When charter school leaders, governing boards, and authorizers recognize the early signs of school distress, they can intervene before the issues become too deep, systemic, or extensive for schools to recover. Identifying Indicators of Distress in Charter Schools, an ongoing research series from the National Charter School Resource Center, offers the charter sector tools to detect and address the signs of school distress while improvement is still possible.
On this page you will find all the materials in the series, including reports, toolkits, and self-guided learning modules, and webinars.
Learning Modules
Publications
- Identifying Indicators of Distress in Charter Schools, Part 1: The Role and Perspective of Charter School Authorizers, an introduction to the indicators and the ways that authorizers can help notice and reverse the signs of school struggle.
- Identifying Indicators of Distress in Charter Schools, Part 2: The Roles and Perspectives of Charter School Leaders and Board Members, which follows Part 1 and provides guidance and lessons from school leaders and board members regarding the indicators of distress.
- Identifying Indicators of Distress in Charter Schools: Tools to Support Authorizer Data Collection, a toolkit to help authorizers identify indicators of distress, audit their current data collection methods for evaluating indicators of distress, and assess whether and to what extent the schools in their portfolio exhibit the indicators.
- Indicators of Distress Reflection Tool, which can help authorizers assess if a school is in distress by leveraging the early indicators described in the report.
Webinars
These NCSRC webinar recordings feature the reports' authors and guest panelists discussing implications and use of the Indicators of Distress research:
- For Charter Sector Stakeholders: Indicators of Distress and What They Mean in the Charter Sector: A Webinar for Charter Sector Stakeholders Introducing New Research Related to the Early Indicators of Distress
- For Authorizers: The Death Spiral: Identifying Early Indicators of Distress in Charter Schools (A Conversation with Authorizers)
- For Credit Enhancement Organizations: Risk in Charter School Lending: Indicators of Distress and the Charter School Growth Fund’s Approach to Risk Management
- For School Leaders and Board Members: Indicators of Distress and What They Mean in the Charter Sector: A Workshop on Using the Early Indicators of Distress
- For Authorizers and State Departments of Education: Identifying Distress in Charter Schools: A Workshop for Authorizers and State Departments of Education