Washington, D.C. – The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools today released the following statement from its President and CEO, Peter Groff, on the states selected for funding by the U.S. Department of Education in the second round of the Race to the Top competition:   Read more >

Most of the early bloggery on the Race to the Top results is focusing on the horse race. Many scribes are surprised that so many of the Round 1 finalists, who placed well in the first tier of Round 2, got knocked out. A lot are dumbfounded at the exclusion of Louisiana and Colorado, maybe the two most reformy states in the Union. There’s near-universal head-scratching at the number-three showing of Hawaii, a state that was running a four-day school week last year.

So how important was the charter component in judging? As our statement notes, most winners came from strong-law states (although tightly-capped North Carolina, charter-hostile Ohio, and worst-charter-law-in-the-country-state Maryland are baffling).   Read more >

In a Huffington Post op-ed, Tom Vander Ark suggests that states update their charter school laws to provide different pathways to authorization, as appropriate to conversion charters, turnarounds, innovative programs and existing operators with high-performing schools.

In other headlines...
‘Race to the Top Limps to the Finish Line’
‘Charter Schools Being Urged to Serve ELLs’
In Ohio, ‘Send School Aid Directly To Charters, Panel Says’
In Ohio, ‘High-Performing Charters Dominate Some Markets’

  More headlines >

Written by Public Impact’s Joe Ableidinger and Bryan C. Hassel, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools's latest issue brief, Free to Lead: Autonomy in Highly Successful Charter Schools, identifies seven distinct ways autonomy impacts operational and academic performance at five highly successful charter schools.   Read more >

Washington, D.C. – The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools released the following statement on yesterday’s passage of the Amendment to the House Supplemental Appropriations bill cutting education reform funding:   Read more >