6 Common Challenges Charter Schools Face and How Education Technology Can Help

Leading a charter school is no small feat. It involves interacting with many stakeholders, including staff, students, and families, and when done effectively, can greatly benefit the community. 

As charter schools grow, so do the challenges their leaders must solve. Systems and practices that work for smaller organizations often fall short in larger education settings with more complex needs. The need for streamlined processes and efficient management becomes even more pressing as charter schools juggle more diverse student populations, larger staffs, and increasingly multifaceted tasks.

In this post, we’ll explore some of the most common challenges charter schools face and highlight solutions that can make a real difference in overcoming them.

Challenge 1: Staff Shortages 

Educational institutions across the country are grappling with teacher shortages, with nearly 9 in 10 schools facing unfilled teaching roles. Charter schools, in particular, are feeling the impact of this nationwide shortage, leaving gaps not only in teaching roles but also in essential administrative tasks.

Fewer teachers overall mean that each teacher is tasked with more duties. As a result, administrative tasks are divided among multiple people. When too many people take on responsibilities they struggle to fulfill, it often results in confusion, overwhelming workloads, and frustration for your school staff.

Fortunately, managing administrative tasks becomes much simpler with automation made possible with effective education technology solutions. These solutions lighten the load on staff, improve communication, and significantly increase efficiency. Educators can unlock greater operational success by streamlining crucial areas, including:

• Grading
• Student Activity Tracking
• Family Communication
• Curriculum Delivery
• State/Federal Compliance Reporting

By implementing edtech solutions, schools can redirect valuable time and energy toward the areas where they have the most impact — teaching and student growth.

In addition, schools that choose to partner with experts — such as education data specialists or a customer success team — can address issues proactively and fully maximize their tools. The result is smoother efficiency, happier families, and more satisfied teachers.

Challenge 2: Inaccurate Attendance Tracking

Accurate attendance data is crucial for both state reporting and measuring student engagement. If your school has an unreliable system, you may be at risk of falling short of meeting compliance requirements. The resulting penalties can significantly impact your funding and the long-term viability of your school. Furthermore, inaccurate attendance tracking makes it difficult to spot absenteeism patterns, which makes it more challenging to identify and provide effective support to at-risk students.

Managing attendance becomes much simpler with a robust software solution like a Student Information System (SIS). An SIS can automatically record students’ attendance electronically and in real time. It also reduces manual paperwork, ensures accurate and up-to-date data, and minimizes errors. When deadlines approach, an SIS exports attendance data in the required format, simplifying state and federal reporting and saving administrators valuable time.

Additionally, as more charter schools adopt flexible learning environments, leaders must be able to track attendance across a variety of instructional settings, including classroom, remote, and hybrid formats. An integrated system that tracks both synchronous and asynchronous learning ensures you capture a complete picture of student activity across different learning environments. This approach ensures accurate reporting, which is crucial for meeting attendance requirements and measuring student participation in virtual settings.

Challenge 3: Communication Gaps Between Schools and Families

Research shows that familial engagement is closely linked to better student outcomes. However, true engagement requires consistent communication between the school and families. Effective communication is particularly important when meeting the needs of diverse student populations and low-income families, as access to information among underserved demographic groups is often more limited.

To overcome communication barriers, charter school leaders can create opportunities for family engagement in a variety of situations:

• Parent-Teacher Events
• Volunteer Programs
• Advisory Councils
• Electronic Feedback Surveys

Having a combination of in-person and virtual communication strategies allows schools to connect with a broader range of families. To this end, a unified platform for messaging ensures everyone — teachers, staff, parents, and students — has a clear, centralized place to look for information. Whether it’s sharing student progress, scheduling parent-teacher meetings, or providing important updates about programming and schedules, an integrated system ensures everyone has the information they need to stay connected, engaged, and fully involved in the process.

At the same time, not everyone will have the same background knowledge or speak the same language. It’s important to make sure your communications are tailored to the needs of your school’s families. Consider diversifying staff to accommodate different language speakers. If you’re leveraging technology, look for translation features within your tech stack to send messages translated into families’ native languages.

Challenge 4: Ineffective Enrollment Processes

The lifeblood of charter schools is their ability to meet annual enrollment targets. Yet, managing fluctuating enrollment, attracting new students, and retaining your current families are ongoing challenges for every charter school — especially as you face growing competition from other schools.

To thrive, a charter school needs a strategic plan that not only promotes its mission but also boosts enrollment and fosters long-term relationships with families. Essential components of a successful recruitment strategy include developing a unique brand identity, highlighting the school’s strengths to prospective students, and utilizing local media to expand reach.

Not every school has dedicated resources or the available personnel to manage enrollment effectively, so making the most of technology to manage these evolving needs is a good place to start for increased efficiency. A tech-driven enrollment management system can simplify the application process, automatically manage waitlists, and streamline student enrollment. These systems allow for proactive outreach to help build trust and transparency with prospective families.

It’s also equally important that student admissions should follow an equitable, rules-based process. A system equipped with configurable lottery settings can be a powerful tool for your school to ensure that student selections are clear and free from bias. Look for solutions that allow you to achieve multiple tasks, such as tracking enrollment numbers, weighing preferences, and generating auditable documents, in a single system.

Challenge 5: Limited Data-Driven Insights

Data-driven insights enable charter schools to address behavioral or academic issues early and meet accountability goals with documented reports. Additionally, regularly collecting and analyzing data allows charter schools to evaluate their performance across multiple areas, such as enrollment numbers, student achievement, and graduation rates. 

Although the benefits of evidence-based decisions are clear, collecting and analyzing a complex web of data is no easy task for any team, especially when using outdated or disconnected technology or lacking the training to fully leverage available data. 

With the proper systems in place, you can generate custom reports, analyze real-time trends, and integrate other systems — like your LMS or individualized instructional technology — to get a holistic overview of performance, improve instructional methods, and meet accountability standards. To ensure teachers and administrators feel confident in analyzing and using data, make sure your solutions partner can provide dedicated training sessions and ongoing support. 

Challenge 6: Compliance Issues With State Reporting

Charter schools must navigate a complex landscape of state and federal regulations, including data reporting systems like CALPADS, to safeguard their funding and uphold accountability. The challenge? Compliance requirements are constantly evolving, and many schools may not have dedicated staff to stay on top of these changes. While manual data collection might seem like a manageable option, it masks inefficiencies and leaves schools vulnerable to compliance risks that could jeopardize their operations.

Getting help from external compliance experts can enable your school to stay ahead of the ever-changing regulations without added stress. For example, School Pathways’ CALPADS experts serve as dedicated partners to help determine the steps schools need to take for certification. Having the right support in place means schools can focus on their core goals while experts handle the complexities of compliance.

With an up-to-date, CALPADS-compliant SIS, your school can generate required reports using real-time data in the proper format. This not only helps meet regulatory deadlines but also eliminates the burden of manual data collection. Additionally, it ensures that data is securely stored and readily available for audits and reviews.

Be Proactive To Meet Charter School Challenges

Charter schools face a wide range of challenges that can make it difficult for them to fully meet their goals, but there are solutions available to ease the burden of these hurdles. When charter school leaders take a proactive, data-driven approach to managing their school’s administrative requirements, they can tackle many of the most common problems at once.

School Pathways is dedicated to providing integrated tech solutions that give charter schools the time, resources, and tools to face these challenges every day. Request a demo today to see how School Pathways can help your school.