FOSTERING INNOVATION AND EXCELLENCE

or all students to thrive in the classroom, in college, and in a career, our educational 

system must continuously develop and embrace the very best practices, policies, and 

ideas. Innovative practices are constantly emerging to help more students graduate ready for 

college and a career. We will ask policymakers and educators at all levels to carefully analyze 

the impact of their policies, practices, and systems on student outcomes. We will provide 

students and families with increased high-quality public school educational options, and 

empower them with improved information about the options available to them. And across 

programs, we will focus less on compliance and more on enabling effective local strategies to 

flourish.

F

OUR APPROACH

►Providing incentives for a Race to the Top among states and district willing to take 

on ambitious, comprehensive reforms.

►Developing, validating, and scaling up promising and proven educational strategies to 

improve student outcomes.

►Expanding educational options to increase choice within the public school system 

through high-performing new schools and meaningful public school choice.
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RACE TO THE TOP

OUR APPROACH

► Encouraging systemic reforms. Authorize Race to the Top as an ongoing program, giving 

competitive grants for systemic reforms that will lead to improvements in student outcomes.

► Grants to states and districts. Competitive grants to both states and districts, to support effective 

policies and reforms at both levels. 

► Focus on results. Grantees will have flexibility in the use of funds in line with plans, but 

continued funding is contingent on progress towards performance targets.

Even before the Recovery Act’s Race to the Top 

program awarded a single dollar, it had already 

drawn national attention to important reforms 

and led to many states and districts carefully 

rethinking their education laws and policies. For 

the first phase of the competition, 41 states and 

the District of Columbia submitted applications 

that laid out ambitious plans for putting in place 

the conditions for innovation and reform that 

will foster significant improvements in student 

achievement, high school graduation rates, and 

college enrollments, and to significant reductions 

in achievement gaps. While Tennessee and 

Delaware were the winners of the first phase of 

the competition, all of these states have taken 

crucial steps toward building stronger education 

systems.

Already, 12 states have passed laws that will lead 

to more children having access to high-quality 

charter schools, and others have passed laws to 

improve teacher evaluation, such as by 

considering student growth. In many states and 

districts, stakeholders have come together for 

the most productive conversations on education 

in years.

But we recognize that this isn’t enough. That’s 

why we’ll employ a rigorous and fair selection 

process in both phases of the competition, and 

award funds only to applicants that put forward 

the best plans that will lead to the best results. 

And it’s why we’re proposing, through ESEA 

reauthorization, to continue the reform 

processes Race to the Top has sparked, so that 

the Department can continue to work with 

states, expand the competition to districts, and 

continue to call attention and steer funding 

toward the very best ideas and policies, so that 

more students can benefit from the 

improvements that will result. 
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INVESTING IN INNOVATION

OUR APPROACH

► Fostering effective innovations. Authorize the Investing in Innovation fund as an ongoing 

program, giving competitive grants to districts or nonprofits to promote the development and 

expansion of promising and proven practices, strategies, and programs with potential for 

sustainability and significant scale.

► Tiers of evidence. Lower levels of funding for promising innovations with some research basis, 

and higher level of funding for proven innovations that are ready to go to scale.

► Rotating priorities. To drive innovations across the education sector, focus on a few consistent 

priorities like serving high-need students, but identify additional competitive priorities each year.

Innovation will be essential to achieving the 

dramatic improvements in educational 

achievement and attainment our nation 

seeks. Innovation is broadly recognized as the 

fundamental source of a nation’s growth and 

prosperity (OECD, 2009). And long ago it was 

recognized that the opportunity for innovation in 

social sectors like education was at least as great 

as in business and the economy (Drucker, 1985). 

These improvements will require dramatic 

acceleration in the rate of improvement in each 

of these metrics (Snyder et al., 2009). Moreover, 

education reforms will occur in an environment 

of constrained state and local funding for 

education (McNichol and Johnson, 2010; 

National Governors Association, 2010), making 

innovative, cost-effective approaches even more 

essential. Meeting our goals will require new 

solutions—products, processes, strategies, and 

approaches—that may not yet exist or may be in 

use at too small a scale. 

Effectively fostering innovation requires 

investments and strategies that are new for 

the education sector. It requires an accelerated 

investment in innovation, not only in basic 

research and development, but in developing, 

validating, and scaling up solutions that have 

already been developed. In the field of medical 

technology most innovations come from the 

field rather than the lab (Institute of Medicine, 

1995). Similarly in education, another field 

characterized by continuous practitioner 

adaptation, significant innovations are developed 

by educators and educational entrepreneurs 

(Hess, 2007). Yet these innovations, even if 

effective, can have tremendous difficulty scaling 

due to a poorly-functioning educational market 

that limits funding to develop and scale

promising innovations (Berger and Stevenson, 

2007). 

The Investing in Innovation fund 

complements the Department’s basic 

research and development function with 

specific resources targeted specifically at 

developing and scaling up these promising 

innovations. The $650 million Investing in 

Innovation fund authorized by the Recovery Act 

is already serving as a powerful lever for effective 

innovations in educational policies and practices. 

Thousands of potential applicants have 

expressed an interest in competing for program 

funds, and the program’s focus on evidencebased approaches is encouraging district and

nonprofit leaders to focus on expanding proven 

practices and evaluating promising ones. While 

this Recovery Act program will be instrumental 

in spurring the next generation of educational 

innovations, only an on-going program will be 

able to foster a culture of continuous innovation 

throughout the education system.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berger, Larry, and David Stevenson (2007). K–12 Entrepreneurship: Slow Entry, Distant Exit. Retrieved 

April 9, 2010, from http://www.aei.org/docLib/20071024_BergerStevenson.pdf. 

Christensen, C., C. Johnson, C, and B. Horn (2008). Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change 

the Way the World Learns. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Drucker, Peter (1985). Innovation and Entrepreneurship. New York: HarperCollins. 

Hess, Frederick (2007). Educational Entrepreneurship: Realities, Challenges, Possibilities. Cambridge, Mass.: 

Harvard Education Press.

Institute of Medicine (2005). Sources of Medical Technology: Universities and Industry. Washington, D.C.:

National Academy Press, Institute of Medicine, Committee on Technological Innovation in 

Medicine.

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (2009). Education at a Glance: 2009. 

Retrieved April 9, 2010, from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/41/25/43636332.pdf. 

McNichol, Elizabeth, and Nicholas Johnson (2010). Recession Continues to Battle State Budgets: State Responses 

Could Slow Recovery. Washington, D.C.: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Retrieved April 9, 

2010, from http://www.cbpp.org/files/9-8-08sfp.pdf.

National Governors Association (2010). The Big Reset: State Government After the Great Recession. Retrieved 

April 9, 2010, from http://www.nga.org/Files/pdf/1002stategovtaftergreatrecession.pdf. 

Snyder, Thomas, Sally Dillow, and Charlene Hoffman (2009). Digest of Education Statistics, 2008 (NCES 

2009-020). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, 

National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved April 9, 2010, from 

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009020.pdf.
SUPPORTING EFFECTIVE CHARTER SCHOOLS

OUR APPROACH

► Multiple eligible grantees. Grants to SEAs, authorizers, or nonprofits with a record of funding 

and supporting effective charter or other autonomous schools for the purpose of making 

subgrants, and direct grants to operators of charter and other autonomous schools.

► High standards for autonomy. Grantees and subgrantees may use funds for either charter 

schools or other autonomous schools that meet a rigorous standard of autonomy over budget, 

staffing, schedule, and program.

► High standards for accountability and learning what works. Charter and other autonomous 

schools will be held to high standards of accountability, and lessons learned will be disseminated to 

help other public schools.

► Family empowerment. Require that all grantees use funds for family outreach and information, 

and make lottery and admissions processes easy to navigate.

► Capacity building. Greater funding for capacity-building to raise standards for quality and 

support across the charter sector and for charter organizations that commit to partnering with 

districts for support and dissemination activities.

► Facilities. More flexible grants for charter school facilities, including credit enhancement.

Low-income and minority students are 

dramatically more likely to attend schools 

that have low student achievement and low 

graduation rates. Minority students in America 

are four times as likely as non-minority students 

to attend a high school with graduation rates that 

are very low, and three times less likely to attend 

a high school with graduate rates that are very 

high (Balfanz and Legters, 2004). Scores of 

students attending high-poverty schools are 

consistently lower than students attending more 

affluent schools on NAEP reading and 

mathematics tests (Planty et al., 2009).

Over the last 20 years, a significant and 

growing number of charter schools have 

opened in high-poverty and high-minority 

communities and had their students achieve 

dramatically better results than other schools 

in the community or state. Uncommon 

Schools, a charter management organization that 

manages 16 schools in Newark, New York City, 

upstate New York, and Boston, had 98 percent 

of their grade 3–8 students, 99 percent of whom 

are African-American, score advanced or 

proficient on the 2009 New York State Math 

exams and 89 percent on the state English 

Language Arts exams, outperforming the 

percentage of white students in the states scoring 

at similar levels. The organization has outlined 

plans to double the number of schools it 

operates to 33 in the coming years (Uncommon 

Schools, 2010). Green Dot, a charter 

management organization that works 

collaboratively with its teachers union, has 

graduated 80 percent of entering ninth-grade 

students within four years, far higher than the 

Los Angeles Unified School District’s graduation 

rate of 47 percent; in addition, 76 percent of 

graduating seniors have been admitted to fouryear colleges (Green Dot, 2010). Mastery Charter 

Schools, which was recruited by the School 

District of Philadelphia in 2005 to run 

turnarounds of failing schools, has substantially 

improved student achievement in the 
Philadelphia turnaround schools it operates, 

almost doubling and in some cases tripling the 

percentage of students scoring advanced or 

proficient in reading and math across all grade 

levels within two years of their restart. Every 

member of Mastery’s 2009 graduating class was 

accepted into a postsecondary institution

(Mastery, 2010). And a recent study of a KIPP 

school in Lynn, Massachusetts found that it is 

possible for these high-performing schools to 

serve high-need students, including English 

Learners and students with disabilities, at rates 

comparable to the district while delivering even 

greater gains for these students than for other 

students attending the school (Angrist et al., 

2010).

Demand for high-quality options such as 

these schools is high, with significant 

numbers of students enrolling on waiting 

SUNY Charter Schools Institute

New York’s Charter Schools Act of 1998 named the State University of New York (SUNY) Board of Trustees 

a ―chartering entity" with authority to approve charter schools statewide. The SUNY Trustees created the 

SUNY Charter Schools Institute to help it carry out its work as an authorizer. The Institute’s rigorous 

application process for new charter schools includes in-depth interviews with applicants and proposed 

board members, an extensive academic, fiscal and legal review by Institute staff, and a review by a panel of 

external experts in the fields of education and school finance. In its oversight and evaluation role, the 

Institute is in regular communication with all schools. Institute staff, or external evaluators contracted by 

the Institute, conduct on-site visits in the first, second, and third years of the charter and a comprehensive 

renewal visit in the school's fifth year. The visits include meetings with the principals or directors, school 

board members, staff, and students, classroom visits, and reviews of student work. In order for a charter to 

be renewed, the school must demonstrate that it has increased student achievement over the life of the 

charter both by the extent to which it has met SUNY's Charter Renewal Benchmarks (in the areas of 

academic success, organizational viability, fiscal stability, and reasonable and achievable plans for the 

future) and by the extent to which it has met its academic Accountability Plan goals (SUNY Charter Schools 

Institute, 2009). Of the 47 SUNY authorized charter schools that have applied for a full-term renewal, SUNY 

has not renewed, i.e. closed, seven schools. SUNY charter schools predominantly serve minority students 

(90 percent) and low-income students (76 percent qualify for free or reduced-price meals). Positive results 

of SUNY charter schools include:

► The average percentage of students in grades 3–8 scoring at the ―proficient‖ level in English language 

arts in 2008–09 in SUNY-authorized charter schools (80 percent) exceeded the average proficiency 

rate for non-SUNY-authorized charter schools (73 percent) and all public schools state-wide, charter 

and non-charter (77 percent). 

► There were similar results for mathematics: 92 percent, compared with 89 percent and 86 percent, 

respectively (SUNY Charter Schools Institute, 2009). 

lists. The waiting list for Philadelphia schools 

operated by Mastery Charter Schools was over 

300 in 2010, and there are similarly lengthy 

waiting lists for charter schools across the 

country. The Colorado Department of 

Education estimates that approximately 38,000 

children are waiting to be accepted into Colorado 

charter schools, an average of 462 students per 

school (Colorado Department of Education, 

2009). Nationally, estimates of the number of 

students on waiting lists for charters nationwide 

is as high as 365,000, with an estimated average 

of 238 students per school (NAPCS, 2009).

Despite these high-performing examples, 

and despite the high levels of demand for 

charter schools, there is inconsistent quality 

in the charter sector, a result of both a poor 

state policy landscape and insufficiently 

rigorous and supportive charter authorizer 
practices. Rigorous studies of the effectiveness 

of charter schools across multiple states have 

found that while many charters perform 

significantly better than state averages, many 

perform worse. A study of charter schools in 16 

states found that 17 percent delivered learning 

gains for students significantly better than local 

public schools, but 37 percent delivered 

significantly worse results than local public 

schools (CREDO, 2009). A follow-up study 

focused on charter schools in New York City 

reversed these numbers, with a smaller 

percentage (12 percent in reading and 16 percent 

in math) of charters delivering significantly worse 

results and a larger percentage (29 percent in 

reading and 51 percent in math) delivering 

significantly better results (CREDO, 2010). Out 

of these, and other, studies, a similar picture 

emerges: there is a great deal of variation in 

quality in charter schools, with some schools 

achieving at levels that are higher than traditional 

public schools, and some schools achieving at 

levels that are lower.

This inconsistency in quality stems in part 

from authorizers employing insufficient 

rigorous charter renewal and revocation 

policies, and can be addressed in part by 

authorizers playing a greater role in 

monitoring and supporting their schools. A 

key component of the charter model is 

authorizers holding charter schools accountable 

for student achievement to a degree greater than 

traditional public schools. But despite the high 

percentages of charters performing worse than 

local schools, very few charters are shut down for 

poor academic performance; of the 657 charter 

schools closed between 1992 and 2009, only 14

percent were closed for reasons related to 

academic performance, and of the approximately 

5600 charters ever opened, only 2 percent have 

been closed for academic reasons (CER, 2009; 

CER, 2010). Case studies of high-quality 

authorizers have found that these authorizers 

develop a strong talent pool and select quality 

applicants, support new school operations, 

provide meaningful and transparent oversight, 

and hold schools accountable for meeting 

performance goals (U.S. Department of 

Education, 2007).

This inconsistent quality may also in part be 

a result of state policies that effectively limit 

the growth of effective charter schools, or 

that do not ensure strong authorizing 

practices. A recent survey of charter laws in 

every state found that 13 states have in place a 

cap that either allows no room for growth or 

only allows limited room for growth; such caps 

can make it difficult or impossible for even highperforming charters to replicate (NAPCS, 2010). 

The same survey found that only eight states had 

in place systems for authorizer accountability 

that included even some of the important 

characteristics like an application or registration 

process in which eligible authorizers must 

actively seek to become authorizers, submission 

of annual authorizer reports, an oversight body 

with the authority to remove the right of 

authorizers to approve schools, and periodic 

formal evaluations of the state’s charter school 

program and its outcomes; only two states had in 

place many of these characteristics (NAPCS, 

2010).

A key attribute that allows charters to be 

successful is the substantial autonomy they 

enjoy, an autonomy that can be extended to 

public schools through means other than the 

chartering process. Greater autonomy can 

enhance efficiency, strengthen accountability, 

and allow for innovation and specialization 

(Plank and Smith, 2008). Plank and Smith’s 

(2008) review of the literature on autonomous 

schools found that “when skillfully supported 

with fiscal and other resources” (p. 407),

autonomous schools have been associated with 

greater commitment to local priorities, enhanced 
Clark County (Nevada) School District’s Autonomous Schools

Nevada’s Clark County School District (CCSD) initially designated four district elementary schools as 

Empowerment Schools during the 2006–07 school year. There are currently 27 Empowerment Schools in 

CCSD, including one middle school and three high schools, and there will be 28 Empowerment Schools in 

the 2010–11 school year. Empowerment Schools are predicated on the idea that schools should be given 

the freedom to determine how to best accomplish their goals and that decisions are most likely to be 

successful when all stakeholders—including teachers, parents, and community members—are given a voice. 

Each Empowerment School is led by a principal with autonomy over governance, instruction, staffing, 

budget, and scheduling decisions. Each Empowerment School creates a School Empowerment Team (SET) 

comprised of administrators, teachers, support staff, students, parents, and community members. The 

purpose of the SET is to collectively establish school priorities and decide how the school will operate. 

Empowerment Schools receive an additional $50,000 per year from community partners. Along with 

autonomy comes accountability, and Empowerment Schools have set specific achievement targets and 

receive an incentive of up to two percent of pay if student achievement and school outcome target are met 

(Clark County School District, 2010; Council for a Better Nevada, 2009). Positive results include:

► Empowerment Schools have increased the percentage of students proficient in mathematics by 10 

percentage points and in reading by 6 percentage points when compared with their pre-empowerment 

proficiency percentages (Council for a Better Nevada, 2009). 

► Students in third, fourth, and fifth grades in the original four Empowerment Schools performed 

significantly better than students in comparison elementary schools in reading and mathematics on 

2008–09 state achievement tests (Daellenbach and Carpenter, 2010).

► Parents whose children attend Empowerment Schools are more satisfied with their child’s school than 

parents whose children attend other district schools. For example, 91 percent of parents of students 

at Empowerment Schools were satisfied with the schools’ academic assistance opportunities 

compared with 82 percent of parents of students attending other district schools (Council for a Better 

Nevada, 2009).

teacher influence and engagement, and improved 

relations between schools, parents, and their 

communities. The literature review also found 

that sufficient knowledge and capacity at the 

school level is necessary for autonomous schools 

to improve student performance. In a study of 

autonomous high schools known as “innovation” 

schools in Baltimore, after controlling for student 

demographics and middle school test scores, 

students who attended innovation high schools 

had higher algebra and English state test scores 

and attendance rates than students attending 

other high schools in the district (Urban Institute, 

2007). Understanding the promise of autonomy, 

many districts have created autonomous schools 

programs, including Chicago’s Renaissance 2010, 

New York City’s Empowerment Schools, Baton 

Rouge’s Autonomous School Network, and Clark 

County, Nevada’s Empowerment Schools.

Even when choices are available to parents, 

they may be unaware of their options. A 

survey by a community-based organization in 

Chicago found that only 43 percent of 

respondents knew that charter schools were 

public schools and only 40 percent knew that 

charter schools were free for students to attend. 

A similar percentage (38 percent) had not heard 

anything about charter schools (TARGET Area 

Development, 2010). Another study of parents in 

Denver, Milwaukee, and Washington, DC found 

that compared with wealthier parents, parents 

with annual incomes below $20,000 were socially 

connected to fewer people with knowledge of 

school choices, felt less well informed, and more 

often preferred assistance from a “school choice 

counselor” or parent information center (Teske, 

Fitzpatrick, and Kaplan, 2007).
BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Angrist, Joshua D., Susan M. Dynarski, Thomas J. Kane, Parag A. Pathak, and Christopher R. Walters 

(2010). Who Benefits from KIPP? NBER Working Paper 15740. Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of 

Economic Research.

Balfanz, Robert and Nettie Legters (2004). Locating the Dropout Crisis: Which High Schools Produce the 

Nation’s Dropouts? Where Are They Located? Who Attends Them? Report 70. Baltimore: Center for 

Research on the Education of Students Placed At Risk (CRESPAR), Johns Hopkins University. 

Retrieved on April 15, 2010, from http://www.csos.jhu.edu/crespar/techReports/Report70.pdf.

Center for Education Reform (2009). The 2009 Accountability Report. Edited by Jeanne Allen, Alison 

Consoletti, and Kara Kerwin. Washington, D.C.: Author.

Center for Education Reform (2010). Annual Survey of America’s Charter Schools, 2010. Edited by Jeanne 

Allen and Alison Consoletti. Washington, D.C.: Author. 

Center for Research of Education Outcomes (2009). Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States. 

Stanford, Calif.: Center for Research on Education Outcomes, Stanford University. Retrieved April 

9, 2010, from http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/multiple_choice_credo.pdf. 

Center for Research of Education Outcomes (2010). Charter School Performance in New York City. Stanford, 

Calif.: Center for Research on Education Outcomes, Stanford University. Retrieved April 9, 2010, 

from http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/NYC%202009%20_credo.pdf.

Clark County School District (2010). Empowerment Schools. Retrieved on April 9, 2010, from 

http://ccsd.net/areas/superintendents-schools/empowerment.php.

Carpenter, Dick, and Kafer, Krista (2009). The State of Charter Schools in Colorado. Colorado Department of 

Education. 

Council for a Better Nevada (2009). 2009 Annual Report. Las Vegas: Council for a Better Nevada. 

Retrieved on April 9, 2010, from http://www.cbnonline.org/cbn_2009_annual_report.pdf. 

Daellenbach, S. and Carpenter, J. The Empowerment Schools Study: Final Report. Las Vegas: The Center for 

Evaluation and Assessment, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Green Dot Public Schools (2010). School Reports. Accessed April 15, 2010, from 

http://www.greendot.org/results.

Mastery Charter Schools (2010). Results. Accessed April 15, 2010, from 

http://www.masterycharter.org/Results.html.

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) (2010). How State Charter Laws Rank Against The 

New Model Public Charter School Law. Washington, DC: National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. 

Retrieved on April 15, 2010, from http://www.publiccharters.org/files/publications/DBModelLaw_Report_01-12-10.pdf.

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) (2009). Public Charter School Dashboard 2009. 

Washington, D.C.: National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Retrieved April 9, 2010, from 

http://www.publiccharters.org/files/publications/DataDashboard.pdf.

Plank, David and BetsAnn Smith (2008). Autonomous schools: Theory, evidence and policy. In Helen 

Ladd and Edward Fiske (eds.), Handbook of Research in Education Finance and Policy. New York: 

Routledge.

Planty, Michael, William Hussar, Thomas Snyder, Grace Kena, Angelina KewalRamani, Jana Kemp, 

Kevin Bianco, and Rachel Dinkes (2009). The Condition of Education 2009 (NCES 2009–081). 
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center 

for Education Statistics. Retrieved April 9, 2010, from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009081.pdf.

SUNY Charter Schools Institute (2009). SUNY Authorized Charter Schools: Celebrating 10 Years of High 

Quality Charter School Authorizing. Albany, N.Y.: Charter Schools Institute, State University of New 

York. Retrieved April 9, 2010, from http://www.newyorkcharters.org/documents/10thAnnivPubFinal.pdf.

TARGET Area Development Corporation (2010). Parent Perceptions v. Student Realities. Chicago: 

TARGET Area Development Corporation. Retrieved April 9, 2010, from 

http://targetarea.org/researchdoc/Parent-Perceptions-vs-Student-Realities.pdf.

Teste, Paul, Jody Fitzpatrick, and Gabriel Kaplan (2007). Opening Doors: How Low-Income Parents Search for 

the Right Schools. Seattle: Center on Reinventing Public Education. Retrieved April 9, 2010, from 

http://www.crpe.org/cs/crpe/download/csr_files/pub_crpe_open_jan07.pdf

Uncommon Schools (2010). Our Results. Accessed April 15, 2010, from 

http://www.uncommonschools.org/usi/ourResults/.

Urban Institute (2007). Baltimore City’s High School Reform Initiative: School, Students, and Outcomes. 

Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute. Retrieved April 9, 2010, from 

http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411590_baltimoreschools.pdf.

U.S. Department of Education (2007). Supporting Charter School Excellence Through Quality Authorizing. 

Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Innovation and Improvement.
PROMOTING PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE

OUR APPROACH

► Comprehensive systems. Grants to LEAs and SEAs to build comprehensive systems and 

develop programs that give students and families better choices and information.

► Flexibility in approach. Grantees may use funds to implement multiple different approaches to 

increasing choices, which may include inter- and intra-district choice, magnet, online learning, or 

academic pathways programs.

► Family empowerment. Grantees must use funds for family outreach and information, so that 

families and students are aware of, and able to access, these options.

Both intra-district and inter-district choice 

programs increase the options available to 

students and parents and have the ability to 

produce positive outcomes of students. Lowincome and minority families frequently live in 

areas with high concentrations of lowperforming schools, and their limited ability to 

move residences restricts their ability to select 

other schools for their children. Many school 

districts have addressed this inequality of 

opportunity by offering intra-district choice 

programs, which allow students and parents to 

choose a school other than their neighborhood 

school. Inter-district choice further increases the 

number of options available to students and 

their parents. Two studies of intra-district school 

choice programs found that students who were 

assigned to low-performing schools and chose to 

attend a higher-performing school experienced 

increases in mathematics and reading 

achievement (Hastings and Weinstein, 2008; 

Phillips et al., 2009). A comprehensive review of 

eight inter-district transfer programs found that, 

after an initial adjustment period, students who 

New Haven Public Choice, Connecticut

The New Haven Public Choice project has received two consecutive five-year Voluntary Public School 

Choice (VPSC) grants from the Department. New Haven is expanding efforts to provide high-quality school 

choice options to students who attend low-performing Title I schools. The project consists of a range of 

choice strategies, including inter- and intra-district magnet schools, charter schools, non-magnet schools 

called Lighthouse Schools, and a transfer program involving 13 urban and suburban school districts called 

Project Choice. Program practices include investing additional resources in receiving schools to attract 

students from low-performing schools, investing in a multi-pronged recruitment effort for inter-district 

magnets, and offering free transportation to promote inter-district magnet program enrollment. More than 

15 percent of eligible students participated in New Haven’s school choice project in 2007–08 (U.S 

Department of Education, 2009a). Positive results include:

► In 2005–06, 48 percent of magnet schools in New Haven made adequate yearly progress (AYP) in 

mathematics and reading, while only 24 percent and 19 percent of non-magnet schools made AYP in 

the respective subjects (New Haven Public Schools, 2007). 

► Students who transfer under VPSC have tended to outperform those remaining in lower-performing 

schools, regardless of the students' ethnicity, gender, or access to supplemental education (U.S. 

Department of Education, 2008b).
transferred from urban districts to suburban 

districts tended to demonstrate achievement 

gains (Holme and Wells, 2008). Additionally, 

parents who choose the public school their child 

attends are more satisfied with their child’s 

school, its teachers, and its order and discipline 

compared with parents whose child attends a 

district-assigned school (Tice et al., 2006). 

Online courses offer a new tool to expanding 

choice programs by connecting students to 

resources regardless of their location or 

economic circumstance (Lips 2010; Watson

et al., 2009; Zucker and Kozma, 2003). Online 

learning allows students to access advanced or 

specialized courses and expert teachers, 

regardless of the school they attend (NEA, 2006; 

Picciano and Seamen, 2009; Tucker, 2007). A 

recent synthesis of rigorous research addressing 

learning outcomes in online courses, mostly at 

the postsecondary level, generally found that 

students performed better, on average, in online 

and blended learning courses than in more 

traditional face-to-face classes (U.S Department 

of Education, 2009a). Another study of high 

school seniors taking online courses in 

Washington state concluded that the online 

option increased the proportion of students 

qualified for a high school diploma (Baker et al., 

2006).

Families need better information than is 

typically provided about their choice options.

In 2006–07, 95 percent of Title I districts that 

were required to offer parents the option of 

transferring to another school reported notifying 

parents of this option but only 20 percent of 

parents in eight large, urban districts said that 

they were notified of the transfer option (U.S. 

Department of Education, 2009b). Furthermore, 

an analysis of 21 notices to parents about Title I 

school choice found that fewer than half 

identified the schools from which families could 

choose or offered advice on how to choose the 

Louisiana's Algebra I Online Project

This pilot project, a part of the Louisiana Virtual 

School (LVS), provides Louisiana students with a 

certified Algebra I instructor and with a high 

quality Algebra I curriculum through a web-based 

course. The Algebra I Online Project targets rural 

and urban districts with schools where one or 

more sections of Algebra I are taught by an 

uncertified mathematics teacher. In addition, 

districts desiring to provide certified teachers 

access to pedagogy training and mentoring in 

order to build capacity for strong mathematics 

instruction are eligible to participate. The online 

teachers are Louisiana secondary certified 

mathematics teachers who were identified based 

on their outstanding teaching credentials. These 

teachers provide year-long instruction to students 

and mentor the in-class teacher throughout the 

year. The in-class teacher serves as the sitebased facilitator and co-instructor. Students 

benefit by having two teachers (the certified 

online teacher and the in-class teacher) who 

facilitate the in-class algebra learning activities. 

Students also utilize technologies, such as the 

graphing calculator, digital tablet, and e-mail 

(Louisiana Virtual School, 2010). 

Positive results include:

► A 2007 quasi-experimental study that 

compared the learning of students 

participating in the Louisiana Algebra I 

Online initiative with the learning of students 

in comparison classrooms found that online 

students performed better than their peers 

in conventional classrooms on a researcherdeveloped multiple choice test (O’Dwyer et 

al., 2007).

best school for their child (U.S. Department of 

Education, 2008a). Better information can make a 

difference. A study of school choice in CharlotteMecklenburg, North Carolina found that 

simplified information on school-level

achievement gains increased choice participation 

and that families were more likely to choose 

schools with higher test scores (Hastings and

Weinstein, 2008). 
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