Phoenix Charter Academy's Alternative School Model Meets Student Needs and Fosters Academic Success

Welcome to National Charter Schools Week 2013!

On behalf of the public charter schools movement, welcome to National Charter Schools Week 2013!

National Charter Schools Week – May 5-11, 2013 – celebrates the great work accomplished by public charter schools, which now serve more than 2.3 million students and provide parents with high-quality public education options. This week gives us, as a community, the opportunity to highlight and share in our successes, lessons learned and achievements, and raise awareness of what public charter schools can offer.

This week the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools will join together with representatives from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Washington, D.C., Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas in our nation’s Capitol. We will be walking the halls of Congress to advocate on behalf of public charter schools everywhere, while meeting with many of our elected leaders and supporters.  

We are also excited to announce the 2013 Charter Champions on Tuesday, May 7. Given annually during National Charter Schools Week, this year’s Charter Champion awards recognize five public officials for their outstanding service to the students, parents and families of the public charter school movement. Stay tuned to @Ninacharters on Twitter as we reveal this year’s champions.

How can you support National Charter Schools Week?

Check out our toolkit for ways you can participate, take part in one of the many events planned across the country or contact your state charter school association to see what events and activities are planned in your area. You could also write your local newspaper editor to help raise awareness that research shows public charter schools are improving student outcomes, or call your local elected officials and ask them to support more favorable policies and equitable funding for charter schools.

Most importantly, remember that this is a week to celebrate the fantastic accomplishments we have achieved during the last year. With more than 6,000 schools serving over 2.3 million students, there is a lot to be excited about this year!

Two BASIS Schools Top U.S. News Best High School Rankings

Countdown to National Charter Schools Week (11 days to go)

We've designed a toolkit meant to be used as a simple resource for events and activities in states, and provide some examples and templates for promoting NCSW. The toolkit offers suggestions to promote efforts around:

• Public Awareness. Spread the word about NCSW by reaching out to the media, elected officials, and others about the successes of public charter schools in your state and community.
• State and Local Events. Invite your elected officials to these events to show them first-hand the great things public charter schools bring to their state and communities.
• Advocacy. Speak out about public charter school achievements and the benefits they offer to families across the country by writing letters to the editors of your local and statewide newspapers, contacting your elected officials about why they should support public charter schools, and sharing your public charter school’s achievements via social media.

Click here to access the NCSW toolkit.

U.S. ED Awards Green Ribbon Schools on Earth Day

•  Journey School (Aliso Viejo, CA) offers a comprehensive eco-education program; has a partnership with Tanaka Farms, which delivers baskets of fresh organic produce weekly for faculty, students, and parents; and the school has established five gardens in its community.
• Redding School of the Arts II (Redding, CA) was the first school campus worldwide to be certified LEED Platinum in 2009 and is a national model of sustainability. In addition to being a visual and performing arts school, RSA has a Mandarin language immersion program that includes outdoor learning, and maintains a relationship with a sister school in China. 
• Common Ground High School (New Haven, CT) was the nation’s first environment-themed charter school; composts 100 percent of its organic waste onsite; and its campus is a 20-acre demonstration farm at the base of a state park.
• Mundo Verde Bilingual Public Charter School (Washington, D.C.) was the first public charter school in D.C. explicitly dedicated to being a green school. All of the school’s furniture is always certified as 100 percent recycled, sustainably made, and non-toxic, and students enjoy activity through yoga, physical education classes, and enjoy an hour of outdoor time each day.
• Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School (Washington, D.C.) has a new permanent campus on three wooded acres of land, a unique and treasured setting for an urban school. The school lunch vendor, Revolution Foods, is committed to providing clients with healthy, unprocessed food, and adheres to the school’s “no junk food” policy.
• Ivy Academy (Soddy-Daisy, TN) takes advantage of its location near state-protected land, and its students spend 30-50 percent of the school day outside—including academic classes commonly held outside. Students are also required to participate in at least one year of service learning courses which focus partly on environmental projects. 
• Jefferson Elementary-Fox River Academy (Appleton, WI) has integrated sustainability topics to the academic curriculum, and uses a Positive Behavior Intervention System (PBIS) with rewards such as basketball, dance, and open gym. 

Congratulations to all the GRS winners recognized for their exemplary efforts to make their schools healthier, safer, more cost efficient, and sustainable.

Public Charter School Performance Tops New Study on Global Competitiveness

National School Choice Week: A Governing Board Member Perspective

This week is National School Choice Week (NSCW), which you can follow on Twitter with #SCW. All of the activities and events around NSCW prompted me to write again about my board experience at Pioneer Charter School in Denver. There have been some big updates since I last wrote about Pioneer.

The last time I wrote about Pioneer, we were in the process of recruiting new board members. I am happy to report that we have three fantastic new board members who bring expertise and years of experience in school leadership, teacher preparation, and education research. Another update since the spring is that our students made some good academic improvements. On the Denver Public Schools’ School Performance Framework, Pioneer moved from Accredited on Watch to Meets Expectations. On the Colorado Growth Model, Pioneer experienced decent growth in math and reading, but our overall proficiency is still lower than where we would like it to be (check out the data here, I’ve highlighted schools in the same neighborhood as Pioneer).

We also organized some great out of state field trips for our middle school students. Check out these photos from D.C., Chicago, and Utah.

Last week Education Week ran a great story exploring the different ways that public charter schools are responding to Common Core State Standards. I read the article with interest because Pioneer spent the past year aligning curriculum, instruction, and formative assessment to the Common Core—and it appears that we are not alone. I would agree with the overall take away from the article that public charter schools may have more flexibility than traditional public schools to transition to the Common Core, but there are still significant barriers to implementation given resources, time, and capacity.

The board, school leadership, and teachers at Pioneer believe that aligning curriculum, instruction, and assessment to the Common Core is critical to improving students’ overall performance, especially our students at Pioneer who are primarily English Language Learners. We also recognized that alignment wouldn’t just happen by relying on teachers and leadership to volunteer their free time. As a result, the board approved funds to pay for faculty and staff to use time during their summer break to work in grade level and subject area teams to map out the standards. The teams organized the standards by six, six week blocks, which we call Assessment Periods. And faculty developed interim formative and summative assessments aligned to each Assessment Period to provide information about mastery of the standards and point to areas that need to be retaught. There is evidence from other charter schools that have developed their own formative and summative assessments, that they can be good indicators of how students will perform on annual assessments.

I imagine that every time I write about Pioneer, I will add the caveat that it is a work in progress. (The next big project on our board agenda is making sure that our facility meets the instructional needs of our students!) We have high expectations for what our students can do, but there is a lot of work to be done to create a learning environment that makes it possible. Fortunately, we have strong leadership and dedicated faculty and staff who are committed to the students of Pioneer.


Image: Students from Pioneer Charter School on a field trip to Washington, D.C.