June 2017 Newsletter

Resource Selection
27 Jun, 2017
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Case Study on Personalized Learning at Cornville Regional Charter School

The National Charter School Resource Center (NCSRC) recently visited a successful and expanding charter school in Cornville, Maine. Cornville Regional Charter School opened its learner-centered personalized learning campus in 2012, and serves 144 students ranging from grades K-8.

This case study consists of four videos highlighting various aspects of personalized learning for the school, the learner, and the family. Cornville Regional Charter School opened with the mission to serve families in rural areas of Central Maine. Cornville leaders and learning facilitators offer students a curriculum largely based on the core tenet of personalized learning: give students what they need, when they need it. The NCSRC video case studies let you see and hear directly from people pursuing this vision. 

Personalized learning is a philosophy that uses student-centered practices and technology to integrate student interests and self-pacing into their curriculum. This case study provides an overview of personalized learning broadly, and specifically at Cornville. It shows personalized learning in action, offers suggestions on how charter schools can implement personalized learning, and pinpoints the overall benefits of personalized learning.

To read more and view the videos, click here.

Webinar: Exploring the Role of States in District-Charter Collaboration

Charter schools have operated in conflict, or at odds, with local districts for as long as they have been around. For the past five years, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) has closely tracked the work in cities that have attempted cross-sector collaboration. CRPE has written extensively on what is working in district-charter cooperation, what gets in the way, and how local conditions matter when it comes to cross-sector collaboration.  

This webinar gave updates on the state of district-charter collaboration nationally and the preliminary findings from work CRPE conducted with state education agency leaders. Sarah Yatsko, Senior Research Analyst at CRPE, and Jordan Posamentier, Deputy Director of Policy at CRPE, presented on national trends in the pursuit of district-charter collaboration, discussed noteworthy efforts around the country to work across sector lines, and explored how some states have begun to exert influence on local collaboration efforts.

To view the full webinar, click here.

Recent NCSRC Resources

  • Toolkit: Intentionally Diverse Charter Schools: A Toolkit for Charter School Leaders: This toolkit is designed to help charter school leaders and their stakeholders design and implement intentionally diverse charter schools. Using this toolkit, leaders will learn more about how to measure student diversity, how to intentionally recruit and retain students, how to ensure that diversity is supported and experienced meaningfully at the individual, classroom, and school wide levels, and how to create and run schools that help all children thrive.
  • Webinar: Intentionally Diverse Charter Schools: The purpose of this webinar is to share effective, evidence-based practices and school-based examples of how to foster diversity within a charter school.
  • Toolkits: Fiscal Oversight Toolkits: These two toolkits foster proper fiscal oversight of charter schools. One toolkit is targeted to charter school governing boards, while the other is for charter school authorizers. Each toolkit compiles successful practices and recommendations on how to prevent, identify, and manage the common financial issues that charter schools face. The toolkits cover both financial insolvency and fraud with a set of checklists that boards and authorizers can use to ensure that charter school funds are used to best serve their students.
  • Webinar: Charter School Board’s Role in Oversight: Presented by the Colorado League of Charter Schools and Charter Board Partners, this webinar focuses on how boards have a responsibility to ensure their charter school is successful.
  • Report: English Learners: The compilation draws from key stakeholders and leaders in the sector, including federal, state, and local agencies, nonprofit organizations, and research agencies that have developed resources specifically to aid charter schools in the important efforts they take to serve EL students.
  • Webinar: Recruitment for Governing Boards: This webinar highlights how having the right skills, experiences, perspectives, and networks among board members is essential to help the charter school achieve its goals.
  • Webinar: Logic Models as Living Documents: Updating and Applying Tools: This webinar is the second of a two-part series on how to better streamline the logic model as a roadmap for Charter Schools Program grant activities and the application of these tools. 

Recent NCSRC Partner Resources

  • Measuring Up to the Model: A Ranking of State Charter Public School Laws: The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) developed a model state law to help states create laws that support the growth of high-quality charter public schools. Each year it ranks states based on how well their charter school laws align to this model. The 2017 rankings also reflect the continued steps many states took in 2016 to strengthen their laws and foster a landscape of high-quality charter schools that have a positive impact on students.
  • A Guide to Unifying Enrollment: The What, Why, and How for Those Considering It: This guide by CRPE helps city education leaders better understand the benefits and costs of a fully unified enrollment system. This guide was inspired by the questions commonly asked by cities considering changes to their enrollment systems and draws from CRPE research on several cities at different stages of implementation.
  • Inside Charter School Growth: A Look at Openings, Closings, and Why Authorizers Matter: Authorizers are essential to expanding the number of quality public schools across the country. Authorizers make decisions that shape the quantity and the quality of charter schools – a direct impact on three million children currently attending charter schools. In this report, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) explored key findings on charter schools’ openings, closings, and authorizers.
  • The “City of Firsts” Charts a New Path on Turnaround: This report is part of a CRPE series on turnaround efforts. In 2015, the Springfield Public School District in Massachusetts voluntarily ceded operational control of six middle schools to the Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership (SEZP). This case study profiles SEZP, comparing and contrasting it with conventional turnaround strategies such as district-led turnaround, reconstitution, chartering, and state-initiated turnaround.

Events