CHARTER SCHOOLS

The Impact of Charter Schools on Public and Private School Enrollments 

 The Charter School Paradox

 Can Charter Schools be Catholic? The Answer is No - From Karen Ristau's Article in Notes

 Building 21st Century Catholic Learning Communities

 "Catholic Schools Should Adopt Charter Best Practices to Survive" BEWARE - From September CACE Newsletter

SCHOOL VOUCHERS

 The Effects of School Vouchers on College Enrollment

     http://ncea.org/public/SchoolChoiceInitiatives.asp#Voucher4

 http://ncea.org/public/SchoolChoiceInitiatives.asp#TCREDIT

PARENTAL CHOICE

 http://ncea.org/public/SchoolChoiceInitiatives.asp

 Parental Choice a Prominent Feature at Reform Summit Report

 PENNSYLVANIA'S OPPORTUNITY SCHOLARSHIP TAX CREDIT

  Various Links to information about the Tax Credit Program

LEADERSHIP

 Leadership Principles from Connected Principals

The First Job of a Leader Is to Face Reality 

 ENROLLMENT

With Catholic Enrollment Down, Archdiocese Launches Study

OTHER 

School Lock-down Best Practices Offered by SchoolReach

 Big Education Ideas in 2013

Daily and Life Lessons: The Benefits of a Catholic Education

21 Reasons to Use Tablets in the 21st Century Classroom

Innovative Program Helps Retain Catholic Teachers

Catholic Education, in Need of Salvation

Momentum Magazine: Satellite School Sites

Newton Tragedy Raises Questions Over Local School Security Procedures

READINGS

The Impact of Charter Schools on Public and Private School Enrollments
by Richard Buddin

 Richard Buddin is an education policy expert and a former senior economist at the RAND Corporation. He has published over a dozen articles evaluating the various dimensions of charter school performance and has several publications that assess teacher effectiveness using value-added research methods. (Published on August 28, 2012)

Charter schools are publicly funded schools that have considerable independence from public school districts in their curriculum development and staffing decisions, and their enrollments have increased substantially over the past two decades.

Charter schools are changing public and private school enrollment patterns across the United States. This study analyzes district-level enrollment patterns for all states with charter schools, isolating how charter schools affect traditional public and private school enrollments after controlling for changes for the socioeconomic, demographic, and economic conditions in each district.

While most students are drawn from traditional public schools, charter schools are pulling large numbers of students from the private education market and present a potentially devastating impact on the private education market, as well as a serious increase in the financial burden on taxpayers.

Private school enrollments are much more sensitive to charters in urban districts than in non-urban districts. Overall, about 8 percent of charter elementary students and 11 percent of middle and high school students are drawn from private schools. In highly urban districts, private schools contribute 32, 23, and 15 percent of charter elementary, middle, and high school enrollments, respectively. Catholic schools seem particularly vulnerable, especially for elementary students in large metropolitan areas.

The flow of private-school students into charters has important fiscal implications for districts and states. When charters draw students from private schools, demands for tax revenue increase. If governments increase educational spending, tax revenues must be increased or spending in other areas reduced, or else districts may face pressures to reduce educational services. The shift of students from private to public schools represents a significant shift in the financial burdens for education from the private to the public sector.
http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/impact-charter-schools-public-private-school-enrollments  

The Charter School Paradox:
How public-sector-only choice can increase costs, reduce educational diversity, and undermine competition, and how those unintended consequences can be avoided.Adam B. Schaeffer Cato Institute
August 28, 2012

Based on research conducted by Richard Buddin in “The Impact of Charter Schools on Public and Private School Enrollments,” Policy Analysis #707, Cato Institute, August 28, 2012
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/Charter-School-Paradox.pdf

 Can Charter Schools Be Catholic? The Answer is No 
-- Dr. Karen Ristau's Article in NCEA Notes  

“Catholic Schools Should Adopt Charter Best Practices to Survive” BEWARE

- Contributed by Karen Ristau, Ed.D.
From September 2012  CACE Newsletter

In Mid-August a rather interesting report published by the Lexington Institute and an accompanying news release came across my desk. Perhaps you saw it reported in your local newspaper. The headline - “Catholic Schools Should Adopt Charter Best Practices to Survive”. Since I know full well charter schools were modeled after Catholic and other private/faith based schools, this really caught my attention.

All in all, the article is really promoting blended learning in one of its forms. While blended learning is a good idea for some things, unfortunately the news release makes a number of unfounded statements on the way to promoting their version of blended learning. You certainly have local/regional information to reply to the following comments which are direct quotes from the news release.

Catholic schools should learn from high-performing charters and innovate to deliver high-quality education to more students at a low cost.

Blended learning also helps Catholic schools address their weaknesses by providing schools with real time and longitudinal data on student and school performance, something often lacking in Catholic schools.

Catholic schools succeeded for so long because they refused to change, but it is becoming necessary to change.

You might want to use your marketing and public relations efforts to show case the innovations which do already exist in your schools, how you use student data to improve teaching, new learning techniques which incorporate technology and even how cost effective the schools are without harming quality. Your good stories are always better than unfounded criticism.

BUILDING 21st Century Leaning Communities:  Enhancing the Catholic Mission with Data, Blended Learning, and Other Best Practices From Top Charter Schools

http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/library/resources/documents/
Education/Building21stCenturyCatholicLearningCommunities.pdf

  THE EFFECTS OF SCHOOL VOUCHERS ON COLLEGE ENROLLMENT: Experimental Evidence from New York City

Most research on educational interventions, including school vouchers, focuses on impacts on short-term outcomes such as students’ scores on standardized tests. Few studies are able to track longer-term outcomes, and even fewer are able to do so in the context of a randomized experiment. In the first study using a randomized experiment to measure the impact of school vouchers on college enrollment, we examine the college-going behavior through 2011 of students who participated in a voucher experiment as elementary school students in the late 1990s. We find no overall impacts on college enrollments but we do find large, statistically significant positive impacts on the college going of African American students who participated in the study. Our estimates indicate that using a voucher to attend private school increased the overall college enrollment rate among African Americans by 24 percent.

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Impacts_of_School_Vouchers_FINAL.pdf

 Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit Program

The Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit Program (OSTCP) was created pursuant to Act 85 of 2012. This program enables eligible students residing within the boundaries of a low-achieving school to apply for a scholarship to attend another public or nonpublic school. A low-achieving school is defined as a public elementary or secondary school ranking in the bottom 15 percent of their designation as an elementary or secondary school based on the combined math and reading scores on the previous school year's PSSA.

SOME LINKS:

http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/school_services_office/9153/p/1202312

http://newpa.com/find-incentives-apply-for-funding/ostc-faq

 http://www.newpa.com/find-and-apply-for-funding/funding-and-program-finder/opportunity-scholarship-tax-credit-program

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2012/08/pennsylvanias_opportunity_scho.html