WASHINGTON, D.C.- Today the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools released a new report with recommendations to help students more quickly access high-quality public schools. The policy paper outlines a set of proposals that would allow states to use School Improvement Grant (SIG) funds to open new and expand existing high-quality public charter schools.
In January 2014, Congress took action to broaden states uses of SIG funds. As the Department of Education considers how to best implement this more flexible authority, public charter schools are well suited to help states and districts provide more high-quality seats to the students they serve.
Far too many students are trapped in low-achieving schools, said National Alliance President and CEO Nina Rees. This new freedom provided by Congress gives us an opportunity to rethink how we can improve our public schools and we encourage policymakers to consider our proposal. Charter schools with a proven track record of success are in a unique position to help ensure more students get the opportunity to attend a high-quality public school.
Under current regulations, states can only use their SIG funds to make awards to Local Education Agencies to implement one of four SIG models. Regulations do not permit states to award funds directly to high-performing public charter schools to open new schools, and provide little flexibility to leverage turnaround funds to attract high-quality school leaders and develop district or citywide improvement strategies.
Each year that a child spends in our nations lowest-performing schools is one year too many, continued Rees. We hope policymakers will take a serious and careful look at the ways we can improve the School Improvement Grant program so that more students are able to attend a high-quality public school.
Click here to read Using School Improvement Grant Funds to Increase Access to High-Quality Public Schools.
About Public Charter Schools
Public charter schools are independent, public, and tuition-free schools that are given the freedom to be more innovative while being held accountable for advancing student achievement. Since 2010, all but one independent research study has found that students in charter schools do better in school than their traditional school peers. For example, one study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University found that charter schools do a better job teaching low income students, minority students, and students who are still learning English than traditional schools. Separate studies by the Center on Reinventing Public Education and Mathematica Policy Research have found that charter school students are more likely to graduate from high school, go on to college, stay in college and have higher earnings in early adulthood.
About the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools is the leading national nonprofit organization committed to advancing the public charter school movement. Our mission is to lead public education to unprecedented levels of academic achievement by fostering a strong charter sector. For more information, please visit our website atwww.publiccharters.org.
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