Charter School Support Initiative

The Charter School Support Initiative (CSSI) is a process whereby charter schools are evaluated with the same 9 standards for school reform that's used in underperforming Title I schools in Colorado. The CSSI process includes an additional standard to address charter school governance, but otherwise the two processes are identical.

Charter schools can decide to voluntary go through the CSSI process. For underperforming Title I schools it's mandatory. The process entails a team of CDE-trained experts conducting a 4-5 day school visit and speaking with almost all of the administration, staff, board members and many students and parents. Within a couple of weeks of the visit, the school is given a report that details short-term and long-term goals to hone in on the specific areas that will make the quickest increase in student academic achievement and/or school reform.

Charter schools that have already undergone a CSI visit said it enabled them to focus on priorities and create a Professional Learning Community. We don't have any CSAP to attribute to schools that have had a CSSI site visit, but if the data reflects anything like it does in Title I schools, there will definitely be a corelated increase in student achievement.