Charter School Models

IPCSC-authorized schools use a wide range of educational models designed to meet the diverse needs of Idaho students and communities, including both single-focus programs and dual-model approaches that combine multiple instructional philosophies or areas of emphasis. These models reflect the innovation and flexibility that are central to public charter schools in Idaho.

1. Alternative: Alternative schools meet the unique needs of at-risk students.
2. Arts Integration: Arts integration is instruction that integrates content and skills from the arts—dance, music, theater, and the visual arts—with other core subjects.
3. Blended Learning: Blended Learning schools offer individualized learning opportunities by providing face-to-face instruction as well as guiding student engagement with online curriculum.
4. Brain Based: Brain Based schools focus on providing depth and breadth of content using instructional techniques that consider the shifting social, emotional, and cognitive development of students as they age.
5. Career Technical: Career technical schools focus on preparing students for high-demand careers.
6. Classical: Classical school models provide rigorous instruction focused on the trivium: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. These schools include instruction in Latin and implement direct instruction strategies, such as lectures and demonstrations.
7. College Preparatory: College Preparatory schools focus on preparing students for college success.
8. Compass: Compass is an Idaho-grown model that focuses on delivering challenging curriculum in an environment of trust, safety, and excellence.
9. Core Knowledge: Core Knowledge schools provide a curriculum that is both specific and sequenced. These schools focus on building a broad core of shared knowledge in the early education years to empower deeper learning later.
10. Dual Language: Dual Language schools present literacy skills and instructional content in two languages.
11. Expeditionary Learning: Expeditionary Learning schools embrace project-based, multi-disciplinary learning in an environment that embraces diversity, discovery, and civic engagement.
12. Harbor: Harbor schools provide a rigorous, fast-paced curriculum in a learning environment built on safety, trust, respect, and responsibility. Consistency and routine help deliver a dynamic character education program.
13. Innovative: A school approved as an innovative or novel model.
14. International Baccalaureate: International Baccalaureate schools provide a rigorous, inquiry-based program to develop knowledgeable, confident, and caring young people. Students are empowered to take ownership of their own learning and develop future-ready skills to make a difference and thrive in a world that changes fast.
15. Montessori: Montessori schools offer child-centered programs that include multi-age groupings, uninterrupted learning time, and guided choice.
16. Multi-Age: Multi-Age classrooms allow students to build relationships beyond their own age group, help normalize growth and change, and provide opportunity for students to have the same teacher for multiple years.
17. Native Language and Culture: Native Language and Culture schools offer student-centered instruction, an immersion approach to native language, and cultural enrichment opportunities.
18. Place-Based: Place-based education promotes learning oriented to the unique history, environment, culture, economy, literature, and art of a particular place.
19. Project Based Learning: Project Based Learning is an instructional model that allows students to work in large blocks of time to explore and investigate authentic and complex questions.
20. Schoolwide Enrichment: The Schoolwide Enrichment model provides standards-based instruction enriched by opportunities for students to develop products and services that build on their strengths and interests and benefit the community.
21. STEAM: STEAM expands on STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education by including the arts.
22. STEM: STEM schools provide a hands-on education with a focus on one or more areas of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics.
23. Virtual: With models specializing in career technical education, credit recovery, special needs, and more, Idaho's virtual charter schools offer a flexible, web-based option to families statewide.
24. Waldorf: Waldorf schools offer multi-disciplinary curriculum delivered in single-age classrooms. They offer a tech-limited, natural-material environment that values academics, imaginative play, and craftsmanship.