The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools Releases Statement on Charter School Management Organization Study

WASHINGTON, Nov. 4, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) today released the following statement from interim president and CEO Ursula Wright in reference to a new report issued today by the Mathematica Policy Research and the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) that explores the practices and effectiveness of charter school management organizations:

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"We are encouraged by a number of the findings of the new Mathematica Policy Research and CRPE report on the effectiveness of Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) nationwide, which shows that many of the nation's strongest CMOs are delivering exceptional results for the students and families they serve.

It is good to see strong evidence confirming what we in the charter space have believed for a while: High-performing charter school organizations are dramatically increasing the odds that black and Latino students, and students from low-income families will succeed in college and beyond.  Specifically, children served by the highest-performing CMOs are achieving three years of learning in only two years of school." 

The findings from the report, which examined the academic performance of 22 CMOs with at least four middle schools, include:

• About half of CMOs have positive impacts on student achievement relative to neighboring district schools, while almost one-third are under-performing their local districts.  Students in the highest-performing CMOs benefit from three years of learning gains over two academic years.
• Hispanic students tend to benefit most from CMOs, especially in math.
• Scale need not hamper quality.  Larger CMOs tend to have greater academic gains than smaller ones.

"We need to replicate what's working within these high performers to ensure that all students can thrive in a high-quality public school," said Wright.  "At the same time, we must also as a movement acknowledge that there is a small subset of CMOs that are not serving their students well. It is important that we take these results seriously and encourage charter authorizers, and the rest of the charter school community, to take steps to ensure that all public charter schools are meeting their intended promise."

Click here to learn more about the report http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/index.asp. Please e-mail the NAPCS at pressroom@publiccharters.org to speak with a spokesperson and discuss the report's significance to the public charter school movement.

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools is the leading national nonprofit organization committed to advancing the charter school movement. Our mission is to lead public education to unprecedented levels of academic achievement by fostering a strong charter sector.

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Ursula Wright : http://www.profnetconnect.com/ursulawright

SOURCE National Alliance for Public Charter Schools

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