Three days. 700 schools. A whole lot of head-to-head battles between custom-made robots.

This is Part IV in a series dedicated to National Charter Schools Week “Taking my daughter to ‪@ECOTSchool . This school is the best ‪#homeschool. Cool how we met some awesome people there.” “The ‪#ecot ‪#masqueradeball ‪#prom is underway! @ Hilton Columbus Polaris” “Check out the new ‪#ECOTtv promo for the upcoming 2014 ‪#scienceexpo here:…

This is Part III in a series dedicated to National Charter Schools Week, and to community members and parents everywhere who mobilize to improve education for their children. Upon hearing that their local elementary school was closing, parents and community members of small town Spartansburg, PA decided to take matters into their own hands to make…

Education reformers across the country were saddened to hear about the passing of Gary Becker, a brilliant icon of economics who bolstered the basic tenets behind educational choice and Parent Power. Through an extensive and wide-ranging body of work, Professor Becker had a distinct ability to examine societal issues, and humanize them to demonstrate realities on the ground.…

Part II in a series dedicated to National Charter Schools Week  99 percent. That was the rate at which 2012 graduating seniors at Boys’ Latin Charter School in West Philadelphia were accepted into colleges across the United States. Quite fittingly, Boys’ Latin is a self-described college preparatory high school, and judging by college acceptance and matriculation…

Part I in a series dedicated to National Charter Schools Week In 1997, following the passage of the DC School Reform Act that set the stage for the robust charter school environment in the nation’s capital, reform visionary and CER Board Member Donald Hense saw the need to improve education for locally impoverished students. Six…

It is always interesting to see how the U.S. government divides its power between the state and federal levels. Though many of us have learned about the subject in theory, it isn’t always that easy to understand in practice. Attending the hearing of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce titled, “Reviewing the President’s…

The New America Foundation convened a panel discussion to “cash the check,” as Senior Researcher Conor Williams put it, on the information expounded in a recently published book entitled Our School: Searching for Community in the Era of Choice. The book follows two elementary school classrooms, a kindergarten class in the start-up charter school Mundo…

Charter schools make an impressive showing on the U.S. News & World Report’s list of America’s Best High Schools, accounting for 24 percent of the top 100 high schools on the rankings. For the rankings, U.S. News & World Report evaluated 500 top schools. Of these 500 schools, 84 are charter schools, totaling 17 percent…

As my semester of interning at CER comes to an end, I am able to reflect on all that I have been exposed to in such a short period of time. When I first came to CER in February, I didn’t know what to expect. As the first few days of my internship commenced, I…