| Creating the Conditions for Great Schools to Thrive |
Our public schools live in the complex world of public policies that govern education. Designing these policies in a way that elicits high performance from schools needs to be one of our top priorities. Too often, our policies achieve exactly the opposite result, squelching high-achieving teachers and leaders and tolerating schools that accomplish less for children.
Our work creating conditions for schools to thrive spans many areas, including:
Our work also encompasses reforming school districts, enhancing education philanthropy, and improving other education policies. Scroll down to see examples of our projects in this area. |
| Human Capital for Education |
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Improving Teaching Through Pay for Contribution [pdf]. Despite proliferating chatter about the need to reform teacher compensation, the bulk of teacher pay remains fundamentally unchanged. This report by Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan C. Hassel with research assistance from Julie Kowal and published by the NGA Center for Best Practices, sets forth a guiding principle for moving from talk to action—“pay for contribution.” Pay for contribution means investing more in teachers and teaching roles that contribute measurably more to student learning. Pay for contribution is particularly attractive to higher contributors. For this reason, it can help shape not only the performance of current teachers, but also the quality of the future teaching workforce by shifting who enters and stays in the profession. The report explains several approaches to pay for contribution and explores the research on how to design these strategies to get the best results. In addition, it explores related policy initiatives, such as data systems with teacher-level student learning results, that would help make pay for contribution happen. |
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Teacher Compensation in Charter and Private Schools: Snapshots and Lessons for District Public Schools [pdf]. In this report for the Center for American Progress, Julie Kowal, Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan C. Hassel examine teacher compensation policies in charter and private schools for lessons to help traditional public schools more effectively draw and keep high-quality teachers. The authors looked to national surveys of charter and private schools and interviews with leading charter and private school networks for their answers to major questions that animate the current debates over teacher pay in public schools. Their findings, presented at CAP in February 2007, offer a picture of what school and district leaders can do with pay when they are free to use compensation as a tool to meet their goals. |
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Better Pay for Better Teaching [pdf]. Improving the quality of teaching is a consensus, high-priority capacity-building challenge. This publication, prepared for the Progressive Policy Institute, addresses one piece of the teaching quality puzzle - pay. It calls for wide scale experimentation with new approaches to pay teachers, including performance-based pay, differential pay for hard-to-fill jobs, and pay for knowledge and skills. |
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Cultivating Success through Multiple Providers, A New State Strategy for Improving the Quality of Teacher Preparation, co-authored by Bryan C. Hassel and Michele E. Sherburne (Chapter 8 of A Qualified Teacher in Every Classroom?, Harvard Education Publishing Group). This chapter explores a new state strategy for improving the quality of teacher preparation: authorizing a portfolio of providers. Under this strategy a state would cultivate a robust portfolio of providers of teacher preparation. These providers, including traditional purveyors of teacher education, nonprofit organizations and school districts, would serve as laboratories for diverse approaches to teacher education. |
| School Funding |
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Fund The Child: Bringing Equity, Autonomy, and Portability to Ohio School Finance [pdf] While Ohio’s policymakers have made great strides in reducing funding inequities between school districts, substantial inequities remain between schools, with schools serving more disadvantaged populations often receiving less. In addition, the state’s finance system has not kept pace with the expanding choices available to families: while kids can take advantage of more and more choice options, money does not follow them fully as they choose. This Thomas B. Fordham Institute report, by Public Impact and University of Dayton’s School of Education and Allied Professions, documents those issues and proposes a new approach to school finance called “weighted student funding,” or WSF. Under WSF, money would follow children to the schools they attend, with more disadvantaged children generating more funding. Schools would then have increased discretion to spend funds in ways that maximize student learning. |
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Fund the Child: A 100% Solution [pdf]. A broad, bipartisan coalition now urges a new method of funding our public schools--one that finally ensures the students who need the most receive it, that empowers school leaders to make key decisions, and that opens the door to public school choice. It's a 100 percent solution to the most pressing problems in public school funding--and it's called Weighted Student Funding. Public Impact's Matt Arkin, Bryan Hassel and Amy Way led the research and writing behind this manifesto, released in June 2006 with dozens of signatories from across the political spectrum. |
| Charter School Authorizing |
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Navigating Special Education In Charter Schools Part I: Critical Background Information For Authorizers. This two-part NACSA issue brief series by Lauren Morando Rhim identifies the issues related to navigating special education in the charter school sector. The first Brief introduces the basic foundation underlying provision of special education in public schools and research findings regarding key challenges and strategies charter schools are using to build capacity to provide special education and related services. The second brief outlines authorizers’ roles in ensuring the development of quality special education programs in charter schools. It also identify issues authorizers should consider when reviewing applications and developing accountable systems. |
| Supporting Charter School Excellence through Quality Authorizing [pdf]. This publication highlights eight charter school authorizers – the agencies responsible for approving, monitoring, assisting and evaluating charter schools – that are advancing the quality and growth of charter schools across the country. Developed by Lucy Steiner, Julie Kowal, Sarah Crittenden and Bryan Hassel, in partnership with WestEd, for the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement, the Guide explores the practices and policies of these authorizing offices and is designed to inform and inspire others to follow their lead in creating and supporting high-quality charter schools. |
| The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation Sponsorship Accountability Report 2005-06 [pdf]. In July 2005, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation became Ohio's first nonprofit organization to sponsor charter schools. Public Impact played a lead role in helping to craft the organization's charter application process. This first annual report offers a comprehensive account of Fordham's sponsorship policies and practices - as well as individual profiles of all Fordham-sponsored schools. Included in the profiles are descriptions of each school's educational program, school philosophy, and overall academic performance based on state achievement data. |
| Mayor of Indianapolis Charter School Initiative. Public Impact has played a leading role in the design of a charter school program for Mayor Bart Peterson the nation’s only mayor with chartering authority. We have helped design the application review process, the accountability system, and the effort to attract highly qualified charter applicants. Harvard named the Mayor's initiative the 2006 winner of its presitigious Innovations in American Government Award. See the Mayor’s charter school website here; read a write up about the Mayor's initiative in Education Next here and our Progressive Policy Institute monograph here. |
| State Policymaker’s Guide to Alternative Authorizers of Charter Schools [pdf]. This brief helps state policymakers think through what kind of alternative authorizing structures may make sense for their states. The paper presents the advantages, disadvantages and policy considerations for each of the seven types of alternative authorizers. In addition, it discusses the critical design issues facing states interested in creating alternative authorizers. |
| Application Packet for Community Schools Seeking Sponsorship from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation [pdf]. This application packet for charter school developers seeking sponsorship from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation Community School Sponsorship program in Dayton, Ohio is designed to guide applicants through the steps required to create a robust and high-quality plan for establishing a community school and to help them navigate the three-stage review process. |
| Charter School Accountability: A Guide to Issues and Options for Charter Authorizers. Charter school authorizers across the country are confronted with how to put into action one of the central ideas behind charter schools - their accountability for results. Developed with funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, this guide examines the challenges of setting appropriate terms for accountability, gathering meaningful information about schools, and using the data to make good decisions. Drawing on the experiences of some leading authorizers, it lays out the issues and options that those holding schools accountable need to consider. |
| High Stakes: Findings from a National Study of Life-or-Death Decisions by Charter School Authorizers. This national research project, funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation, examined 50 cases of charter schools that have come up for high-stakes decisions - having their charters renewed, not renewed, or revoked. The study investigated how clear authorizers' expectations for the schools were, the information authorizers used to judge progress, and how they made their decisions. |
| Building a Foundation for Success: How Authorizers Can Help Schools with the Facilities Challenge [pdf]. This brief, written by Bryan Hassel and Robin Halsband, explores the ways in which authorizers can, indirectly and directly, affect a school’s ability to obtain the financing necessary for a schoolhouse. Part I examines the indirect impact: how the quality of the authorizer, as perceived by a financial institution, can affect loan decisions. Part II considers the direct, proactive roles that some authorizers have taken to help schools meet their facilities financing needs. |
| Charter School Policy |
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Boosting Performance and Containing Costs through Mayoral Academies [pdf] A coalition of Rhode Island mayors, including Cumberland’s Daniel McKee, asked Public Impact and Brown University’s Martin West to analyze the state of public education in the Ocean State and in the five-town region surrounding Cumberland, which is north of Providence. The resulting report paints the picture of a state where performance lags the national average, despite very high per-pupil spending. Public Impact goes on to propose a new model of school governance – Mayoral Academies – in which a mayor-led board of trustees would contract with high-quality school providers to open new, regional public schools. RI’s general assembly passed legislation to enact the new model, and Mayor McKee’s coalition hopes to open the first schools in fall 2009. Ed Week’s coverage is here. |
| Public Impact prepared a report entitled “Working the Curve” for North Carolina’s Charter Schools for the North Carolina Blue Ribbon Commission on Charter Schools to inform the Commission on the current performance of the state’s charter schools, identify challenges the sector is facing, and provide proposals for the future direction of the state’s charter school policies. Public Impact’s report outlined a course of action to promote a stronger charter sector—including lifting the state’s charter cap, closing low-performing charter schools, and providing better support along the charter school lifecycle. The Blue Ribbon Commission developed a report of recommendations for the State Board of Education to consider and included some recommendations outlined in Public Impact’s “Working the Curve.” |
| Ohio Charter School Performance Report, 2006-07 [pdf]. Every August Ohio releases its K-12 state achievement test data. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute commissioned Public Impact to conduct a brief analysis of charter school performance in 2006-07. Using Ohio Department of Education data, the report by Sarah Crittenden compared the performance of urban charter schools with that of non-charter public schools in the eight largest urban districts in the state (Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo, and Youngstown). Separately, the report compared the performance of charter e-schools (also known as virtual schools) with that of non-charter public schools statewide. |
| Turning the Corner to Quality: Policy Guidelines for Strengthening Ohio's Charter Schools [pdf]. At the request of Ohio's top government and education leaders in the summer of 2006, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, National Association of Charter School Authorizers, and National Alliance for Public Charter Schools commissioned Public Impact to help create a report recommending strategies to strengthen the state's charter school program. The report breaks its 17 recommendations into four categories: Keep the Accountability/Autonomy Promise, Strengthen Ohio’s System of Charter School Sponsors, Fund Charter Schools Fairly, and Help Open Quality Charter Schools. Recommendations include closing low-performing charter schools and holding sponsors more accountable for oversight of the growing charter movement while also helping more high-performance schools to open and succeed in Ohio. In return for stepped-up accountability, the document calls for restrictions on the formation of high-quality charters to be removed and for charter schools to receive more equitable funding. In addition to Bryan Hassel and Michelle Godard Terrell, Louann Bierlein Palmer and Peter Svahn contributed to the report. |
| Florida Charter Schools: Hot and Humid with Passing Storms [pdf]. Florida is often referred to as “School Choice Central” due to its variety of public school choice options, including vouchers and tax credits, school-to-work academies, and virtual and home schools. Among all the choice options in Florida, none has reached as many children and families as charter schools. In the 2005-06 school year, there were over 300 charter schools serving about 3 percent of the state’s public school students. This report, co-authored by Bryan Hassel, Michelle Godard Terrell, and Julie Kowal, examines the outcomes of the first decade of charter schooling in the Sunshine State. Published by Education Sector, a nonpartisan education think tank, the report reviews the evolution of Florida’s charter school legislation, examines the achievements and the shortfalls of Florida’s charter schools, and offers several recommendations for improvement. |
| Charter School Funding: Inequity's Next Frontier. Of all the controversies swirling around the nation’s charter schools, none is more hotly contested than the debate over funding. This report, created in collaboration with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and Progress Analytics Institute, is the most comprehensive and rigorous study ever undertaken of how public charter schools are funded, state by state, and how their revenues measure up to dollars received by district-run schools. |
| Charter School Achievement: What We Know. Several recent reports have raised questions about the performance of public charter schools. To answer these questions, and provide a full and fair picture of how charter schools are actually doing, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools commissioned an extensive review of the available research on charter school achievement. The third edition of this report, issued in October 2006, summarizes and evaluates 58 comparative analyses of charter school and traditional public school performance, including a study-by-study look at central findings and methodological strengths and weaknesses. |
Stimulating the Supply of New Choices for Families in Light of NCLB: The Role of the State [pdf], co-authored by Bryan Hassel and Lucy Steiner. The states can play a vital role in the process of stimulating the supply of new choices so interested families can exercise their rights to transfer under NCLB. Published by The Education Commission for the States and funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Public Charter Schools Program this policy brief outlines how a targeted campaign that assesses needs, allows for new options and develops new supply can provide the choices families are requesting.
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| “The Rugged Frontier,” A Decade of Public Charter Schools in Arizona [pdf], co-authored by Bryan Hassel and Michelle Godard Terrell. Published by The 21st Century Schools Project at the Progressive Policy Institute through funding from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, this report reviews the unique Arizona charter school law, examines the outcomes charter schools have attained, and profiles some of the high and low points of chartering in Arizona. It analyzes the potential risks and rewards inherent in the Arizona model. It delves into some of the pressing challenges facing chartering in the state, and concludes with some recommendations for the future. |
| The Charter School Challenge: Avoiding the Pitfalls, Fulfilling the Promise, by Bryan C. Hassel. This book examines the way state legislatures have crafted charter school legislation, how the legislation is playing out in practice, and what the future holds for charter schools. From The Brookings Institution, 1999. |
| Paying for the Charter Schoolhouse: Policy Options for Charter School Facilities Financing [pdf]. This 1999 Charter Friends National Network report explores innovative state policies to address charter schools' facilities needs. |
| School Finance in Dayton: A Comparison of the Revenues of the School District and Community Schools [pdf], co-authored by Bryan Hassel and Michelle Godard Terrell. This report on the funding of charter schools in Dayton is in response to a mistaken public perception that charter schools receive higher public funding than traditional public schools. Prepared for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, this analysis makes clear that charter schools in Dayton receive considerably less operating money per student than schools within the Dayton Public School District. This discrepancy is primarily due to the charter schools' lack of access to local tax dollars, a critical source of funds for the district. |
District Reform |
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A New Kind of School District: How Local Leaders Can Create Charter Districts [pdf]. This report, written for Education Commission of the States, outlines the charter district design issues faced by school district leaders, explaining the key questions and discussing options for addressing them. |
| Charter Districts: The State of the Field. This update of a 2003 Education Commission of the States StateNote describes the latest developments and trends in charter districts throughout the country. Charter districts, in which all or most of the schools are charter or contract schools, are part of broader efforts to improve public schools. Rather than operating schools themselves, these districts enter into charters or contracts with individuals and entities to run schools. |
| Education Philanthropy |
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Big Box: How the Heirs of the Wal-Mart Fortune Have Fueled the Charter School Movement [pdf]. Co-authored by Education Sector co-director Thomas Toch, this installment of Ed Sector's "Connecting the Dots" series describes the Walton Family Foundation's impact on the charter sector via its investments in individual charter schools, charter management organziations and networks, support organizations, advocacy, and research and information. |
| A Road to Results: Helping the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Education Program Implement Results-Based Accountability. This series is part of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s multi-year effort to develop a “results-based accountability” (RBA) approach to its K-12 education portfolio. Though still a work in progress, the Foundation’s experience with RBA can help other philanthropic organizations and individual donors develop their own approaches to producing and documenting the results of their investments. Public Impact’s Sarah Crittenden and Bryan Hassel have been helping the Foundation with a series of reports on its approach. The first [pdf], describes the Foundation’s overall approach to RBA. The second [pdf] explains the Program's vision, theory of change and theory of action. The third [pdf] is a guidebook to help Program grantees understand performance measurement, select performance measures, set performance goals, and report performance results. It also includes an Excel template for reporting on performance measures. |
| Choosing to Fund Choice: Philanthropy and School Choice in K-12 Education, co-authored by Bryan Hassel and Amy Way as a chapter in Frederick Hess's 2005 volume With the Best of Intentions: How Philanthropy is Reshaping K-12 Education (Harvard Education Press). The chapter aims to shed light on the question: How extensive is choice-related philanthropy in the United States? By evaluating the top 50 donors in K-12 education for the extent and nature of their financial support for school choice we determined a successful movement will focus on creating high quality options for students and finding ways to reach the scale needed to make up a significant portion of the educational market. To achieve this we need a broader set of donors willing to enter into this controversial movement. |
| Jumpstarting the Charter School Movement: A Guide for Donors [pdf], commissioned by The Philanthropy Roundtable, seeks to provide donors with strategic ways to support a strong charter school movement in their communities and across the nation. This book, the first in a series on “Strategic Grantmaking in Education,” draws on the experience of many of the movement's most active funders. It does not offer a simple recipe for all donors to follow but instead provides a menu of possibilities that readers can choose from and adapt, with concrete examples of each approach to school reform. |
| A New Bet for Better Schools [pdf]. This report of the May 2004 meeting “Creating New Schools: Promising Strategy for Change?” was published by Grantmakers for Education and The Philanthropy Roundtable. This meeting convened over 40 donors and grantmakers from foundations across the country to consider the effectiveness of a “new schools” strategy for philanthropy. With support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the meeting offered two days of conversation and reflection on the rationale for a new schools strategy, emerging evidence on its viability and the challenges grantmakers need to confront to support successful new schools initiatives. |
| Other Education Policy |
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White House Commission on Excellence in Special Education. Bryan Hassel was appointed to this 19-member national commission, which issued its report [pdf] in 2003. Dr. Hassel helped the Commission develop its recommendations on making special education accountability more results-based. |
| Rethinking Special Education Accountability [pdf]. Bryan Hassel co-authored two articles with Patrick J. Wolf about making the nation's special education system more outcome-oriented and less procedure oriented. The first, Effectiveness and Accountability (Part 1): The Compliance Model and the second, Effectiveness and Accountability (Part 2): Alternatives to the Compliance Model [pdf] both appear in the book jointly published by the Progressive Policy Institute and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. |
