Leading Approaches to Philanthropic Investment in the Charter Sector: A Scan of Four Cities

Commissioned by Baptist Community Ministries (BCM) in 2010, this report examines how philanthropic organizations in four American cities—Albany, N.Y.; Denver, Colo.; Harlem, N.Y.; and Houston, Tex.—have affected the charter sector. This scan includes information about how a select number of philanthropic organizations in each city developed their investment strategies, made investment decisions, and evaluated the impact their investments are having on public education.

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.

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 teacher and leader 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.