NACSA | Publications & Resources

Other NACSA Publications

NACSA makes a number of charter school related research and other publications available free to members and associate members. We make all publications available to non-members for a shipping & handling fee. Contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to order hard copies.

 Accountability in Action: A Comprehensive Guide to Charter School Closure

NACSA’s Comprehensive Guide to Charter School Closure is designed to assist the staff and board members of authorizing agencies as they address the wide array of challenges involved in any closure decision.  It draws directly upon the successful experiences of other authorizers across the country.  Authorizers are entrusted by the public with unique and extraordinary powers to approve new good charter schools and to close those that fail.  This guide provides the information and tools to help authorizers fulfill those responsibilities so that more children attend only high-quality schools that successfully prepare them for their futures.

NACSA has now made using its Accountablity in Action: A Comprehensive Guide to Charter School Closure even easier to use. By converting the publication's Action Plan for Closure into an Excel workbook, authorizers can customize their own plan, track their status, and make notes to help guide their closure process. Download Workbook

 

New Demands Shape a Field in Transition

This report is a part of NACSA’s Performance Management, Replication, and Closure (PMRC) project. PMRC is a U.S. Department of Education-funded initiative focused on developing, piloting, and disseminating integrated, research-based performance management, replication, and closure practices that help authorizers strategically close low-performing schools and replace them with high-performing alternatives.

 

 

 

Quality Authorizing for Online and Blended-Learning Charter Schools

Authored by the Evergreen Education Group, "Quality Authorizing for Online and Blended-Learning Charter Schools" identifies key issues faced by authorizers of these types of schools.  This Monograph provides a preliminary scan of current authorizer practices related to online and blended learning.  The findings of this paper are based on in-depth interviews with seven authorizers with online and blended-learning charters in their portfolios.

 

 

About NACSA

Authorizers maintain quality within the charter school sector. This publication gives a brief overview of how NACSA and its members are leading the way toward an even more professional, creative, and effective charter school authorizing sector.

 

 

 

Locating Quality and Access: The Keys to Denver's Plan for Educational Excellence

Locating Quality and Access: The Keys to Denver's Plan for Educational Excellence provides essential new information on the relationship between the location of and enrollment in Denver public schools that meet the 2009 School Performance Framework (SPF) standards. Funded by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), this research is designed primarily to identify and highlight those areas with the largest numbers of school-age children and the fewest seats in schools that meet SPF standards. The research for Locating Quality and Access was conducted by IFF, a nonprofit and community development financial institution that engages in independent external research, finance, and real estate consulting.

The study has found that more than half of Denver's children today cannot access a performing school in the Denver public school system. The report also found that these children without access to a high-quality education are concentrated in several largely Hispanic communities within the city.

 

New Study Sets Priority Areas and Recommends Strong Standards So All St. Louis Students Have Access to a Quality Education

The National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) and IFF, in conjunction with the St. Louis Mayor's Office, released a new study analyzing the performance, location, and enrollment of both St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) and charter schools in 2007-08. The study - Place, Performance, and Promise – determined that St. Louis students have limited access to a quality school in their neighborhood. In fact, in 2008 only one St. Louis Public School neighborhood school and three magnet schools met Missouri State Standards for academic performance. None of the fourteen charter schools in the City met the Missouri State Standard. This leaves some 52,000 school age children without access to a quality public education in the City of St. Louis.

 

Starting Fresh in Low-Performing Schools Series

NACSA has produced a series of five manuals, the Starting Fresh in Low-Performing Schools series, that guide district leaders through key considerations and steps in designing and implementing a successful start-fresh strategy. The series provides district leaders with a blueprint for making deep and lasting change – the kind that is likely to lead to improvements in our most struggling schools. The Starting Fresh series honestly addresses the challenges of restructuring low-performing schools. Through these books, districts learn both why and how to use the Start Fresh strategy successfully.

 

Learning to Succeed at Scale

This monograph, funded by NACSA and authored by Fredrick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and Monica Higgins of Harvard's Graduate School of Education, explores ways the charter school sector can invest in and develop high quality schools and replicate high quality authorizing practices.

In this monograph, Higgins and Hess suggest strategies that nontraditional educational organizations can use to help themselves "grow smart," especially when it comes to talent management.

 

Resource Toolkit for Working with Education Service Providers

A compilation of materials developed and used by charter authorizers and charter school governing boards to help charter schools work successfully with education service providers, comprehensive school management organizations, and comprehensive educational designs. Includes contract review checklists, service contracting policies, performance evaluation protocols, and more.

 

 

Ohio Policy Recommendations

Turning the Corner to Quality: Policy Guidelines for Strengthening Ohio's Charter Schools

At the request of Ohio's top government and education leaders, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, National Association of Charter School Authorizers, and National Alliance for Public Charter Schools have issued a report seeking to strengthen the state's charter school program. Among its 17 recommendations are calls for closing low-performing charter schools and holding sponsors more accountable for oversight of the growing charter movement while also helping more high-performance schools to open and succeed in Ohio. In return for sharply stepped-up accountability, restrictions on the formation of high-quality charters should be removed, and charter schools should receive more equitable funding.

Turning the Corner to Quality bases its findings on research and analysis of Ohio school performance data; a review of best practices in other states; input from experts in charter school finance, sponsorship, accountability and policy; and evaluation of dozens of policy options.

NACSA's publications are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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