In a Washington Examiner op-ed, Barbara F. Hollingsworth credits D.C.’s “well-crafted charter school law” with the city being the only East Coast location chosen for a BASIS public charter school. This year, US News & World Report named BASIS Tucson the top public charter school and sixth-best public high school in the nation. The school has a 100 percent graduation and college acceptance rate. A rigorous prep-school curriculum starts in fifth grade; matriculation exams ensure students master content before advancing to the next grade. Although its building will not be ready until July, BASIS DC has been holding after-school and weekend tutoring sessions in four locations since February; already, 40 percent of the students are participating. Teachers are focusing especially on helping the 20 percent who have been identified as extremely low-performing in math and reading. Preliminary testing indicates that students, who come from across the city, have advanced more in five weeks of tutoring than in a whole year at DC Public Schools. Co-founder Michael Block predicts BASIS graduates “will be among the best-educated in the city.”

We at HighMark are encouraged by the statistics below, which show that EMOs and CMOs continue to grow and account for a significant portion of charter school enrollment throughout the nation.  We look forward to partnering with successful charter management organizations and education management organizations looking for facilities solutions–often the missing component in a feasible growth plan.

Number of Charter Schools and Students Enrolled in Charter Schools

Source: Compiled by NAPCS using the Public Charter Schools Dashboard and reports on CMO and EMO management organizations from the National Education Policy Center.