trust, Not Just Tools - Rick Hess Straight Up ... - 0 views

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    What effective CMOs do rely on heavily is trust, relationships, and clear communication. In well-run charters, there is a common belief about teaching and learning, and teachers are hired and retained based on whether they share that belief. Teachers know they are getting ongoing feedback and no surprises. They know that the principal doing their observations and evaluations is a master teacher operating on the same definition of good instruction as they are. They know that every other teacher in the building is a potential collaborator. In other words, they trust their coworkers and operate in a culture of common understanding and mutual respect. Evaluation is understood to be more about organizational improvement than about passing judgment on an individual. In fact, some CMOs have tried and dumped merit pay because they felt it disrupted this collaborative culture.
Jeff Bernstein

Secrets of 'miraculous' charter management organizations - The Answer Sheet - The Washi... - 0 views

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    Here the report lets the cat out of the bag: one of the keys to effective CMO behavior management is bribing students to behave. The report notes that "paycheck" of merit/demerit systems are the "backbones of culture-building efforts." At KIPP schools, one of the CMOs honored as "successful," students are, on average, paid $40-$50 a week to incentivize compliant behavior.
Jeff Bernstein

MPR's Unfortunate Sidestepping around Money Questions in the Charter CMO Repo... - 0 views

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    Let me start by pointing out that Mathematica Policy Research, in my view, is an exceptional research organization. They have good people. They do good work and have done much to inform public policy in what I believe are positive ways. That's why I found it so depressing when I started digging through the recent report on Charter CMOs - a report which as framed, was intended to explore the differences in effectiveness, practices and resources of charter schools operated by various Charter Management Organizations.
Jeff Bernstein

Shanker Blog » The Relatively Unexplored Frontier Of Charter School Finance - 0 views

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    Do charter schools do more - get better results - with less? If you ask this question, you'll probably get very strong answers, ranging from the affirmative to the negative, often depending on the person's overall view of charter schools. The reality, however, is that we really don't know. Actually, despite uninformed coverage of insufficient evidence, researchers don't even have a good handle on how much charter schools spend, to say nothing of whether how and how much they spend leads to better outcomes. Reporting of charter financial data is incomplete, imprecise and inconsistent. It is difficult to disentangle the financial relationships between charter management organizations (CMOs) and the schools they run, as well as that between charter schools and their "host" districts.
Jeff Bernstein

Study Finds Achievement Mixed at Charters Run by Networks - Inside School Research - Ed... - 1 views

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    A new national study on the effectiveness of the networks that operate charter schools finds that their students' test scores in math, science, and social studies improve after they have spent a year or two at the school, but not by much. Overall, the report out today finds that middle school student achievement varies widely at schools run by charter-management organizations, which are the groups that establish and operate multiple charter schools. Most networks seem to produce a positive effect on student achievement, compared with results for students in district-run schools in the same area that are not run by CMOs. Some actually have a negative effect. The overall impact, however, tends not to be statistically significant, according to the report by from Mathematica and the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington.
Jeff Bernstein

COPAA: Charter Schools and Students with Disabilities - Preliminary Analysis of the Leg... - 0 views

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    This paper examines the extent to which students with disabilities are being served by the approximately 5000 publicly funded charter schools, which are predominantly, but not exclusively, located in urban, under-performing school districts, and 20 percent of which are operated by charter-school management organizations (CMOs) controlling multiple entities.  
Jeff Bernstein

An Alternative NCLB (nee ESEA) Blueprint - Rick Hess Straight Up - Education Week - 0 views

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    The charter bill is modeled almost entirely on the House's just-passed charter bill, except that it will also allow charter management organizations to compete directly for federal funds. Right now, only states or districts can compete for those funds; under this provision, a CMO like KIPP could compete for direct federal grants.
Jeff Bernstein

The Educated Reporter: New Study Finds Early Predictors of Charter School Success - 0 views

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    "A charter school's performance in its first three years of operation is a solid predictor of the program's long-term chances of success, a new study by Stanford University researchers concludes. On Wednesday Stanford's Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) published Charter School Growth and Replication, which focuses on what can be learned from the track records of more than 1,300 independently managed public schools and nearly 170 Charter Management Organizations (CMOs). "
Jeff Bernstein

Middle School Charters in Texas: An Examination of Student Characteristics an... - 0 views

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    "The findings reviewed in this section refer to the results for the most appropriate comparison-the sending schools comparison-unless otherwise noted. Full results are in the body of the report or in the appendices. The CMOs included in this particular study included: KIPP, YES Preparatory, Harmony (Cosmos), IDEA, UPLIFT, School of Science and Technology, Brooks Academy, School of Excellence, and Inspired Vision."
Jeff Bernstein

Public Hearing Summary - Brooklyn Success Academy Charter School 3 - 0 views

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    The New York City Department of Education ("NYCDOE") proposed to co-locate Brooklyn Success Academy Charter School 3 ("BSA3") in Building K293, located at 284 Baltic Street in Brooklyn, within the geographical confines of Community School District ("CSD") 15. BSA3 would be co-located in K293 with three existing NYCDOE schools: the Brooklyn School for Global Studies, serving approximately 415 students in grades 6-12 in the 2011-12 school year; the School for International Studies, serving approximately 522 students in grades 6-12 in the 2011-12 school year; and a District 75 program serving approximately 30 students at the high school level who are autistic, mentally retarded, or have multiple handicaps. The not-for-profit charter management organization (CMO), Success Charter Network, Inc., will operate BSA3. 
Jeff Bernstein

RAND: First-Year Principals in Urban School Districts - How Actions and Working Conditi... - 0 views

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    Principals new to their schools face a variety of challenges that can influence their likelihood of improving their schools' performance and their likelihood of remaining the principal. Understanding the actions that principals take and the working conditions they face in the first year can inform efforts to promote school improvement and principal retention, but the research on first-year principals' experiences is limited. This report examines the actions and perceived working conditions of first-year principals, relating information on those factors to subsequent school achievement and principal retention. This report presents findings from an analysis of schools led by principals who were in their first year at their schools. Throughout this report, we define first-year principals as principals in their first year at a given school including those principals with previous experience as principals at other schools. The study is based on data that were collected to support the RAND Corporation's seven-year formative and summative evaluation of New Leaders. New Leaders is an organization that is dedicated to promoting student achievement by developing outstanding school leaders to serve in urban schools. The findings will be of interest to policymakers in school districts, charter management organizations (CMOs), state education agencies, and principal preparation programs, in addition to principals themselves and teachers. This research was conducted in RAND Education, a unit of the RAND Corporation, under a contract with New Leaders.
Jeff Bernstein

Kathleen Porter-Magee: Do we need a new charter revolution? - 1 views

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    "When charter schools first emerged twenty years ago, they represented a revolution, ushering in a new era that put educational choice, innovation, and autonomy front and center in the effort to improve our schools. While charters have always been very diverse in characteristics and outcomes, it wasn't long before a particular kind of gap-closing, "No Excuses" charter grabbed the lion's share of public attention. But in this rush to crown and invest in a few "winners," have we turned our back on the push for innovation that was meant to be at the core of the charter experiment?"
Jeff Bernstein

Spending by the Major Charter Management Organizations: Comparing Charter School and Lo... - 0 views

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    We compare the spending of charters to that of district schools of similar size, serving the same grade levels and similar student populations. Overall, charter spending variation is large as is the spending of traditional public schools. Comparative spending between the two sectors is mixed, with many high profile charter network schools outspending similar district schools in New York City and Texas, but other charter network schools spending less than similar district schools, particularly in Ohio. We find that in New York City, KIPP, Achievement First and Uncommon Schools charter schools spend substantially more ($2,000 to $4,300 per pupil) than similar district schools. Given that the average spending per pupil was around $12,000 to $14,000 citywide, a nearly $4,000 difference in spending amounts to an increase of some 30%. In Ohio, charters across the board spend less than district schools in the same city. And in Texas, some charter chains such as KIPP spend substantially more per pupil than district schools in the same city and serving similar populations, around 30 to 50% more in some cities (and at the middle school level) based on state reported current expenditures, and 50 to 100% more based on IRS filings. Even in New York where we have the highest degree of confidence in the match between our IRS data and Annual Financial Report Data, we remain unconvinced that we are accounting fully for all charter school expenditures.
Jeff Bernstein

What We Told the State Education Commissioner - SchoolBook - 0 views

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    A few Saturdays ago, while taking a break from the black and Latino caucus meetings in Albany, I was eating lunch with Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters. We saw the state education commissioner, John B. King Jr., having lunch three tables away. He was on his way to a meeting, but we said hello and he stopped for a few minutes so we could talk. Leonie introduced me as a parent whose child was counseled out of Harlem Success charter following 12 days of kindergarten, after the principal told me there was something wrong with him and he needed to transfer to another school.
Jeff Bernstein

Teacher Coaching and High Expectations Key to Charter Performance - Inside School Resea... - 0 views

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    Recent research has indicated that teacher coaching and high expectations for student behavior are characteristics of the most effective charter schools. In "Learning from Charter School Management Organizations: Strategies for Student Behavior and Teacher Coaching," researchers from the University of Washington's Center for Reinventing Public Education and New Jersey-based research firm Mathematica probe into exactly what those polices look like.
Jeff Bernstein

KIPP Shares Leadership Model With School Districts - District Dossier - Education Week - 0 views

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    More than a dozen school districts are taking part in a leadership fellowship sponsored by the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) charter network, in order to learn how the network trains its school leaders. The KIPP Leadership Design Fellowship, which is funded through a $50 million federal Investing in Innovation grant, has also brought together representatives from charter management organizations and educator training programs.
Jeff Bernstein

John Merrow: Thinking About Charters | Taking Note - 0 views

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    I have been hanging around charter school operators for the past few days, and the experience has left me with some complicated - and perhaps contradictory - thoughts about a movement that I have been following since 1988. I love the energy, intelligence and dedication of the people I spent time with, but I left the annual meeting of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools in Minneapolis with some concerns. I think they need to do a better job of choosing their friends and of refining their message, among other issues. For what it's worth, here's my thinking.
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