Investing in Charter Schools: A Guide for Donors

[pdf] Charter schooling remains one of the nation’s most promising efforts to produce more excellent public schools, especially for low-income and minority students. Almost 20 years after the first charter school law was passed, however, questions in the sector largely focus now on quality and expansion: How can we help take the best of the charter sector to scale, while at the same time maintaining high standards of quality? Drawing upon the experience of many of the sector’s most active funders, Public Impact prepared this guidebook for The Philanthropy Roundtable to offer a menu of strategies that donors can use to support a high-quality charter school sector, including:

• Building a robust supply of high-quality new schools;
• Priming the human capital pipeline;
• Addressing critical operations challenges;
• Defining and improving quality; and
• Forging charter-friendly public policies.

The guidebook examines these five priorities by describing how current funders are addressing them, providing suggestions for new donors and exploring the next phase of philanthropic support in the charter sector. Excerpts from the report (pdf) also appear in the spring 2009 issue of Philanthropy Magazine.

Performance Guarantees in Education: Shifting Risk to Create Opportunity

[pdf]  In this report, authors Bryan Hassel and Daniela Doyle note that to improve upon the successes of entrepreneurial providers and raise student achievement, more districts and states must be willing to give new education services a chance. Districts, however, are hesitant to hand over schools and school functions to outsiders. The authors suggest that performance guarantees, similar to car warranties or a home builder's bonded contracts, could provide an incentive for districts to experiment with new services by shifting risk from the district to the provider. The report explores a range of design issues that districts, providers, and investors could work through as they set up viable performance guarantees.

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 grant-makers need to confront to support successful new schools initiatives.

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.