Charter Schools Indicators: A Report from the Center on Educational Governance University of Southern California. CSI-USC 2007

Center on Educational Governance. 3470 Trousdale Parkway, WPH 901, Los Angeles, CA 90089. Tel: 213-740-0697; Fax: 213-740-4184; Web site: http://www.uscrossier.org/ceg/

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Charter Schools; Educational Indicators; Governance; School Effectiveness; Educational Finance; Educational Quality; Academic Achievement; Productivity; Federal Programs; Accountability; Investment; Teacher Qualifications; English Language Learners; Classification; Language Arts; Mathematics; Elementary Secondary Education

Like other public schools, California charter schools are judged primarily by one measure: student test scores. Though necessary, the Academic Performance Index and Average Yearly Progress scores can't assess charter schools' broad dimensions of student learning, program effectiveness and school operations. The state's accountability system requires that all public schools submit mountains of data, but it's not reported in a way that's useful for the schools to evaluate themselves. And charter schools rely on this data to sustain their very existence. The first report of its kind, "Charter Schools Indicators-USC" transforms data submitted to the state for compliance purposes into a tool for school improvement and accountability. USC's Center on Educational Governance built CSI-USC in partnership with the charter school community: state policymakers, charter school authorizers, charter school operators and professional organizations of charter schools. Performance measures are organized into four areas: financial resources and investment, school quality, student performance and academic productivity. The report also updates the profile of the California charter school population. CSI-USC's quality measures use both academic and financial data, existing figures and new measures created expressly for this report. They are presented as indices; each index is composed of a set of individual data elements. Most indices compare charter schools to non-charter public schools. When the data for individual non-charter public schools is not publicly available, comparisons focus on changes in charter school performance over time. An aggregate of school data, CSI-USC is designed for readers to draw their own conclusions. In the next two years, USC's Center on Educational Governance will complete an interactive, searchable Web site of performance data on individual California charter schools. Schools and their stakeholders--policymakers, foundations, corporate partners and researchers--will be able to gauge a school's performance on a given measure and compare that school to all other California public schools on that measure. Overall, a broader array of indicators better captures the value of a school. And as charter schools and their enrollments continue to grow in California, data on their progress is more sought than ever. By examining these school data as a collection, CSI-USC has taken the first crucial step. Appended are: (1) Data Sources and Terms; (2) Creating CSI-USSC; and (3) Index and Data Sources.

ERIC

2016

ED569146