What state do you live in / want to set up the school in?
I’m currently in California. I doubt this is where I’ll set up the first school, though, since my wife and I aren’t really comfortable here. (We’re here only because I’m finishing my Ph.D. down here.)
It seems like emailing someone at a charter school association for your state might get you partially where you need to go.
Yep, that’s on my to-do list. Thanks for the suggestion!
My concern is that I could totally see existing charter schools thinking they’re doing well (or at least surviving) because of their “focus on excellence” or their “guaranteed method of college preparation” or this or that, but have it turn out that their marvelous common sense missed the fact that, say, the people geographically near the school with money happen to like blue and the school’s logo has a lot of blue in it. And stupidly, the blue probably matters more than the college preparation.
Gerber’s suggestion for getting at this kind of info (what he calls “psychographics”) is to put out a poll to the people in one’s intended demographic and ask things like, “What brand of computer do you prefer?” and “What brand of toothpaste do you use?” Then backtrack by looking at the advertising methods of the things they indicated that they actually buy in order to get a hint about what kind of subconscious influence actually “generate a ‘buy’ response”. (Unsurprisingly, it’s useless to ask people what color most encourages them to try a product. They tend to claim no color does that to them despite statistical evidence to the contrary.)
Because I’m interested in doing something quite a bit different than what many charter schools do, I could easily get skewered by listening to their advice but have it turn out that they had absolutely no clue why they were actually successful. If it’s something they take for granted but I end up changing, that could be a problem.
So while I agree that talking to charter schools is a really great starting point, I can see where I’ll need to do at least a little bit of my own research. I’m just hoping I won’t have to reinvent the research methods on top of actually conducting it.
I’m currently in California. I doubt this is where I’ll set up the first school, though, since my wife and I aren’t really comfortable here. (We’re here only because I’m finishing my Ph.D. down here.)
Yep, that’s on my to-do list. Thanks for the suggestion!
My concern is that I could totally see existing charter schools thinking they’re doing well (or at least surviving) because of their “focus on excellence” or their “guaranteed method of college preparation” or this or that, but have it turn out that their marvelous common sense missed the fact that, say, the people geographically near the school with money happen to like blue and the school’s logo has a lot of blue in it. And stupidly, the blue probably matters more than the college preparation.
Gerber’s suggestion for getting at this kind of info (what he calls “psychographics”) is to put out a poll to the people in one’s intended demographic and ask things like, “What brand of computer do you prefer?” and “What brand of toothpaste do you use?” Then backtrack by looking at the advertising methods of the things they indicated that they actually buy in order to get a hint about what kind of subconscious influence actually “generate a ‘buy’ response”. (Unsurprisingly, it’s useless to ask people what color most encourages them to try a product. They tend to claim no color does that to them despite statistical evidence to the contrary.)
Because I’m interested in doing something quite a bit different than what many charter schools do, I could easily get skewered by listening to their advice but have it turn out that they had absolutely no clue why they were actually successful. If it’s something they take for granted but I end up changing, that could be a problem.
So while I agree that talking to charter schools is a really great starting point, I can see where I’ll need to do at least a little bit of my own research. I’m just hoping I won’t have to reinvent the research methods on top of actually conducting it.