I. Charter Schools in Perspective

The charter school movement grew out of a belief that a carefully developed competition among existing public schools and new kinds of schools developed by local educators, parents, community members, school boards and other sponsors could provide both new models of schooling and the incentives to improve the current system of public education.¹

In the early 1990s, several states developed legislation permitting the creation of a limited number of "charter" schools. Each charter school has a contract specifying how it will operate and what it must do in order to receive public funds for a set period of time; the contract holds the charter school accountable for improving student performance and achieving the goals of the charter. In several cases, the states have freed charter developers from most regulations that otherwise apply to public schools, apart from health, safety, and antidiscrimination laws. In other states, the charter laws are more restrictive, as the next chapter discusses. At the end of school year 1995-96, more than 252 charter schools were operating in ten states, while 15 other states had passed charter legislation. At the beginning of 1997, 428 charter schools were serving students--and these numbers are likely to grow rapidly over the next few years.

American education has thus embarked on an experiment to see whether the charter approach serves students well, can provide models for improving public education, and can become a catalyst for changing state and local public school systems. The 1994 amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act established a role for the federal government in the charter movement by authorizing funds for charter school development and for a national study to assess the impact of charter schools. This document is the first annual report from the four-year national Study. Its purpose is to provide an early indication of charter school development and implementation.

The Study's Research Focus and the Scope of This Report

Over four years the Study will monitor charter school developments and address research and policy questions in three major areas:

Implementation. In what ways are charter schools similar to or different from other public schools? What types of students attend charter schools? Do they differ from students in other public schools? What factors influence charter school development and implementation? How do states differ in their approaches to charter schools? In what ways do charter laws and policies affect charter schools in each state?
Impact on students. Do charter schools have a positive impact on student learning? What are the conditions under which charter schools improve or do not improve student achievement and other aspects of student learning?
Effect on public education. How do charter schools affect local and state systems of public education? Are charter schools developing models or reform strategies that other public schools might use to improve education? Does their existence pressure other schools to reform? What lessons can be learned from the successes and failures of charter schools?

The Study's research methodology consists of annual phone interview surveys of all charter schools; repeated field visits to cohorts of samples of charter schools; comparisons over time of student assessment results between a sample of charter schools and matched noncharter schools; and analyses across states of charter laws, state agency rulings and procedures, court rulings, and education policy. Appendix A summarizes the Study's research design.

This first-year report provides information about the first research topic listed above?how charter schools are being implemented. It is descriptive, focusing on where charter schools are located, what they are like, what types of students are enrolled, how charter schools were started, and what problems and barriers they have encountered.

Describing charter schools is not easy. Freed from existing rules and regulations, but explicitly accountable for student performance, some charter schools have the potential to break the conventions of public schooling. These charter schools may look different from standard public schools, yet may be quite distinct from one another. General statements about charter schools must therefore be drawn with care--or substantial differences between charter schools could be ignored and the comparison of charter schools with other public schools could be misleading. Indeed, the conventional methodology of education research also has to be stretched to examine these potentially unconventional schools. Accordingly, the first study year has focused on canvassing the charter school movement in order to inform and shape our future in-depth research. Instead of offering premature conclusions, this report seeks to portray charter schools accurately and frame those research and policy questions that a national study can--and cannot--address.

The report serves another crucial purpose. The charter school movement is controversial, despite the small number of charter schools currently operating. This charged context calls for impartial research. The Study is publishing this progress report at the earliest possible time to provide an opportunity for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to help the Study team ask the right questions in an impartial way.

Contents of the First-Year Report

Chapter II of this volume reviews the state role in the charter movement, providing examples of ways that states approach charter development. The differences in state approaches partly account for the variety of charter schools that are now operational. (Appendix B provides an abbreviated summary of state charter school laws.) Chapter III describes basic characteristics, including school size, grade levels, and student demographics, of currently operating charter schools. These data will provide information about what types of students attend charter schools. Chapter IV discusses why charter schools were founded and what barriers they encounter.

The data provided in these chapters are preliminary in two senses. First, most existing charter schools are still in early stages of development. The Study will be able to provide a more accurate picture of the charter school movement over time as charter schools evolve and stabilize. Second, in the 1996-97 school year, the Study will begin intensive field visits and analysis of student achievement at charter schools. With the completion of this next research phase, the Study will provide more in-depth and comprehensive evidence for both policymakers and practitioners.
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[Executive Summary]

[II. The State Role]