Best Practices for Alternative Charter School Programs and ...

Best Practices for Alternative Charter School Programs and Virtual Charter School Programs

Date February 15, 2016

Request 01264

REQUEST DESCRIPTION

A state education agency (SEA) served by the Southeast Comprehensive Center (SECC) has requested information regarding research on best practices related to successful alternative charter school programs and virtual charter school programs. Specifically, the SEA is interested in research in many areas of policy and practice for alternative and virtual charter schools. Some areas are directly related to students and curriculum, including student performance and accountability, management of students and courses, special populations, dropout prevention, technology, student/parent perspectives, and postsecondary success. Other areas of interest concern school management, such as governance, funding, and charter school evaluation.

The SEA plans to use the information provided in this report to inform the evaluation process for alternative and virtual charter school programs within the state and to develop recommendations regarding these programs to state policymakers.

This Information Request (IR) document describes the process for obtaining research articles, reports, and other resources as well as considerations as the SEA moves forward. It is organized into the following sections:

! Procedure ! General Limitations ! Background ! Overview of Resource Review ! References ! Resource Summaries ! Conclusion

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PROCEDURE

To obtain information for this document, the IR team conducted online searches--through the EBSCO host database, ERIC, Google, and Google Scholar--to look for research studies, articles, reports, and other resources that describe best practices related to successful alternative and virtual charter school programs or approaches to alternative education and virtual education. The terms alternative education and virtual education were included in the resource search to increase the likelihood of locating supplementary information applicable to alternative and/or virtual charter programs. For the database searches, the IR team used a combination of the following terms.

Accountability Alternative charter schools Alternative education Charter school evaluation Dropout prevention Governance

Table 1. Terms Used for Resource Search

Grade levels

Special populations

Management

Student/parent perspectives

Online/cyber/virtual charter schools

Student/parent satisfaction

Performance metrics

Successful implementation

Postsecondary success

Technology

Quality standards

Virtual education

The IR team reviewed 79 resources and selected 18 for discussion in this report. Inclusion was based on the following criteria: (a) publication date within the past 11 years (2005?2014) and (b) the content addresses alternative charters, virtual charters, alternative education, or virtual education. The documents provide a foundation for understanding best practices for successful charter school programs and for exploring potential challenges related to nontraditional school settings.

Based on review of the content, the IR team highlights four of the selected resources in the Background and Overview sections below and provides summaries of the remaining 14 resources in the Resource Summaries section, which begins on page 6.

GENERAL LIMITATIONS

Due to the limited research base, the IR vetting process yielded a small number of resources on alternative charter and virtual charter school programs. Although the presence of charter schools in the United States has grown in the past 25 years, little empirically based research has focused on charter school quality (Baude, Casey, Hanushek, & Rivkin, 2014). The IR team identified a collection of descriptive and evidence-based articles and reports that highlight states' efforts with the above charter programs as well as in alternative and virtual education. This IR presents the current landscape of charter schools and discusses practices related to successful charter schools and educational programs that effectively serve students in nontraditional settings.

SECC does not offer conclusions regarding the research or practices featured in this report, but instead provides information about the above topics and related recommendations from the respective authors. The Background section of this IR contains contextual information to aid stakeholders in making informed decisions with respect to the content of this report, but does not endorse any of the research or practices that are discussed.

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BACKGROUND

As public school options increase, so do the challenges associated with understanding these options and ensuring high quality and accountability. Charter schools represent a growing alternative to traditional public schools, while still being public schools. A 2009 white paper from the Center on Reinventing Public Education stated that the 21st century demands for high school graduation are contributing to the demand for alternatives to traditional school models, and that charter schools are growing to fill the need (Yaktsko, Gross & Christensen, 2009). The white paper, Charter High Schools: Alternative Paths to Graduation, stated that charter schools offer advantages, such as instructional focus and climates that promote relationships and safety, and pose challenges, such as competition for resources and high dropout rates.

As the charter school sector has grown, so has the body of research regarding charter school practices, performance, and accountability. Charter schools are publicly funded and are typically operated under the auspices and oversight of an authorizer, which is often a school district but can be an SEA, university, nonprofit agency, or other entity designated by law. Two options within the charter school sector include alternative education schools focusing on at-risk students, such as dropouts, and virtual schools that provide online instruction remotely via computer to a range of students, including those who have failed in traditional settings.

Alternative charter schools are not new and represent a small element of the overall charter school sector. The first charter school, City Academy High School, was an alternative school organized by teachers. It opened in 1992 in St. Paul, Minnesota, and was inducted into the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools' Hall of Fame in 2012. Currently, students at the academy range in age from 17?21 and usually have not achieved success in traditional schools. "City Academy was established to meet the growing need for academic programming aimed at young adults seeking a small school with small classes, which would enable them to have productive and meaningful roles within the community," according to the school's website (City Academy, 2016). The school uses a communitycentered approach, locating classes at the Wilder Recreation Center and at satellite locations.

Results across the country vary, and the approach to accountability for alternative charter schools has been undergoing change. Steps have been taken to raise the accountability bar, with educators, researchers, and policymakers seeking ways to establish what factors most influence success and differentiate performance among charter schools.

Research recognizes that special conditions exist for alternative education programs and students. A Texas study (Beken, Williams, Combs, & Slate, 2009) illustrated the nuances involved in assessing atrisk student performance, including matters such as peer influences and the burdens associated with students with more complex or numerous handicaps. But research by the California Charter School Association (CCSA, 2011) suggests that some charter schools do significantly better than others serving similar at-risk groups, and that patterns exist regarding what is making the difference. In an extensive analysis by American Institutes for Research (AIR) (Quinn & Poirer 2006), studies suggest effective programs require a complex blend of expectations and support. In 2013, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) released Anecdotes Aren't Enough: An EvidenceBased Approach to Accountability for Alternative Charter Schools. NACSA studies authorizing trends and offers guidance for evaluation of charter school proposals, performance monitoring, and renewal and closure decision making. In its report on alternative charter schools, NACSA discusses definitions

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for alternative charter schools (p. 6), measuring performance of these schools (p. 9), establishing parameters for accountability for alternative charters (p. 25), as well as federal policy and state activity.

Of more recent vintage are virtual schools, which have grown rapidly but still remain a small element of the overall charter school sector. Virtual schools have increased opportunities for individualized learning and broadened accessibility to a new range of instructional options. Even so, a 2015 national study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) on virtual school performance showed, on average, that these schools lag far behind traditional public school counterparts. Questions also have been raised about the quality of oversight of some virtual schools and the manner in which they operate.

Schools that operate online pose a variety of complex challenges in the selection and teaching of curriculums, use and monitoring of technology, engagement of students and parents, and compliance with laws covering special student populations, such as students with disabilities. NACSA urged in an October 2015 statement that the 2015 CREDO virtual school study should "sound an alarm" with authorizers and policymakers. NACSA offers best practices for authorizers, including its Index of Essential Practices 2012 and the 2011 issue brief School Quality in the Cloud: Guidelines for Authorizing Virtual Charter Schools.

State policy toward these schools and how they are organized, managed, and monitored play important roles in outcomes. Additional information on these topics and others is provided in the following sections, which highlight other articles, reports, and documents selected for inclusion in this IR.

OVERVIEW OF RESOURCE REVIEW

As school districts strive to meet the needs of their diverse student populations, nontraditional schooling options continue to expand. To aid decision making in this area, an SEA served by SECC requested assistance with research on best practices related to successful alternative charters and virtual charters.

Based on the SEA's request, the IR team selected resources that are applicable to alternative charters, virtual charters, alternative education, and/or virtual education, as explained previously. The majority of the resources are described in the Resource Summaries section, which consists of two categories: Alternative Education and Virtual Education.

The five documents in the first category--Alternative Education--discuss topics such as governance, accountability, student performance, grade levels, special populations, and charter evaluation. A few examples are provided below:

! Porowski, O'Conner, and Luo (2014) found that the majority of alternative schools serve secondary-level students who have exhibited discipline problems. Their report provides a perspective on how 43 states define alternative education.

! Beken and colleagues analyze the performance of students in alternative school settings as compared to their peers in traditional school settings (Beken, Williams, Combs, & Slate, 2009).

! Schlessman (2014) discusses accountability policies for alternative schools in the state of Arizona.

! Quinn and Poirer's (2006) study of alternative education programs identifies program components that were successful in meeting the needs of students with disabilities.

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In the second category--Virtual Education-- nine resources discuss topics that include the potential benefits of virtual schools for students and educators, challenges associated with these schools, and recommendations regarding operations, course management, instruction, and funding of virtual schools.

The resources discussed in this category indicate that one chief benefit of virtual schools is flexibility. Some students need the flexibility that virtual schools offer to continue their schooling while balancing the demands of their private lives. For example, a recent study of online charters (Woodworth et al., 2015) indicates that while virtual schools may serve as a viable option for students with multiple family obligations, students attending virtual schools consistently underperform as compared to their counterparts in traditional classroom settings. Also, the authors suggest that policy considerations and accountability oversight should be considered when developing virtual campuses and online learning opportunities for students.

An in-depth discussion of the remaining selected resources occurs in the Resource Summaries section. It contains details on the authors, hyperlinks to the documents, and information related to the operation, governance, performance, and evaluation of alternative education programs and charter schools.

REFERENCES

Baude, P. L., Casey, M., Hanushek, E. A., & Rivkin, S. G. (2014). The evolution of charter school quality (NBER Working Paper 20645). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved from

City Academy. (2016). City Academy [Website]. Program. Retrieved from

Lin, M. (2011). School quality in the cloud: Guidelines for authorizing virtual charter schools. Retrieved from

National Association of Charter School Authorizers. (2013). Anecdotes aren't enough: An evidencebased approach to accountability for alternative charter schools. Retrieved from

National Association of Charter School Authorizers. (2012). Index of essential practices. Retrieved from

Yaktsko, S., Gross, B., & Christensen, J. (2009, November). Charter high schools: Alternative paths to graduation (NCSRP White Paper Series, No. 3). Seattle, WA: Center on Reinventing Public Education. Retrieved from

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