Charter Schools in Eight States: Effects on Achievement, Attainment, Integration, and Competition

Education and Literacy;Government Reform

Charter Schools in Eight States: Effects on Achievement, Attainment, Integration, and Competition

Examines the student characteristics and effects of charter schools on students' test-score gains, high school graduation and college attainment rates, and test scores in nearby traditional public schools. Includes policy and research recommendations.

August 1970

Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Midwestern) / Illinois / Cook County / Chicago;North America / United States (Midwestern) / Wisconsin / Milwaukee County / Milwaukee;North America / United States (Southern) / Florida;North America / United States (Southwestern) / Texas;North America / United States (Western) / California / San Diego County / San Diego;North America / United States (Midwestern) / Ohio;North America / United States (Western) / Colorado / Denver County / Denver;North America / United States (Northeastern) / Pennsylvania / Philadelphia County / Philadelphia

Drivers of Choice: Parents, Transportation, and School Choice

Education and Literacy, Government Reform

Drivers of Choice: Parents, Transportation, and School Choice

Based on surveys of two districts, explores the extent to which distance, transportation time, and mode prevent low- and moderate-income families from choosing private, charter, or non-neighborhood schools. Calls for decentralized transportation policies.

August 1970

Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Western)-Colorado, North America-United States (Western)-Colorado-Denver County-Denver, North America-United States (Southern)-District of Columbia-Washington

Early Exit: Understanding Adult Attrition in Accelerated and Traditional Postsecondary Programs

Education and Literacy

Early Exit: Understanding Adult Attrition in Accelerated and Traditional Postsecondary Programs

As a follow-up study to Lumina's "Learning in the Fast Lane: Adult Learners' Persistence and Success in Accelerated College Programs," focuses on why students leave college -- both student and institutional factors -- and what colleges can do.

August 1970

Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Midwestern) / Missouri;North America / United States (Western) / Colorado

Connecting Child Health and School Readiness

Children and Youth, Education and Literacy, Health

Connecting Child Health and School Readiness

Describes research, practices, and policy options for integrating efforts to enhance child health and school readiness by ensuring child health care; linking child health, early learning, early intervention and family support; and improving environments.

August 1970

Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Western)-Colorado, North America-United States

Learning in the Fast Lane: Adult Learners' Persistence and Success in Accelerated College Programs

Education and Literacy

Learning in the Fast Lane: Adult Learners' Persistence and Success in Accelerated College Programs

Compares adult students' demographics, transfer credits, responsibilities, financial aid, and other characteristics at two colleges, and explores how they affect retention, degree completion, and academic success in accelerated and traditional programs.

August 1970

Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Midwestern) / Missouri;North America / United States (Western) / Colorado

Learning in the Fast Lane: Adult Learners' Persistence and Success in Accelerated College Programs

Education and Literacy

Learning in the Fast Lane: Adult Learners' Persistence and Success in Accelerated College Programs

Compares adult students' demographics, transfer credits, responsibilities, financial aid, and other characteristics at two colleges, and explores how they affect retention, degree completion, and academic success in accelerated and traditional programs.

August 1970

Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Midwestern) / Missouri;North America / United States (Western) / Colorado

Working Together to Manage Enrollment: Key Governance and Operations Decisions

Education and Literacy

Working Together to Manage Enrollment: Key Governance and Operations Decisions

Common enrollment systems designed to manage student enrollment across district and charter sectors introduce a host of governance challenges. City charter and district leaders realize the importance of cross-sector representation when deciding policies related to enrollment, such as the number of choices families should list or whether some students will have enrollment priority over others. The question of who will administer the enrollment process once these policy decisions are made can be highly controversial. Cities that don't attend to these management questions early on risk major political fights that can stall or derail progress on the effort.

There is little precedence, nor is there a ready-made legal framework, for coordinating enrollment across sectors; how these systems will be governed and operated must instead be resolved through the collaboration of agencies, many of which have histories of competition, mistrust, and hostility. In this issue brief, we draw from a series of interviews with local education leaders in Denver, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C., focusing on the governance issues that emerged as these three jurisdictions sought a cross-sector common enrollment system.

While some urban school systems have long had enrollment processes to manage choice for schools under their control, the expansion of charter schools presents a different and more complicated challenge for both parents and administrators. In many places, students no longer have a single "home district" in the traditional sense. Instead, they can now choose to enroll in the local school district or one of the city's charter schools. State charter laws give charter schools -- whether they are an independent local education agency or not -- authority over their enrollment processes; a charter school must conduct its process in a manner consistent with the law, typically a random lottery.

As charter schools grow in number, so does the number of separate enrollment systems operating across individual cities. In Denver, for example, a 2010 report showed that 60 separate enrollment systems operated in the city at the same time. Similar situations occurred in New Orleans and D.C. As individual selection processes grew to unmanageable levels in these cities, education and community leaders sought ways to rationalize and centralize student placement across an increasing number of school choices

December 1969

Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Western)-Colorado-Denver County-Denver;North America-United States (Southern)-Louisiana-Orleans Parish-New Orleans;North America-United States (Southern)-District of Columbia-Washington

Cultivating Talent through a Principal Pipeline

Education and Literacy;Employment and Labor

Cultivating Talent through a Principal Pipeline

This report, the second in a series, describes early results of Wallace's Principal Pipeline Initiative, a multi-year effort to improve school leadership in six urban school districts. The report describes changes in the six districts' practices to recruit, train and support new principals. It also offers early lessons for other districts considering changes to their own principal pipelines.

December 1969

Geographic Focus: North America-United States (Western)-Colorado-Denver County-Denver;North America-United States (Southern)-North Carolina-Mecklenburg County-Charlotte;North America-United States (Southern)-Maryland-Prince George;North America-United States (Southern)-Georgia-Gwinnett County;North America-United States (Southern)-Florida-Hillsborough County;North America-United States (Northeastern)-New York-New York County-New York City

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