According to "Charting New Territory: Tapping Charter Schools to Turn Around the Nation's Dropout Factories," results from Philadelphia's Mastery Charter Schools and Los Angeles' Green Dot Public Schools suggest charter conversions can boost college readiness and graduation rates.
The charter leaders focus on changing school culture, raising expectations, forging ties with parents, and offering intensive college counseling.
The report, written by Melissa Lazarin, the center's former associate director of education policy, stresses the importance of clearly defining the parameters of charters' authority to ensure that they maintain the flexibility and independence that have helped them succeed.
"For me, the reason that it might be working in these two places is that charters are getting a lot of autonomy about important things, like staffing, budgeting, and how they operate their school day," Lazarin said.
In return, she said, charter operators agree to enroll all neighborhood students who attended the schools when they were district-operated.
The hiring autonomy at charter conversions has stirred controversy. In Los Angeles, the teachers' union challenged a decision to give two more schools to Green Dot. In Philadelphia, although teachers at district schools that Mastery converts can apply to remain, few have. Those who do go through the same rigorous screening as other Mastery applicants, including teaching a sample lesson.
The report's findings are especially timely as Mastery and two other Philadelphia charter groups prepare to turn four district high schools into charters next month as part of Superintendent Arlene C. Ackerman's Imagine 2014 initiative.
The district provides per-student funding; the charter operators rent the buildings.
