Lead of Project: Jesus Davila 

In 2016 Texas won a new three-year, $50.5 million Charter School Program (CSP) grant from the U.S. Department of Education (ED). This award was larger than all but four states with current CSP grants (FL, NY, OH, and CA). The Texas Education Agency’s (TEA) goals for this grant include increasing the number of high-quality charter schools campuses while reducing low-quality ones annually. Above all, TEA intends to produce sustained gains in academic performance and growth, leading to post-secondary readiness, increasing school choice, and new professional opportunities that attract talented educators (TEA 2015).  Safal Partners recently won the contract to evaluate the program that administers these funds through TEA, the Public Charter School Program Start-Up (PCPS) grant program. As part of this contract Safal will be responsible for the following evaluation activities:

• Identify best or promising practices in high-quality charter schools within the state
• Identify best or promising practices within Public Charter School Program Start-Up Grant recipients
• Examine the impact of the Public Charter School Program Start-Up Grant
• Examine if and how Public Charter School Program Star-Up Grant recipients attract, recruit, admit, enroll, serve, and retain students
• Examine if and how Public Charter School Program Start-Up Grant recipients attract, recruit, and retain highly-qualified instructors