Charter School Models

IPCSC-authorized schools use a wide range of educational models designed to meet the diverse needs of Idaho students and communities. This includes 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 schools integrate content and skills from the arts—dance, music, theater, and visual arts—with 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 provide depth and breadth of content using instructional techniques that consider students’ social, emotional, and cognitive development.
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. They 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.
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. They 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: Schoolwide Enrichment provides opportunities to develop products and services that build on student 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, and more, virtual schools offer a flexible, web-based option to families.
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.