Charter School Partners

The mission of Charter School Partners is to nurture and grow high performing charter schools in MN that close the achievement gap and demonstrate nationally-recognized excellence in academics and business. We have two overarching goals: 1) to close the achievement gap between white and low-income minority students and 2) to increase the number of high performing charters in the state.

Charter School Partners was incorporated in 2008 by a group of education reform leaders who were frustrated with the performance of public education and wanted to address a "crisis of quality" among charter schools in MN. Despite MN's history as the first state to authorize charter schools, a report generated by the MN Office of Legislative Auditors in June, 2008 confirmed that MN charters were not meeting the expectations of its founders. The report found "that a greater percentage of MN charter schools failed to make AYP than district schools" and "that, in general, charter school students did not perform as well on Minnesota's standardized assessments as students who attended district schools." The founding goal of Charter School Partners was to address this deficiency by providing academic and financial services to improve charter school performance and to advocate for high performing charters throughout MN.