NWREL's Charter School
Leadership Training

"Starting a charter school is like starting six small businesses at once." -Joe Lucente, Fenton Avenue Charter School Co-director Charter School Leadership Training provides charter school founders and operators with useful strategies and tips on how to effectively start and run a charter school. The program is full of research-based, practical strategies and tips to help you effectively start and run a charter school. Training will be packed with interactive, skill-building sessions based on our Charter Starters Program, and will include opportunities for participants to network with colleagues. Participants will have the option of receiving course credit. Topics: Start Up Logistics or Renewal Issues (depending on the operational phase of the charter school), Regulatory Issues, Assessment and Accountability, Governance and Management, and Community Relations. We are available for customized training sessions/events that are designed to meet your needs. Please contact Joyce Ley via e-mail at leyj@nwrel.org or call 1.800.547.6339

“Charter Starters” Program

Charter school founders face numerous challenges as they attempt to create thriving new charter schools or successfully convert existing schools to charter status. Intensive instruction and assistance directed at charter school founders in the planning stage and first year of operation will contribute to the early success of charter schools and allow these schools to focus on improving student learning. For the past three years, The Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL) has worked with a team of charter school experts (including founders, operators, researchers, state education agency representatives, charter school association representatives, and an attorney) to identify the specific needs of charter school founders and to develop a leadership training program designed to address those specific needs. "Charter Starters," funded by the U.S. Department of Education, is the result of that effort.

Charter Starters is a five component training program designed to assist charter school founders as they work to create high quality, successful, public charter schools. The five components of Charter Starters are:

• Start-Up Logistics and Renewal Issues-- Charter school founders require expertise in areas such as building an organizational and leadership vision, acquiring a facility, establishing a legal entity, acquiring necessary start-up funds, and numerous other first steps. Renewal strategies are a crucial consideration from the first day of operation.
  
  
• Regulatory Issues --Charter founders should be aware of the multitude of federal and state regulations for which all public schools, including charter schools, are accountable. These include special education, health and safety regulations, liability issues, marketing issues, and a host of other state-specific regulations.
  
  
• Assessment and Accountability --The ability to develop an academically rigorous curriculum that is true to the school mission and aligned with program and student assessments is a key component of charter school sustainability. Developing appropriate accountability mechanisms is an important leadership ability.
  
  
• Governance and Management--Charter school founders must develop a stable organization with an accepted governance body and policies guiding both long-range planning and day-to-day operations. Founders should also have expertise, or access to expertise, in developing a sound financial plan that is compatible with school vision and fiscal realities.
  
  
• Community Relations
--Charter school founders should have the ability to deal with controversy, work with the media, and develop positive relationships with interest groups in their community, including the local district, school board, and/or local teachers union.

Charter Starters material is available online at www.nwrel.org/charter/publicat/charter_workbook.html.

A training module with sub-topic sessions was created for each of the five components. The sub-topic sessions may be used separately, together as a complete training module, or in any combination. Each sub-topic session includes curriculum materials, interactive activities and resources. The Charter Starters training materials were pilot tested with over 100 charter school founders representing 27 different charter schools from 12 states. In follow-up evaluation visits, these charter founders reported that the training experience, materials, and continued opportunities for networking were all very valuable to them as they developed their charter schools.

In the third year of this project (starting September 30, 1999), Charter Starters was refined by adding trainer tips to each module and scaling-up the training program nationally. In order to accomplish our goal, early in the year 2000, we assembled a design team comprised of representatives from regional comprehensive centers, regional equity centers, state charter school associations, state education agencies, charter school founders, and other interested organizations. Together with this design team we further refined the training materials during a week-long development session held in Portland.

Those attending the development session committed to offering training for charter school founders in their region following the development session. NWREL staff assisted with the local training events and offered technical assistance. NWREL also continued to follow participants from the second year of the program and assess the impact of the training experiences and materials.