In the wake of the pandemic, accelerating student learning is a priority for all public schools. Luckily, because of their programmatic flexibility, charter schools are uniquely positioned to leverage their autonomy to develop innovative strategies to ensure students are making up for lost time in the classroom.
This capacity to innovate was further enhanced by the availability of ESSER funds, which were used differently in the charter sector than in district-run schools. With that in mind, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools connected with charter school leaders across the country about what they learned from the pandemic and how they can use those lessons learned to improve student outcomes.
In collaboration with partners at Bellwether Education Partners, the National Charter Collaborative, and the Diverse Charter Schools Coalition, we worked with a diverse range of charter school leaders, staff, and families to develop a set of resources documenting promising pandemic-era strategies to improve learning experiences for all students moving forward.
These resources include, but are not limited to:
- A case study about supporting student mental health and wellbeing. This case study focuses on how charter schools assessed student mental health needs and adjusted resources to meet them by embedding non-academic curriculum and mental health supports into the school day. Approaches to supporting student mental health and wellbeing differed across schools, but all agreed that ensuring student wellbeing was a necessary precursor to learning.
- A case study about prioritizing instructional time to retain teachers. This case study focuses on how charter schools used their flexibility to both adjust job responsibilities and restructure the school day, week, and year to ensure teachers are focusing their time on teaching rather than other (often more administrative) responsibilities. This case study explores how these strategies impacted both teacher retention and student outcomes. This case study is accompanied by a toolkit that helps schools self-assess their need in this area.
- A case study about helping families in poverty navigate crisis. This case study documents how schools created formal programs with designated staff to support the specific needs of families living in poverty, with a special focus on helping families ensure their students remain engaged in school. While the pandemic cast light on the urgent needs of families living in poverty, schools recognized that they pre-dated the pandemic and that the supports they provided should last well into the future.
In total, the National Alliance and its partners developed six case studies, two toolkits, exemplar documents, and a policy brief to be used by both charter schools and district-run schools to accelerate student learning. In addition to the resources outlined above, there will also be resources detailing strategies for supporting students with disabilities and English learners as well as tools to support the development of more nuanced accountability metrics.
Remote and asynchronous instruction illuminated how different learning environments work (or don’t work) for different students. What we’ve learned is that charter schools have innovations and learnings that will benefit all students: our role is to highlight those and enable more students to benefit from them.
Katie Burke is the senior director of policy at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
