Charter School Founders Program: Supports for School Leaders

Abstract

Presently, students of color in a southeastern state do not have access to high-quality schools. The Charter School Founders program seeks to create schools that provide opportunities to students and families to mitigate systemic educational inequities. This mixed-methods study investigates the supports charter school leaders and founders found useful in launching and running their schools. This study is the first of its kind in the literature world of charter school founding. Our research examines charter school stakeholders' perspectives on the Charter School Founders Program’s supports. This compiled report seeks to answer the following questions: (1) To what extent is the program providing the support school leaders need to launch and run their schools? And what supports do they think are the most useful? (2) What additional supports do fellows and school leaders need currently not provided? (3) To what extent do supports compare from a school founder program to similar programs nationally? The conceptual framework, consisting of the three main buckets of culture and people, instruction, and organization, served as a foundation for our research (Grissom et al., 2022). Based on the findings of our study, we recommend that the Charter School Founders Program expands academic support for academic programming and accountability, provides practical recruitment and hiring strategies, build a charter facilities incubator, prioritize sustainability in financial planning, and increase the responsiveness of leadership development.