National Charter School Research Project Receives NACSA Award For Excellence

10/28/2008

At its Annual Conference in Indianapolis, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) announced the inaugural recipients of its Awards for Excellence. The National Charter School Research Project (NCSRP) was honored for "Advancing Knowledge" in the authorizing profession:

Fifteen years into the movement, the charter school debate continues in town halls, state capitals and in the Beltway as fervently as ever. Since 2004, the National Charter School Research Project (NCSRP) has sought to bring “rigor, evidence, and balance” to the charter school debate. Targeted at research and policy communities, charter organizations and funders, and the news media, NCSRP has provided valuable research, knowledge and resources to better inform the merits and future direction of the charter school sector. According to the Project’s Chairman, Paul Hill, “Our goal is to have something that an intelligent layman will understand, and that an academic will think is solid.”

NCSRP has made significant achievements in advancing the nation’s knowledge and understanding of charter schools. Its work includes evaluation of current research on charter schools’ academic outcomes; the formulation of standards for future research on the academic outcomes of charter schools; as well as numerous reports on issues of importance to the charter school community, including authorizing, charter school safety, the growth of charter management organizations (CMOs) and charter school leadership.