Archived Information
The State of Charter Schools 2000 - Fourth-Year Report, January 2000
Why Charter Schools are Started | Implementation Challenges | Autonomy and Control
Autonomy and Choice of Service Providers | External Accountability and Monitoring
External Accountability and Reporting | Accountability and Student Assessment
Educators, parents, and community leaders found charter schools for a variety of reasons. Regardless of creation status, the primary motivation for founding a charter school was to seek an alternative vision of schooling that could not be realized in the traditional public school system. Newly created schools, in particular, reported on alternative curriculum and instructional approaches and a vision for the organizational climate they wished to create. While vision was also an important founding reason for public and private conversion schools, many pre-existing public schools converted to charter status in order to gain increased autonomy, while many pre-existing private schools sought to attain stable funding and attract students to their educational approach. Increasingly, newly created and pre-existing charter schools are being founded to serve a special population of students. About one in four charter schools established their charter to serve a special population of students, often students considered "at-risk."
- Realizing an alternative vision for schooling was the most important reason for founding charter schools--three-quarters (75 percent) of charter schools cited vision among other reasons for founding and 59 percent of charter schools were founded primarily to realize an alternative vision for schooling.
- More charter schools opening in 1998-99 than those founded prior to 1998 were founded to serve a special population of students. In 1998-99, 28 percent of charter schools were founded with the primary motivation to serve a special population of students as compared to 19 percent of all charter schools founded prior to 1998.
- Regardless of creation status, the primary reason for founding charter schools was to realize an alternative vision for schooling. However, a greater percentage of newly created than pre-existing public or private schools were founded primarily to realize an alternative vision for schooling. About two-thirds of newly created charter schools were founded primarily to realize an alternative vision for schooling (64 percent) whereas less than one-half of pre-existing public schools (44 percent) or pre-existing private schools (39 percent) were founded primarily to realize an alternative vision.
- Other important reasons for founding were dependent on creation status. Approximately one-quarter (26 percent) of the newly created schools were founded primarily to serve a special population. Pre-existing public schools were founded to gain autonomy from state or district regulation (35 percent), or to serve a special population (11 percent). Pre-existing private schools converted to charter to serve a special population (21 percent), to attract students (19 percent), of for financial reasons (16 percent).
Estimated Percentage of Charter Schools by Reasons for Founding
NOTE: These data are based on responses from 971 of the 975 open charter schools that responded to the survey. Schools were asked about their reasons for founding the first time they were surveyed. For data reported in column 2 above, schools were asked the reason for founding their schools and they could reply with moe than one reason. For data reported in columns 3 through 6 above, schools were asked to choose one of the named reasons as the primary reason for founding their school; these data are based on responses from 946 of the 971 charter schools because 29 schools did not choose a primary reason--11 gave no response and 18 cited more than one primary reason for founding. The data presented in columns 4 through 6 represent the percentage of the total number of each type of school and includes responses from 168 out of 173 open pre-existing public schools, 90 out of 98 open pre-existing schools, and 688 out of 704 newly created schools.
Percentage of Charter Schools by Most Important Reason for Founding
Percentage of Newly Created versus Pre-existing Charter Schools by Most Important Reason for Founding
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