During the spring of 2012, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) conducted its first national public charter school survey. The survey asked public charter school leaders to respond to questions on school waitlists, curriculum, facilities and a variety of other operational elements. A primary goal of the survey was to collect information that would help to better understand the wide range of instructional strategies public charter schools use.
With 6,000 autonomous charter schools operating nationwide, the responses to our first national survey demonstrate that public charter schools are a varied bunch. Our new report analyzes the survey responses to provide new details about emerging trends and differences in the instructional delivery strategies and focus of public charter schools. Top trends identified by the survey include:
Almost three-quarters (71.8 percent) of the respondents use a combination of off-the-shelf and customized curriculum;
Over half (57.7 percent) of respondents from charter schools that enroll students in grades 9 through 12 described their schools as having a “college-prep” instructional focus;
Half (49.3 percent) of the respondents indicated an extended school day to increase instructional learning time; and
Nearly half (48.8 percent) of the respondents from charter schools that enroll students in grades 9 through 12 said their students take classes at local universities or colleges.
The survey asked public charter schools to select their instructional focus from a list of 44 options, including a write-in option, and two out of five public charter schools (40.5 percent) respondents indicated a college-prep instructional focus. Based on the many approaches that schools use to implement a “college-prep” instructional focus, we asked charter school leaders tell us in their own words how they use different instructional methods to achieve their school’s mission. For example, The Intergenerational School in Cleveland, Ohio, pairs students with adult and senior citizen mentors to let the generations learn from each other, while the Paulo Freire Freedom School, a charter middle school in Tucson, Arizona, adopted project-based learning to impart knowledge through experiences that are authentic and engaging. These are just two of the many innovative approaches that public charter schools use to make a difference in the lives of children. You can also check out blogs from a virtual school in Hawaii, a Japanese immersion charter in Oregon, a wellness-focused charter in New York, and a service-learning school in Pennsylvania. Whether through a customized curriculum or extended learning time, public charter schools are innovating to meet their students’ needs. Charter schools use their autonomy to select instructional focuses that run the gamut: from career-based to vocational and from traditional to project-based learning.
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