Seven organizations will share approximately $4.7 million in grants to expand and improve the quality of their charter school activities, and a $3.7 million contract has been awarded to Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., to conduct the most rigorous study to date on the impact of charter schools on student achievement, U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige announced today.

Charter schools are public schools under contract or charter from a public agency to organizations that want to create alternatives within the public school system. Charter schools are free and open to all students. These schools provide enhanced parental choice and are exempt from many statutory and regulatory requirements. In exchange for increased flexibility, charter schools are held more accountable for improving student academic achievement.

"Charter schools play an important role in our efforts to ensure that no child is left behind," Secretary Paige said. "These grants will help charter schools continue to grow, providing more options for students and families, especially those students who attend schools in need of improvement."

The grants announced today will allow seven organizations to expand charter school activities, including teacher training, serving students with disabilities, training charter school leaders and turning traditional public schools that fail to make academic progress into high-quality charter schools, among others. A complete list of grant recipients follows at the end of this release.

Secretary Paige also announced that Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., has been awarded a $3.7 million contract to conduct a study on charter schools and student achievement. Although some research already exists that compares student progress in charter schools to students in regular schools, none of these studies adequately accounts for the differences between students who choose to attend a charter school and those who remain in traditional public schools.

This rigorous study will use randomized trials to evaluate the impact of charter school models on student achievement and other outcomes. The study calls for using a lottery to create two identical groups of students from among those who apply to charter schools. This method eliminates the bias in who selects to participate, thus making comparisons of the treatment group-students enrolled in charter schools-and the control group-students who applied but were not selected in the lottery-a fairer test.

The Department's National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance in the Institute of Education Sciences will oversee the evaluation, which will include about 25 elementary or middle schools. At each school, two groups of about 60 students will be randomly assigned by the lottery to attend either the charter school or a neighborhood school and these students' achievement and other outcomes will be measured.

The following organizations received grants under the Charter School Program:

American Academy for Liberal Education - to support their charter school accreditation system 1710 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
Project Director: William Craig Rice
202-452-8611
$900,000 over three years

Arizona State University-West - to support their "Leadership for Educational Entrepreneurs Mentors" Program, which targets leaders of high-need charter schools
P.O. Box 873503
Tempe, Ariz.
Project Director: Eleanor Perry
602-543-6318
$2,878,481 over three years

National Association of Charter School Authorizers - to develop a comprehensive set of tools, resources, guidance and training for charter school authorizers
1125 Duke Street
Alexandria, Va.
Project Director: Mark Cannon
703-683-9701
$1,513,500 over three years

National Association of State Directors of Special Education - to provide technical assistance to states to help them better serve charter school students with disabilities
1800 Diagonal Road, Suite 320
Alexandria, Va.
Project Director: Eileen M. Ahearn
703-519-3800
$1,616,534 over three years

New Visions Charter School - to replicate its innovative reading methods in traditional public schools
1800 Second Street, N.E.
Minneapolis, Minn.
Project Director: Bob DeBoer
612-789-1236
$950,451 over two years

NewSchools Venture Fund - to create five to six new "charter management organizations," nonprofit networks that help to manage charter schools
49 Stevenson Street, Suite 1275
San Francisco, Calif.
Project Director: Kim Smith
415-615-6867
$1,999,300 for one year

Public Impact - to identify ways state policymakers can use chartering to improve schools identified as in need of improvement under No Child Left Behind
504 Dogwood Drive
Chapel Hill, N.C.
Project Director: Bryan Hassell
919-967-5102
$500,400 over two years

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