The number of charter schools grew rapidly for a quarter-century after the first charter opened its doors in 1992. But since 2016, the rate of increase has slowed. Is the pause related to a decline in charter effectiveness? To find out, the authors tracked changes in student performance at charter and district schools on the National Assessment of…

Communities in Schools is one of the nation's oldest and largest providers of integrated student supports, also known as "wraparound services." Started in New York City in the 1970s, the agency now works with more than 2,300 schools in 25 states and the District of Columbia. The model is straightforward: Communities in Schools recruits,…

Education in the United States has a foundational public purpose: to prepare students for effective citizenship. The idea that an educated and engaged citizenry is essential to the health of a democracy motivated the creation of government-run "common schools" in the early decades of the nation and remains an important value in modern…

The Chicago International Charter School (CICS) Irving Park's middle school is one of 130 schools nationwide piloting the Summit Learning Program (SLP), developed--and offered entirely free--by Summit Public Schools, a high-performing charter network based in California. Summit's eight schools, two of them in Washington State, are known for an…

This article reports on the fine results being experienced by students from the South Bronx (New York), at one of the seven Icahn Charter Schools. Jeff Litt, superintendent of Icahn's network of charter schools, has been instrumental in seeing that the learning about history, other cultures, and other countries--subjects fascinating to…

Research has been showing that the most important development in K-12 education over the past decade has been the emergence of a growing number of urban schools that have been convincingly shown to have dramatic positive effects on the achievement of disadvantaged students. Those with the strongest evidence of success are oversubscribed charter…

The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) is a network of charter schools designed to improve the educational opportunities available to low-income families. KIPP schools seek to boost their students' academic achievement and ultimately prepare them to enroll and succeed in college. To achieve these objectives, KIPP schools leverage strong…

Since their start in Houston in 1994, KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) charter schools have been the most celebrated of the No Excuses schools. Employing strict discipline, an extended school day and year, and carefully selected teachers, No Excuses schools move disadvantaged students who start behind their peers academically up to and above…

Named Charter Leader of the Year in 2010 by the California Charter Schools Association, Diane Tavenner, CEO of Summit Public Schools, is responsible for the generation of multiple transformative schools and a radically different teaching model for Summit. Summit's first charter high school, Summit Prep, launched in 2003, was featured in the film…

This article features Khan Academy which offers an online math program and short video lectures embedded in the "module", or math concept, that fit students' goals. By now, more than 1 million people have watched the online video in which Salman Khan--a charming MIT math whiz, Harvard Business School graduate, and former Boston hedge-fund…

Data-driven instruction began its spread across the country about a decade ago, in the footsteps of the No Child Left Behind requirement that schools administer yearly achievement tests. Those tests didn't help teachers spot and backfill learning gaps, though. Scores came back after everyone had moved on to the next grade, and anyway, the tests…

Democrats and Republicans in Washington, D.C., are more polarized today than they have been in nearly a century. Among the general public, party identification remains the single most powerful predictor of people's opinions about a wide range of policy issues. Given this environment, reaching consensus on almost any issue of consequence would…

In 1994, fresh from a two-year stint with Teach for America, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin inaugurated the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) in Houston with an enrollment of 49 5th graders. By this Fall, 75 KIPP schools will be up and running, setting children from poor and minority families on a path to college through a combination of hard work,…

KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) offers training for teachers designed to turn them into school principals with an entrepreneur's skill set. Teacher Jason Singer underwent KIPP training and now recruits 5th-grade students for the charter middle school he opened. KIPP, which was founded in 1994 by Teach For America alums Michael Feinberg and David…

Disgusted by what he and his staff considered to be poorly written, poorly stapled, and generally disorganized mandatory citywide exams sent to Fritsche Middle School by the Milwaukee Public Schools central office in the fall of 1999, Principal Bill Andrekopoulos committed an act of ownership theretofore unheard of in the 100,000-student school…