Charter Schools

Publicly funded, independently operated schools that operate outside the traditional district structure — with the ability to experiment on curriculum, compensation, and delivery model.

Epic Oklahoma as a case study. David Perell (2020) highlighted Epic, an online charter school in Oklahoma with 38,000 students where teachers can earn over $100,000 per year. Tyler Cowen’s assessment: “EPIC is not far from doing real damage to traditional school finances.” Kyle’s framing: the threat to traditional school finances is the signal that a model is working, not a bug. If a charter school is forcing incumbents to reckon with their cost structure, it’s doing what it was designed to do.

KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program). A national network of public charter schools founded in Houston in 1994 by Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin (kipp.org). Kyle saved it as “Knowledge is power program — group of high performing public schools” around 2015 — an early indication of interest in performance-based alternative Education models.

Charter Schools and Their Enemies (Thomas Sowell) is on Kyle’s reading list as the analytical treatment of the political and institutional resistance to successful charter school models.

Where this appears

• There’s an Online Charter School… (tweet)