During the 2019-20 academic year, The Learning Collective worked with the Tennessee State Board of Education to lead its board and staff members in a strategic planning and goal-setting process and to develop a new Master Plan. It was an honor to lead the process to develop the five-year direction for all Tennessee public schools representing approximately 1,000,000 students statewide!
For the second consecutive year, The Learning Collective is conducting the third-party evaluations of all applications for new schools submitted to New Orleans Public Schools (NOLA PS). New Orleans is the only public school district in the country comprised entirely of charter schools. Here are some lessons we have learned from this important work:
Despite, and in some respects because of, the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 was a very busy year for The Learning Collective. Our diverse clients and projects spanned ten states. We:
In all of The Learning Collective’s strategic planning engagements, we incorporate core elements. In our work with Florida and Oklahoma authorizers – as well as our collaborations with individual schools such as Discovery Charter School, Beginning with Children and Academy of the City – we take these five steps:
In an attempt to improve charter school authorizing nationally, The Learning Collective has been increasingly partnering with national charter school authorizing support organizations like NACSA and a number of state-level authorizers including Central Michigan University, Idaho Public Charter School Commission, Indiana Charter School Board, New York State Education Department, SUNY Charter Schools Institute and the Washington State Charter School Commission. Through this work a few things have become apparent.
2019 was a productive years for The Learning Collective. We led strategic planning projects with some new clients, such as Discovery Charter School and the Beginning with Children education network in New York, and with authorizers such as those through our partnership with Oklahoma Public School Resource Center.
TLC attended the nation’s first conference exclusively for independently run (i.e. not managed by a Charter Management Organization or Education Management Organization) charter schools – the 2017 Independent Charter School Symposium. It was also a pleasure to moderate the “Charter Authorization: Road to Greatness or Mediocrity?” on the role of authorizers in the charter school sector and whether authorizers are stifling innovation.
Here are some lessons learned, and ideas generated by, the thoughtful conversations and attendees:
Adam Aberman of The Learning Collective is the moderator of the panel: “Charter Authorization: Road to Greatness or Mediocrity?” This is part of the inaugural 2017 Independent Charter School Symposium.
Charter school authorizers are increasingly partnering with consultants. We see this in our ongoing and renewed partnerships with these and other charter authorizers: Charter Schools Institute of the State University of New York, Washington State Charter School Commission, New Jersey Department of Education and Nevada State Public Charter School Authority.
