Recently officials from the University of Southern California wrote to say that they think the Minnesota Charter Consultant Ratings are a “promising practice” that they want to share with others around the nation.  Through their National Center on Charter School Finance and Governance, a description of this project is being written.  As soon as it is finished, we will post it.

The following materials respond to numerous suggestions we’ve had from educators and consultants over the five years that we’ve down this kind of survey.

First, we include rankings of each of the 38 individuals and groups that received two or more ratings (1-5, with 1 being very poor and 5 being excellent).  We include this information both under various areas such as auditing, catering, special education assistance, etc, and alphabetically, by name of individual or organization.  You can see the individual ratings and the average. 

Second, we list the names of more than 100 other individuals or groups who were mentioned ONLY by one school.  Originally we included all ratings – but decided to protect privacy of the participating schools, not to include rankings when only one school named the consultant.

Third, we include case studies done several years ago by Humphrey Institute graduate students about charter public school/consultant relationships that worked out well, and poorly.  We believe there is a great deal to be learned from both kinds of relationships. 

Finally, we include a list of suggestions from charter schools and consultants about how to have a successful relationship.  While following these suggestions does not guarantee that a school will get what it wants from a consultant, we believe that using these ideas makes it much more likely that a school will be satisfied with services received.

Thanks to Naima Bashir and Sheena Thao, who spent hours talking with charter directors, and then compiling this information.  We welcome your feedback on this project.

Sincerely,

Joe Nathan, Director

Center for School Change

Humphrey Institute

University of Minnesota

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2007 Consultant Survey results:

ratings_alpha  ratings_area   otherconsultants2007 

Read more about case studies of charter/consultant relationships and suggestions for how to work with consultants.