Dear Friends,
School may be out for the summer, but the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has been busier than ever. We just wrapped up our largest and most successful national conference to-date, released the results of a new survey estimating that public charter school waitlists across the nation approached one million names and continue to advocate in our nation’s Capitol for greater federal funding for high-quality charter schools. We were also pleased to see dramatically improved results for public charter schools in the recently released report by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University. CREDO found that nationally charter schools do a better job educating low-income and minority students than their district school counterparts. That’s something to be proud of! Thank you for all you do to make high-quality public charter schools a reality for millions of students across America. Best regards, Nina Rees President & CEO Conference Update Thank you to all of our friends and colleagues from around the country who joined us for the 2013 National Charter School Conference. It was our biggest conference yet, with more than 4,000 registrations; and certainly one of our most successful. International superstar Pitbull opened the conference with an inspirational speech about his work to open a public charter schoolin Little Havana in Miami, Florida. I encourage you to watch his remarks and share it with your network. We were also pleased to provide the Broad Foundation with a platform to announce the 2013 Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools. The Broad Foundation chose Uncommon Schools for the honor. Even though more than 78 percent of Uncommon’s nearly 8,000 students across Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York are low-income, these students are outperforming their peers statewide. Results like this are indeed uncommon! Congratulations to the Uncommon Schools team, as well as the two runner-ups for the Prize, Achievement First and KIPP, for showing us what’s possible when great schools have the opportunity to flourish. We also inducted three outstanding public charter school advocates to the Charter Schools Hall of Fame. None of these names will be a surprise to you, as they have been critical to the success of the charter sector across the country. Congratulations toLisa Graham Keegan, Linda Moore and the Walton Family Foundation. The charter movement wouldn’t be where it is today without them. All of the speeches and panels from the conference will be posted on the National Alliance’s YouTube page in the coming days. We’d also love to have your feedback. If you have thoughts you’d like to share, please send them to Angela Christophe, our Director of Programs. We look forward to seeing you in Las Vegas for next year’s conference! One Million Names We recently updated our public charter school waitlist survey and found almost one million names on charter school waitlistsacross the country. The survey also found that more than two-thirds of public charter schools—67 percent—across the nation reported having children on their waitlist. It’s heartbreaking that so many families want to send their child to a high-quality public charter school, and are not able to. Especially when this is a problem we can fix! If policymakers lifted artificial caps on charter school growth, ensured equitable funding between charter and district schools and allowed charters to have access to school facilities or facility funding, the sector can rise to meet the demand. A child’s fate should not rest in a lottery ball—policymakers at the federal and state level can and should do better for our children. ESEA Reauthorization This week the U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to take up the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). We are working to ensure that, under ESEA, public charter schools will be able to meet the growing demand from parents nationwide, including: increasing the funding for charter school start up and replication to $500 million by 2018, offering more flexibility in how some grants may be used, expanding the types of organizations eligible for grants, and eliminating some of the red tape that has recently been required of charter schools. For a deeper look into these recommendations and others, see our report Free to Succeed: Public Charter Schools and the Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. School Visit with U.S. House Republican Leadership This week House Republican leaders will join the National Alliance at the Two Rivers Public Charter School in Washington, D.C. for a tour and roundtable discussion with school leaders and parents. Increasing support for charters is a key objective of the National Alliance’s strategy, and we’re pleased to host lawmakers from across the political spectrum who want to learn more about the great schools in our sector. CREDO Study Making Waves Last month’s release of the CREDO study has gotten a tremendous amount of media coverage. The report showed that nationally low-income and minority students in public charter schools outperform their peers in traditional public schools (see our analysis here and here). From the New York Times to the Chicago Tribune, reporters and editorial boards are taking notice. There’s a lot for charter school advocates to be proud of in this report, not the least of which is that charter school students are outperforming their traditional public school peers in reading while making significant gains in math. Another key take away from the report is the need to focus on replicating high-quality school models and closing the poorest performing schools as rapidly as possible. Do You “Like” Us? If you’d like to be kept informed more regularly about what we’re working on, please “like” the National Alliance on Facebook. We post key news stories, video highlights from our conference, and other news you can use daily. If Twitter is more your speed, you can follow me @ninacharters. Finally, we hope you’ll take a minute to watch our new video about the National Alliance’s work supporting high-quality public charter schools across the country.
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