Charter Schools > Our Services
Advancing Equity, Improving Quality
WestEd engages partners in developing products and tools that support charter schools in effectively serving students.
4 Domains for School Improvement
The Four Domains for Significant and Sustainable Charter School Improvement was developed and designed by WestEd to help educators and policymakers in the charter school system organize and guide both policy and action for rapid school improvement.
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- Improvement Planning
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- Fiscal Sustainability
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- Performance Focus
- Aligned Operations
- Improvement Leadership
- Talent Development
- Instructional Transformation
- Culture Shift
Systemic Improvement
Preventing and addressing under-performing charter schools is imperative to ensuring continuous improvement. WestEd actively supports leaders across the charter ecosystem who work hand-in-hand to improve equitable access to high-quality options for all students.
Our products, tools, and capacity-building experiences include support for:
- Addressing school improvement needs
- Identifying indicators of distress in schools prior to failure
- Conducting strategic planning and system redesign
- Performing evaluations and program reviews
- Offering on-demand learning opportunities
- Leading improvement planning, implementation and accountability support
Supporting All Learners
As the charter sector evolves, authorizers, state departments of education, school districts and others are putting greater emphasis on ensuring that charter schools meet the needs of all learners. WestEd engages partners in developing products and tools that help charter schools in effectively serving students with disabilities, English Learners, and students from historically underserved communities.
- Working Together to Support Equitable Access to Charter Schools
- English Learners in Charter Schools: A Learning Experience Focused on English Learner Instruction
High-Quality Authorizing
We collaborate with charter authorizers, state departments of education, and charter support organizations to strengthen systems for authorizing, monitoring, and renewing high-quality charter schools.
- Policy Framework for High Quality Charter Authorizing Practices
- How are State Entities Improving Authorizing? An NCSRC Policy Framework and Technical Assistance in CSP States
Measuring and Sustaining Impact
WestEd partners with the Charter School Programs (CSP) Monitoring and Data Collection Projects for the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE).
Monitoring addresses compliance with the CSP program and grant requirements, charter school quality and related priorities, and fiscal and administrative responsibilities. Throughout the monitoring, WestEd has observed grant implementation activities in hundreds of grant-funded charter schools.
Through our evaluation and monitoring services, we can help you:
- Develop and refine monitoring protocols and procedures to conduct on-site and remote monitoring of CSP grantees
- Collect and analyze grant administration data from all active CSP grantees and grant funded schools. To date, WestEd has monitored all of State Educational Agencies (SEAs) and State Entity grant recipients and dozens of Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) and Developer grantees.
Technical Assistance
We work directly with state education agencies, charter authorizers, charter networks, and individual schools.
We have engaged with state education agencies and authorizers across the nation, including the New York, Delaware, and the California Departments of Education to support and sustain high-quality charter schools in areas such as school improvement, governance, finance, family engagement, and special education. We have also worked directly with Honors Academy of Literature, and Delta Academy, and Skyline Education on instructional and leadership coaching, curriculum alignment, and assessment review.
Research, Evaluation, and Policy
WestEd provides services pertaining to charter schools and school choice for a variety of federal, state, and local organizations. These services include rigorous evaluations, policy analyses, best practices research, and formative evaluations that inform program impacts and improvements.
WestEd also conducts mixed method, impact and implementation evaluations for various school choice grants, including Breakthrough Schools, Perry Street Preparatory Public Charter School, and magnet programs in Baltimore County and Clark County.