USC Study: What Charter Schools Are Doing Right
Newswire Services
September 27, 2006
A USC Rossier School of Education professor has identified 20 innovative programs in California charter schools and created a database to share their successes with other schools.
A groundbreaking student discipline program in the Bay Area where students earn "paychecks" for positive behavior; a Los Angeles K-8 school which simultaneously teaches English and Spanish; a fiber-arts program in Santa Barbara in which students learn every subject through such crafts as knitting are among the 20 programs that have been proven to work at their home schools, but until now, the schools haven't had the means to share their practices.
"Charter schools were originally started to be laboratories for experimentation," said Priscilla Wohlstetter, director of the Center on Educational Governance at the USC Rossier School.
"There's a fair amount of experimentation going on in charter schools, but no one has the time to search out the best experiments and to spread them to all kinds of public schools," Wohlstetter said. "Our compendium will help spread the promising practices beyond the schools that invented them."
Lauded programs fall into the categories of arts-themed education, integration of technology into math and science, high school reform, literacy for English-language learners, parent involvement, project-based learning, school leadership, school-university partnerships, special education and student discipline.
The Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco/Oakland metro areas are well represented in the compendium. Santa Barbara, Orange County, Fresno, Stockton, Ventura and Redding-area schools are honored as well.
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools praises USC's database, the first interactive Web site dedicated to reporting innovations in charter schools.
"It's a singularly useful compendium of charter school innovations and a terrific, quick reference for anyone looking for leading-edge practices," said NAPCS president Nelson Smith.
"If anyone doubts that charter schools are creating innovative new paths to performance, USC's research provides strong evidence," Smith said.
One in 20 schools in California is a charter school, according to the California Charter Schools Association; one in 35 public school students in grades K-12 attends a charter school in the state.
For more information, visit www.usc.edu/dept/education/cegov. The compendium's executive summary can be viewed at
http://www.usc.edu/dept/education/cegov/exec_summary.pdf.
A groundbreaking student discipline program in the Bay Area where students earn "paychecks" for positive behavior; a Los Angeles K-8 school which simultaneously teaches English and Spanish; a fiber-arts program in Santa Barbara in which students learn every subject through such crafts as knitting are among the 20 programs that have been proven to work at their home schools, but until now, the schools haven't had the means to share their practices.
"Charter schools were originally started to be laboratories for experimentation," said Priscilla Wohlstetter, director of the Center on Educational Governance at the USC Rossier School.
"There's a fair amount of experimentation going on in charter schools, but no one has the time to search out the best experiments and to spread them to all kinds of public schools," Wohlstetter said. "Our compendium will help spread the promising practices beyond the schools that invented them."
Lauded programs fall into the categories of arts-themed education, integration of technology into math and science, high school reform, literacy for English-language learners, parent involvement, project-based learning, school leadership, school-university partnerships, special education and student discipline.
The Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco/Oakland metro areas are well represented in the compendium. Santa Barbara, Orange County, Fresno, Stockton, Ventura and Redding-area schools are honored as well.
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools praises USC's database, the first interactive Web site dedicated to reporting innovations in charter schools.
"It's a singularly useful compendium of charter school innovations and a terrific, quick reference for anyone looking for leading-edge practices," said NAPCS president Nelson Smith.
"If anyone doubts that charter schools are creating innovative new paths to performance, USC's research provides strong evidence," Smith said.
One in 20 schools in California is a charter school, according to the California Charter Schools Association; one in 35 public school students in grades K-12 attends a charter school in the state.
For more information, visit www.usc.edu/dept/education/cegov. The compendium's executive summary can be viewed at
http://www.usc.edu/dept/education/cegov/exec_summary.pdf.
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