Finding Best Practices Among Charter Schools Serving Native Students

Results from the Nation’s Report card (NAEP) indicate that there is a widening achievement gap between Native American students and their non-Native American peers. Specifically, the report finds that American Indian and Alaska Native students, regardless of whether they attend traditional public schools or those under the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education, are lagging behind in reading and math.

In states where demographic enrollment data are available, there were 48 public charter schools in 12 states in the 2011-2012 academic year enrolling a majority of Native American and Alaska Native students. While the numbers are not large (less than one percent of all charter schools), these charter schools present alternative educational opportunities for students.

The National Indian Education Association (NIEA) released a new report conducted on its behalf by Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education on the work of public charter schools serving Native communities. The goal of the report was to find the qualities and practices of charter schools that have a demonstrated track record of successfully educating Native students. Research has shown that cultural programming can help Native students improve their achievement. However, little is known about what charters serving Native students are doing in terms of developing best practices in teaching Native students.

The authors choose three charter schools specifically geared toward serving American Indian and Alaska Native students for further site visits and interviews. The schools—Klamath River Early College of the Redwoods in Klamath, Calif.; Pemayetv Emahakv in Okeechobee, Fla.; and Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Immersion School in Hayward, Wisc.—were selected based on their successes in improving student achievement on standardized tests, providing culturally-based education to their students, and creating  school climates that are respectful and reinforce Native traditions as well as instill self-pride. Among these schools, the authors found common traits including: extremely small, custom learning communities; strong, visionary leaders; political access and leverage in charter context; stability of tribal government; and alliances and relationships with the community.

One of the biggest challenges to replication the success of these schools, perhaps not surprisingly, is the human capital pipeline. While all charter schools struggle to find outstanding school leaders and teachers, schools that focus on Native culture face the additional hurdles of finding and developing teacher fluency in culture and language and tribe-specific context. Overcoming this challenge will impact the sustainability and success of charter schools serving majority Native American students.

The report concludes by recommending schools develop instructional delivery for Native students by:

• Creating a forum for schools to share ideas and collaborate
• Providing accessible research and information
• Conducting more research into effective practices
• Advocating for tribal control over charter law

For more resources on Native education, check out the National Charter School Resource Center eNewsletter. We encourage more studies like the NIEA report to shed more light on this critically understudied topic in the public charter school sector. 

Charter Schools: Do Right by Your Irreplaceable Teachers

Charter school leaders: what would you do if you had a teacher who consistently produced student learning gains of a half a school year more than other teachers in the building? You would do everything in your capacity to keep that teacher, right? Would you also make use of the teacher as a mentor for struggling or new teachers, encourage teachers to visit his/her classroom to observe, try to find a way to compensate the teacher for outstanding performance? Perhaps you would provide career opportunities such as becoming a lead teacher, coach, or part of the leadership team at the school? Fortunately for public charter schools, each of these strategies is doable right now because charters have the autonomy and flexibility to identify, reward, and retain good teachers.

A new report by The New Teacher Project (TNTP) suggests that many traditional school districts are unable and/or unwilling to identify and do what it takes to hold on to teachers they call “Irreplaceable.” Irreplaceable teachers are defined as those who “help students learn two to three additional months worth of math and reading compared with the average teacher, and five to six months more compared to low-performing teachers” (p. 2). Irreplaceable teachers generate bigger student learning gains and provide a more engaging learning experience for students, yet the report estimates that nearly 10,000 Irreplaceable teachers will leave the largest school districts each school year. Nearly half of the Irreplaceable teachers surveyed said that their schools made no effort to retain them.

The report calls out the usual culprits that help to explain why traditional districts and schools neglect their Irreplaceable teachers and have such a hard time getting rid of low-performing teachers: policy barriers (e.g., tenure, meaningless evaluation systems, lock-step compensation, the dance of the lemons), school culture and working conditions (e.g., low morale and teachers aren’t treated as professionals), and the lack of training among traditional school principals to retain the best teachers.

Charter schools are free from many of these barriers. So here is the big question for charter school leaders: are you taking advantage of your ability to identify and retain high quality teachers?

Here are a few resources to make sure you’re finding and retaining the best possible teachers:
• NAPCS Issue Brief on recruiting and selecting teachers
• The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Project
• Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE): Managing Human Capital Project
• New Leaders for New Schools
• TNTP Teacher Talent Toolbox


Graphic via Google Images

Public Charter School Enrollment Matches Catholic School Enrollment in 2011-2012

The decline in Catholic school enrollment has been a steady trend since the 1960s. The National Catholic Educational Association reports that enrollment dropped from roughly 2.3 million in 2006-2007 to a little over 2 million in 2011-2012, a drop of 12 percent. Over that same period of time, charter school enrollment grew from roughly 1.2 million in 2006-2007 to over 2 million in 2011-2012, an increase of 76 percent. The numbers indicate that for the first time, charter schools enrolled more students than Catholic schools during the 2011-2012 school year.

In some cities, charter schools enroll students who previously attended or would have attended Catholic schools had there not been the option to attend a public charter school (see here and here for examples). While some charter schools may have learned lessons on how to develop effective schools from the research on Catholic schools, Catholic schools are now scrambling to adopt best practices from charter schools to keep schools afloat.

Over the last several years, charter schools have been growing by adding close to 200,000 seats per year. The growth of charter schools is unlikely to decline much—if anything, the growth of charter schools is likely to increase. It will be interesting to see whether Catholic schools can slow the loss of students.


Photo Credit: Archdiocese of Boston Catholic Schools Office