Detroit Children’s Fund
PSA evaluated the K-12 School and Talent Program Grants of the Detroit Children’s Fund (DCF), a set of initiatives designed to increase the number of quality seats in Detroit charter schools through efforts in principal leadership, instructional improvement, teacher leadership, and school governance. The evaluation team was responsible for design, data collection, analysis and ongoing reporting. The evaluation design included site visits for the collection of qualitative data through interviews, and analysis and reporting focused on the implementation and outcomes of new strategies and on factors that appear to facilitate or impede their success.
U.S. Department of Education
Charter School Profiles
PSA is partnering with SRI to develop profiles of innovative practices in the charter school sector. Each profile will integrate relevant findings from interviews, extant data, and documents collected in the field regarding innovative practices most relevant to educators in charter and traditional school communities, including community engagement, accountability for achievement for all students, accessible data, equitable resources, behavior management systems, access to advanced coursework, and recruitment and development of effective teachers. Key audiences will be practitioners and policymakers.
State Charter School Finance Systems' Study
The financial health of charter schools, assert some observers, is a critical indicator of whether these schools will survive as an alternative to traditional public schools. If they are right, then information about how policymakers' funding decisions affect the stability and quality of this increasingly popular form of public education becomes critical. PSA, along with Fox River Learning, was a subcontractor in an American Federation of Teachers study that investigated the equity and sufficiency of funding that charter schools receive under different approaches across states. The study was conducted in 23 states and 2 cities, with intensive case studies done in 18 schools in 6 states. It explored state laws, regulations, and practices; compared charter schools' resources and facilities with those of other public schools; and looked into the financial burden charter schools may inadvertently impose on school districts in which they are located.