First National Evaluation of U.S. Public Charter Schools Program Available from SRI International

Report Finds That Charter Schools Serve Diverse Student Populations; Parents Play Key Role
MENLO PARK, California - December 9, 2002 - In the past 10 years, more than 2,000 charter schools have opened across the United States. A new report on the U.S. Public Charter Schools Program by independent research institute SRI International evaluates the operations and impact of this growing movement. In this first national assessment of the program, an SRI-led team of researchers reports on the characteristics of charter schools nationally and documents the movement's evolution.

The U.S. Public Charter Schools Program was established in 1994 by the U.S. Department of Education. SRI has been conducting its independent evaluation for the Department of Education since 1998.

Charter schools are public schools that operate without many of the regulations that apply to "traditional" public schools. Parents can choose to send their children to a charter school; no tuition is charged. Each school has a charter - a contract that outlines the school's mission, program, and types of students served. Since the first charter school opened in 1992 in Minnesota, the number of these schools has increased steadily. As of Summer 2001, about 2,000 charter schools were in operation in 34 states and the District of Columbia.

As the movement has grown, it also has struggled. Stories began to emerge early about the difficulties that charter schools-particularly those that were being created from scratch-faced in their first months and years. SRI's evaluation shows that in general, charter schools have overcome many of the start-up challenges identified in earlier research.

The U.S. Public Charter Schools Program awards grants to U.S. states for assistance with the planning, start-up, and early implementation of new charter schools. Through telephone surveys and site visits with charter schools and their authorizers (the agencies that approve and monitor charter schools), SRI gathered information on the operations and impacts of the Public Charter Schools Program and the characteristics of charter schools.

Key Findings
The 2000-2001 evaluation, prepared by SRI's Center for Education Policy, documents charter school and charter school authorizer characteristics, accountability relationships, flexibility options, and support relationships. The report also focuses on charter school implementation. Key findings include:

• Charter schools serve diverse populations of students. On average, more than half of the students in charter schools were members of ethnic minority groups, 12 percent received special education services, and six percent were English language learners.
• Charter schools often targeted different populations of students than they actually attracted. For example, a relatively small proportion of schools targeted special education, gifted and talented, or low-performing students, but a large proportion of survey respondents (60 percent or greater) indicated that these groups were attracted to their schools.
• Parents play an important role in choosing whether to send their child to a charter school. More than half of the charter school respondents believed that features such as small school size, small classes and a safe environment were powerful in attracting parents. Parent involvement also is a key component of the charter school movement, and most charter schools reported that parents were involved in a wide variety of activities.
• Authorizers frequently had limited resources and staff to help their charter schools. Like other schools, charter authorizers faced a number of challenges or obstacles. Authorizers faced challenges such as inadequate finances, politics, and unclear state charter laws and other relevant laws and policies.
• While the majority of charter schools (58 percent) did not find federal regulations to be problematic, those respondents who cited federal regulations as a barrier viewed special education as the most problematic area.

The complete 2000-2001 report is available in PDF format at http://www.sri.com/policy/cep/choice/yr2.pdf.

SRI published its first interim evaluation of the Public Charter Schools Program in 2000. That report is available at http://www.ed.gov/offices/OUS/PES/chartschools/. The evaluation is expected to conclude in 2003.

About SRI International
Silicon Valley-based SRI International (http://www.sri.com) is one of the world's leading independent research and technology development organizations. Founded as Stanford Research Institute in 1946, SRI has been meeting the strategic needs of clients for more than 55 years. The nonprofit research institute performs contract research and development for government agencies, commercial businesses and private foundations. In addition to conducting contract R&D, SRI licenses its technologies, forms strategic partnerships and creates spin-off companies.

SRI's Center for Education Policy conducts research and evaluations on the design, implementation, and impact of a variety of educational programs, especially improvement efforts targeted on traditionally underrepresented students. The group works with federal agencies, state departments of education, local school districts, private foundations, and not-for-profit groups.