The Growing Readers Initiative is an excellent example of the positive impact charters can have on public schools. This program is a collaborative effort between The Learning Community and Central Falls Public Schools.
The Growing Readers Initiative is a professional development partnership between an urban school district and a charter school – one of the few examples nationally of such collaboration. The Learning Community, a K–8 charter school founded in 2004, has developed a coordinated program to build strong readers in the early grades. Through the Growing Readers Initiative, teachers, coaches, specialists, and administrators from the charter school are working alongside their colleagues in the neighboring Central Falls School District to share best practices teacher-to-teacher, share systems of support and data analysis, and encourage a team approach to student achievement.
The collaborative approach, and its initial results, are shared in the current issue of Voices in Urban Education, published by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown.
