State Policy Regimes and Charter School Performance

How have charter schools in Wisconsin performed relative to traditional public schools? Two analyses provide an answer: First, a comparison of achievement test scores for students in Milwaukee charter and traditional schools from 1998 to 2002 for grades 3 through 10 finds a relative advantage for charter school students using fixed effects and first difference specifications. Second, a methodological approach new to the debate over performance in choice schools assesses schoollevel standardized tests in the fourth and eighth grades for 2000–01 and 2001–02. The results for fourth grade are generally favorable for charter schools; those for eighth grade are mixed. Overall, the results from these two analyses suggest that charter schools in Wisconsin are performing somewhat better than the traditional public schools from which they draw students. © 2007 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management

This article empirically examines how competition influences an organization’s strategic choice of product-market scope in a nonprofit industry, as well as the relationship between product-market strategies and organizational performance. Using panel data of charter schools in Texas (1997-2007), we find evidence that competition in a particular market segment decreases a focal organization’s likelihood of entering the segment; once having entered the market, an organization’s product scope increases with the number of competitors in the market, albeit at a decreasing rate. Our findings also indicate that an organization’s strategic choice has differing effects on different dimensions of organizational performance: a broader product-market scope hurts an organization’s financial performance, but improves its non-financial (academic) performance. Further, environmental turbulence strengthens the negative impact of scope on financial performance, but it does not affect the positive impact of scope on academic performance.

This article applies theoretical and empirical insights on diffusion to a contemporary, important, and striking case in point: the groundswell of state legislation on and implementation of charter schools over the past decade. Drawing from several data sources and using event-history analyses, competing risks, and random-effects negative binomial regression, the analyses examine how interstate dynamics and intrastate attributes affect the adoption of legislation on and the creation of charter schools within states. The findings reveal a strong mimetic tendency among adjacent states to adopt charter school legislation and regional similarities in the creation of charter schools. Internal attributes of states, such as competition between the private and public school sectors, the relative strength of teachers' unions, the presence of racial competition, urbanization, and political party dominance likewise play a role, depending on whether the analytic focus is on the adoption of legislation or the implementation of policy. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of the results for understanding the forces underlying innovation and change in educational policy.

This project focuses on the competitive pressure, or the threat of competitive pressure, generated by charter school policy. This paper uses longitudinal district-level data and multiple quasi-experimental designs to examine the relationship between two Ohio charter school policies and changes in public school district instructional resource allocation. Some believe that the competitive pressure created by charter schools will improve efficiency in district-run public schools; however, the findings from this study do not reliably demonstrate that charter school policy will induce a public school district to increase the level of instructional resource allocation. The findings do provide evidence that some charter policies are linked to changes in resource allocation at certain school districts. This study suggests that additional, multiple method investigations are needed to study how public school districts respond to competition and policies designed to change the levels of competition in the public school system.

This chapter begins with a brief overview of the charter school movement and the most current charter school demographics available. It then discusses the assumptions of the charter school concept and sets an agenda of further research questions on the validity of these assumptions. In Minnesota, the charter school concept evolved once again. Rather than being dependent schools that are part of a district, charter schools could be independent of the local school district, thereby stimulating systemic reform through competition and market forces. The Center for Education Reform, a charter school advocacy group, has developed criteria for determining whether a state charter school law is expansive or restrictive in terms of the ability to create and operate charter schools. Although the growth and stability of charter schools may eventually accelerate reform for school districts, for the time being market forces seem to be operating most effectively among charter schools themselves.

This article presents the results of an investigation involving the provisions for special education services in state charter school legislation and highlights selected special education issues within Colorado's charter schools. The research included document reviews, a survey of individual charter schools, interviews, and site visits in four schools. The results of this multilevel effort reveal significant variability across states and among charter schools within Colorado in how students with disabilities access the schools as well as how special education is provided. There is a general lack of information flowing to charter schools about special education and a disparity in how services are funded and provided. Legal and administrative responsibilities for special education are often ambiguous. Nonetheless, charter schools appear to offer individualized educational approaches that are perceived by many parents and teachers as meeting the needs of many students who had experienced learning as well as behavior problems in the public schools.

The public school system in U.S. has changed dramatically over the past few decades. Institutionally, neo-liberal reform has created a new educational apparatus known as charter schools. As they admit students without school boundaries, these schools promise to offer great opportunities for disadvantaged students. The enrollment in charter schools is mainly Latinx and Black students, especially in large urban areas. That demographic shift is not reflected in the literature because previous studies have predominately focused on comparisons between Whites and minorities. Using Chicago as a case, this study compares the association between the enrollment of Black and Latinx students with educational resources and academic performance in charter schools. Using Illinois Report Card data representing 119 public schools during the 2016 to 2017 academic year, we aimed to understand which group could more systemically benefit from charter schools. We found that although the enrollment of Black students might be associated with better educational resources (i.e., total number of school days per academic year, and class size), the enrollment of Latinx students predicted stronger school academic performance on the SAT and PARCC. Those findings can contribute to the debate about institutionalized racial inequality in education and the effects of charter schools.

In the context of twenty-first century educational reform efforts, school choice options have led to an increase in the number of Afrocentric charter schools. As a school choice option, charter schools that incorporate an Afrocentric approach are more prevalent in large urban school systems disproportionately populated by African-American children and youth. This study examined available data on the performance of Afrocentric charter schools based on their standardized statewide adequate yearly progress (AYP) status. Using systematic research methodology, a keyword search of research databases and internet search engines, 27 Afrocentric charter schools in the USA were identified. Twenty three of the schools met the criteria for analysis, and only 34 % of those schools achieved or exceeded statewide standards in testing and met their state’s AYP goals. Implications for future studies are discussed. The research team contends that Afrocentric charter schools must gain greater legitimacy, using standardized accountability measures, in order to become a credible school choice option to failing urban public schools.

PurposeThis study aims to use the original data collected from school board members representing nonprofit charter schools in the state of Minnesota to examine the relationship between the distribution of board-executive governance responsibilities and the performance of organizations operating as part of a New Public Management style macro-governance reform.Design/methodology/approachA combination of survey data collected from Minnesota charter school board members and hard performance data were utilized in two OLS regression models to predict the link between organizational governance and school performance.FindingsThe authors find that boards can improve hard measures of organizational performance by shifting responsibility of day-to-day operations closer to the executive, and public advocacy duties closer to the board. The results build on the existing literatures on school board governance and board-executive relations. Overall, the findings suggest the existence of an ideal balance between board-executive governance responsibilities in key functional areas on charter school boards.Originality/valueThough a healthy literature exists regarding the value of charter schools, very few studies have actually explored the way in which these organizations are governed. This study is the first to link charter board governance responsibilities to performance.

Charter schools have grown significantly since 1991, when Minnesota became the first state to enact charter school legislation. Charter schools are public schools, as defined by federal and state law. Thus, when it comes to issues of religion and education, charter schools are bound by the same laws and legal precedents as public schools. As a result, local developers and state chartering agencies that seek to establish religious or faith-based charter schools are likely to fail in state and federal courts. This chapter examines this legal framework in the larger charter school movement.

In recent years, a series of articles have examined the performance of charter schools with mixed results. Some of this research has shown that charter school performance varies by charter type or the age of the school (Bifulco & Ladd, 2006; Buddin & Zimmer, 2005; Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 2002; Sass, 2006). However, this research has not examined the school attributes that lead to high- or low-achieving charter schools. In this article, we examine how student achievement varies with school operational features using student-level achievement and survey data for charter and a matched-set of traditional public schools from California. We did not find operational characteristics that were consistently related with student achievement, but we did identify some features that are more important at different grade levels or in charter schools versus in traditional public schools. We also examined the relationship between greater autonomy within schools, which is a major tenet of the charter movement, and student achievement and found very little evidence that greater autonomy leads to improved student achievement.

ABSTRACTFew evaluations have focused on the supply and demand within the education marketplace in a school choice environment. Because traditional public schools are not subject to the same level of competitive pressures as private schools, we expect that measures of school quality—enrollment, academic achievement, and safety—will be more likely to predict closures for private schools and public charter schools than Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). We employ survival analysis using data from private, traditional public, and public charter schools in Milwaukee from 2005 to 2016. Data on enrollment trends, demographics, and academic performance from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction were combined with data from other sources on school safety and closure. Results from our models suggest: (a) enrollment losses drive school closure in all three sectors, (b) low academic achievement only predicts closure for private schools, (c) families choose schools based on academics in all three sectors, and (d) academics and school safety are positively correlated.

Should We Wait for Superman? Evaluating the Performance of Charter Schools in the Greater Los Angeles Area

The political economy of school choice: Support for charter schools across states and school districts

The authors discuss two studies that show that school leaders assemble and deploy their professional staffs in ways that aren't possible in traditional And, since the heart and soul of any school is its teaching staff, few things that we are apt to learn about the operations of schools are more consequential than the realized opportunity they present for innovation-minded principals to do things differently on the personnel front. ARE CHARTER schools really different? Everyone knows that their governance is freer, their budgets leaner, and their longevity less certain than regular public but how different is what actually goes on inside them? Is it anything that students, parents, and teachers would notice? Anything that might make them produce better results? Anything that the rest of American education might learn from? If not, the whole school enterprise may amount to little - a comet flashing across the sky, perhaps, but not the new education solar system that its boosters and backers claim. With the phenomenon barely a decade old, and with the average school only in its second or third year, the majority of America's 2,400 charters are still struggling with myriad start-up problems. It's too soon for definitive judgments on the innovativeness of schools - nor is that, in the long run, the most important thing to know about them. Frustrated education reformers are chiefly interested in whether charters boost pupil achievement. Parents mainly want to know whether their children will be safe in these schools and will learn to read, write, and cipher. Still, for the many educators and policy makers who view schools as beta sites for a broader effort to renew and reinvigorate U.S. education, keen interest attaches to the question of whether they're really different from standard-issue public (and perhaps private) Evidence is trickling in, some of it anecdotal, some of it systematic. Two new studies conducted for the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation - one of them limited and anecdotal, the other wide-ranging and scientifically significant - contribute to that stream. Both address the question of whether people leading schools are taking substantive advantage of their freedom and are, in fact, innovating. The informal study - Autonomy and Innovation: How Do Massachusetts Charter School Principals Use Their Freedom? - was conducted by Bill Triant, a former teacher in the Boston Public Schools who is now studying education and business at Stanford University.1 He interviewed eight Bay State principals on five dimensions of school operations. The systematic study, by veteran economists Michael Podgursky and Dale Ballou, is a data-filled report on how 132 schools in seven charter-friendly states handle personnel matters.2 The two reports come to similar conclusions - conclusions that education reformers should find generally encouraging. Both studies suggest that schools are serving as exciting seedbeds for new approaches to finding, employing, and keeping better teachers. Triant says that charter principals are using the freedom granted to them to create schools that would not be possible if the law did not exist. Podgursky and Ballou found that, when given the opportunity, schools pursue innovative personnel policies that differ in key respects from those of traditional public schools and more closely resemble the practices of private schools. Though Triant also queried principals about finance, curriculum, school structure, and accountability, we focus here on what he discovered about teacher hiring, also the subject of the Podgursky/Ballou study. From his inquiries, we learn that, while seven of the eight principals believed that the system of teacher hiring in their school is better than the system in comparable district schools, their reasons ranged all over the map. …