Leadership

The primary mission of NCSI is to inspire and democratize excellence in education.

For nearly 25 years, NCSI has worked to provide a range of training and support for people and organizations in the charter community—from policymakers to authorizers to school operators. NCSI brings extensive support experience, along with its first rate digital compliance and performance management platform, Epicenter, to the A-GAME project. It facilitates working sessions and professional development opportunities, supports the development and dissemination of project related deliverables, and provides a data platform that will enable authorizers and other stakeholders to set performance targets with their alternative charter schools.

Momentum's mission is to bring to light the best available data and information to impact K-12 public education policy and practice.

Using their original research and Alternative School, Performance, and Policy Database, the co-founders of Momentum, Jim Griffin and Dr. Jody Ernst, have been assisting stakeholders in K-12 education—from school practitioners to state departments of education—to develop relevant and rigorous alternative accountability measures, metrics, and frameworks for nearly two decades. As such, Momentum is the primary grant partner to NCSI and serves as content expert to the A-GAME project--providing data and analytics to build the data dashboard and support informed recommendations from the project team and National Authorizer Leadership Team.

Nelson Smith has held leadership positions in education policy for more than 30 years. In addition to serving as the first President and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Nelson has served as Senior Advisor to the National Association of Charter School Authorizers; the first Executive Director of the District of Columbia Public Charter School Board; Vice President for Education and Workforce Development at the New York City Partnership; and Director of Programs for the Improvement of Practice at the U.S. Department of Education. He has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and has written extensively about education reform issues including alternative charter school accountability and oversight of virtual charters.

While a senior advisor to the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, Nelson convened an Alternative Charter School Work Group, which resulted in the report, Anecdotes Aren’t Enough: An Evidence Based Approach to Accountability for Alternative Charter Schools.

The National Authorizer Leadership Team (NALT) consists of eleven forward thinking authorizing organizations that each authorize at least one alternative charter school. NALT members were selected to represent the general authorizing community and include myriad contexts and historical backgrounds. They are large and small, district and university, state SEAs and independent state boards, East coast and West coast, Northern and Southern. The NALT provides guidance to the project team and assists in the development of many of the A-GAME grant products and deliverables

The NALT includes the following organizations: