Archived Information

I. Charter Schools in Perspective

Charter schools--an educational innovation that seemed radical only a few years ago--are now an accepted part of the public education system in many parts of the country. From a slow start in a few states, as of September 1997, the charter movement has created approximately 700 operating schools in 23 states and the District of Columbia--and their numbers are likely to grow rapidly.

While charter schools are public schools, what sets them apart is their charter--a contract with a state or local educational agency. Each school's charter sets out what it plans to do to achieve educational goals; in return it is allotted public funds for a specified time period. The contract frees charter developers from a number of regulations that otherwise apply to public schools. In theory, the charter itself states the terms under which the school can be held accountable for improving student performance and achieving goals set out in the charter.

The freedoms accorded to charter schools have raised an array of hopes and fears about the consequences of introducing charter schools into the public system. Some people hope that charter schools developed by local educators, parents, community members, school boards and other sponsors might provide both new models of schooling and competitive pressures on public schools that will improve the current system of public education. But others fear that charter schools might, at best, be little more than escape valves that relieve pressure for genuine reform of the whole system and, at worst, add to centrifugal forces that threaten to pull public education apart.

Time will tell which hopes or fears are realized. Presently, the rapid expansion of charters testifies to widespread excitement about the charter idea, but it tells us little about the reality of charter schools. The purpose of this Second-Year Report of the National Study of Charter Schools is to explain how charter schools are being implemented at this still-early stage of their evolution, and to describe patterns derived from our quantitative and qualitative research. Subsequent reports of this National Study will address broad policy issues concerning charter schools.

A. A Framework for Studying Charter Schools

The Study is based on a conceptual framework linking relationships among factors that affect the development, implementation and spread of charter schools. Exhibit 1-1 suggests that charter schools are greatly affected by the context of state and local factors. The flow in this diagram starts at the state level, winds its way down to the local level of individual charter developers trying to make their charter schools effective, cycles at the school level where intricate interactions occur between charter schools, their communities and surrounding districts, and feeds back up to the state level where decisions about the system of public education are made. Because the charter concept is about both individual schools and our system of public education, the Study's research takes this dual perspective in defining its key questions.

As the diagram suggests, the starting point for charter schools is state charter school legislation. Since the impetus for charter schools arises out of a state's political and bureaucratic context, each state approaches charter school legislation in a more or less unique way, so charter laws vary greatly from state to state. A state's charter legislation--and the formal and informal regulations that implement the legislation--profoundly affect the charter development process, the charter granting process, and ultimately the ways in which charter schools operate and relate to their sponsors. In states where only the local school board can grant a charter and only the conversion of pre-existing public schools is allowed, the possibilities for charter developers are much more constrained than in states where there are multiple charter-granting agencies and where charter developers can create new schools as well as convert pre-existing public and private schools. Similarly, each of the following factors affects the kinds of charter schools that are created within a state: the number of charter schools allowed, the degree of freedom from regulation authorized in the legislation, and the accountability requirements. Moreover, the de jure situation prescribed by the law may differ from the de facto reality of how the laws are administered and implemented.

We think of these factors as creating an opportunity space for charter developers and operators. State-specific contextual factors influence the opportunity space, sometimes in subtle ways. The political environment, the history of educational reform in the state, the role of the state education agency, the relationships between the state and the districts, and many other factors have an impact on charter school development and operation. These factors combine to create a unique opportunity space whose "shape" differs from state to state.

EXHIBIT 1-1

FACTORS AFFECTING THE DEVELOPMENT, IMPLEMENTATION, AND SPREAD OF CHARTER SCHOOLS

The Study's Research Foci 1. How do state charter laws affect charter development? 2. What are the characteristics of charter schools compared to other public schools? 3. What kinds off students attend cluster schools? 4. How do charter schools operate? Are their programs distinct from public schools? 5. What are the impacts of charter schools on students and on the public education system?

B. The Study's Research Questions

The complexity of the charter movement calls for a multifaceted research program. This Report focuses on evidence gathered over the last few years that allows us to address some critical research questions in a timely manner, even as the charter phenomenon is growing and changing; other questions must be deferred until more evidence is gathered. This section discusses the research questions addressed in this volume. As such, it serves as a road map for the Report's contents. The section also summarizes broad questions guiding the Study's research. Further findings will be presented in subsequent volumes.

State Charter Law Research Questions. The Study focuses on a series of research and policy questions concerning state law and charter opportunity space. In particular, the Study will address the following:

• How can states' charter legislation be characterized and compared?
• How does charter legislation differ across states?
• What are major patterns of charter law and policy across states?
• What is the impact of state legal, regulatory, and contextual factors on the creation and operation of charter schools?
• What policy conclusions can be drawn from comparing different types of state charter law and policy and their impacts?

Chapter II addresses the first two of these questions. In the Study's First-Year Report, we provided an overview of state charter laws. This Report revisits the de jure aspects of the charter laws across all states, providing an update on significant changes in existing laws and highlights of laws in new charter states. In addition, this chapter characterizes key dimensions of charter laws as a starting point for comparing charter policies across states. Appendix B provides more detailed information on these subjects. Answers to the last three questions above will require intensive fieldwork at state and local levels. This research is now under way; subsequent Study reports will present evidence and conclusions in these areas.

Research Questions about Charter School Characteristics. Though charter laws are the impetus for the development of charter schools, decisions of local charter developers define the kinds of charter schools that actually go into operation, as the bottom portion of Exhibit 1-1 illustrates. Last year's Report identified three primary reasons why charter schools are launched--namely, to pursue an educational vision, to gain autonomy from district and/or state regulations, or to serve a special population. The founding reasons, as well as other local political and educational factors, result in charter schools that vary greatly from one another in such basic characteristics as their size and age of children they serve.

This finding deserves special emphasis. The freedom that educators, parents, and community members have to develop charter schools almost guarantees that charter schools will differ from one another in ways that are more pronounced than differences among other public schools. Rather than speaking of charter schools as if they are the same, the Study seeks to identify broad patterns of variability across charter schools and compare them to other public schools. Specifically, the Study asks:

• What are the characteristics of charter schools, and how do they vary across charter schools and across states?
• In what ways are charter schools similar to or different from other public schools?
• Are these differences systematically related to the reasons charter schools are founded and/or to other state and local factors?

Chapter III and Appendix C provide data about these topics. They update our First-Year Report figures on the number of charter schools in each state and describe the enrollment and grade-level configurations of charter schools compared to public schools.

Research Questions about Students Attending Charter Schools. Another area covered in this year's report concerns a highly controversial subject. Charter schools are schools of choice. For this reason as well as others, charter schools may have student enrollment patterns that are quite different--with respect to race/ethnicity, disability and other factors--from other public schools. One fear is that charter schools may lead to implicit but nonetheless systematic discriminatory practices. Despite the difficulties of analysis, this issue merits sustained investigation on its own terms and as part of the Study's broad research inquiry into the following questions:

• What kinds of students attend charter schools, and does this makeup of the charter student population vary systematically by state or by other characteristics of charter schools?
• In terms of demographics, how do charter school students compare to students enrolled in other public schools?
• Do charter schools tend to recruit and select certain types of students?

Chapter IV and Appendix D present preliminary research data and offer analyses of these complicated issues. The chapter compares racial/ethnic and poverty data between charter and other public schools. It also measures the concentration of different racial/ethnic groups at the schools in order to identify patterns in charter schools that may be different from public schools. Finally, the chapter explores--with qualitative as well as quantitative data--how distinctive charter schools may be from public schools in terms of their students' race or economic status.

Research Questions about Why Charter Schools Are Started and What Attracts Parents and Students to Them. The creation of charter schools requires deliberate, and sometimes unavoidably contentious, actions on the part of many local actors. Charter developers have compelling reasons for going through this process, including strongly held beliefs about how education should work, how schools should operate, and who they should serve. The original motivations and subsequent implementation decisions set the context out of which the features of charter schools develop. It is reasonable to assume that these beginnings may distinguish charter schools from other public schools and be a source of the attraction that parents and students may have toward charter schools. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, the Study asks:

• Why are charter schools founded?
• Are these founding reasons systematically related to other aspects of charter schools operations such as to their status as newly created or pre-existing schools or to the racial characteristics of students they serve?
• What attracts parents and students to charter schools?
• Are there push factors driving parents away from public schools and toward charters? And are there pull factors drawing parents and students toward choosing charters?
• What features of charter schools are the most powerful in attracting parents and students? Are these features systematically related to different types of charter schools?

Chapter V provides preliminary information about these issues. The chapter uses quantitative analysis from the Study's telephone surveys and provides a qualitative context as well as vignettes about charter schools from the fieldwork sample. Future research will address an array of issues concerning different types of charter operators, including:

• What are "for-profit" charter schools? How are they different from other charter schools or other public schools? Is there evidence that they have systematically different results compared to other charter or other public schools? What lessons can be learned for public education?
• How do charter schools with several branches in distinct locations operate? Is there evidence that they have systematically different results compared to other charter or other public schools? What lessons can be learned for public education?

Research Questions about Challenges to Charter School Implementation. Last year's Report drew a parallel between the implementation of charter schools and the start-up of new businesses. As more charter schools are initiated and as the federal government plays a larger role in funding charter school start-ups, the barriers that charters have to face to survive and implement a coherent educational program are issues of great concern. This Report updates the earlier work and asks:

• What difficulties do charter schools experience as they implement their programs?
• Are these difficulties systematically related to other aspects of charter schools such as their status as newly created or pre-existing schools?
• How are these implementation problems changing over time? Are some difficulties becoming more or less prevalent for schools as they continue? Are some difficulties becoming more or less severe for the newer cohort of charter schools as the movement is growing?

Chapter VI, the last chapter of this Report, addresses these topics. In addition, this Report adds more qualitative material that illustrates both the nature of the difficulties and the local or state context within which they arise.

C. Research Questions Not Addressed at This Time or Not Addressed by the Study

The Study's research program is designed to accumulate data over time and present findings when the evidence merits preliminary conclusions. Subsequent reports will present findings in the following areas:

1. Charter School Operations. Supporters of charter schools believe that charter schools may create "innovative" educational programs, governance models, financing arrangements, personnel practices, approaches to parent and community participation, or school operations. The Study's working definition of "innovation" is a charter school practice (in any of the areas listed above) that is distinctively different from the practices of other public schools in the charter school's surrounding district(s) or region.

• What educational programs, governance models, financing arrangements, personnel practices, approaches to parent and community participation, or other school operations do charter schools create, and how different are these from those of other public schools?
• Is there systematic evidence that these school operations are related to such areas as student learning; the schools' cost-effectiveness; or the attractiveness of charter schools to parents, students, and professional staff?
• Under what conditions are these approaches transferable to other public schools? What factors have led to their development and implementation, and are these factors possible to attain in other public schools?
• Is there systematic evidence that other public schools are adopting charter school approaches? (See point 4 below.)

Though the Study will address these questions, it faces many limitations on how definitively they can be answered. Describing and assessing educational programs, governance models, financing arrangements, personnel practices, approaches to parent and community participation, or school operations require research at school sites. The Study has chosen a sample of 91 sites for its investigations. These sites were selected in an unbiased manner, as the Appendix on the Study's research design and methodology describes. This sample is quite large for fieldwork, but it is not--nor could it be--representative of all charter schools. Consequently, the Study's findings concerning the approaches that charter schools take to school operations will provide systematic data on these issues, without attempting to evaluate all charter schools in the country.

2. Autonomy and Accountability. The ideas of autonomy from state or local regulations and accountability for student results are central to the definition of charter schools. However, in terms of the specifics of autonomy and accountability, state legislation as well as local practice vary greatly from state to state and often from charter school to charter school within a state. In this area, the Study (in conjunction with another research study funded by OERI) will address such questions as:

• How do the autonomy and accountability requirements in charter school legislation vary from state to state?
• How are autonomy and accountability played out in local practice, and how do they differ from practices in the surrounding districts or regions?
• Is there evidence of systematic relationships between autonomy or accountability and how charter schools operate, how charter schools measure student achievement, and possible impacts on student achievement? (See point 3 below.)
• What lessons for public education can be garnered from the charter school experiences with autonomy and accountability?

The Study is conducting case studies in five states that have contrasting approaches to autonomy and accountability. In addition to analyzing the charter school laws and the practices of charter-granting agencies, research is under way at 12 districts in these states to provide in-depth information about these questions.

3. Impact of Charter Schools on Student Achievement. A central question for the Study concerns student achievement. Given the Study's limited resources and the inherent difficulties of assessing student achievement in the evolving and fluid charter context, the research will focus on the following questions:

• Under what conditions do charter schools improve (or not improve) student achievement and other aspects of student learning?
• In what ways can charter schools be compared to other public schools in terms of student achievement, and what do these comparisons show?

Research on student achievement faces several major challenges, particularly in the charter context. The foremost problem holds for American education generally: public schools across the country neither use the same tests for measuring student achievement nor administer their tests to the same grades on the same testing schedule. Thus, test results generally can not be compared--in a definitive fashion--across all public schools or all charter schools. Consequently, it is not strictly possible to determine whether charter schools as a group are producing higher student achievement than public schools. Systematic research can nonetheless still learn much about the impact of charter schools on student achievement. The Study uses two approaches to gathering data so that reasonable inferences can be made.

First, the Study has offered charter schools in the fieldwork sample the opportunity at no cost to have their students take a multiple choice test, which is briefly described in Appendix A. For those charter schools that do the testing and continue it over several years, the Study will have test results for individual students over time. These data can yield evidence about the growth in student achievement in the sample of charter schools. Furthermore, the field research at these sites will provide in-depth information about the conditions under which these charter schools experience positive or negative change in their students' achievement.

Second, the Study is collecting student achievement data from each charter school in the field sample as well as from other public schools in districts associated with these charter schools. From those states that have a statewide testing program, we are also collecting student achievement data for all charter schools and all other public schools. Though this approach has limitations, these data can provide the basis for drawing plausible comparisons between many charter schools and other public schools.^[1] Subsequent reports will present the results of analyzing student achievement data in this fashion.

4. Impact of Charter Schools on the Public Education System. As the introduction suggested, some people hold that the charter movement has the potential for changing our system of public education. Though such change will take years to be realized, the Study can examine possible impacts that charter schools may be having on districts or state systems of public education. In particular, we will ask:

• What evidence can be gathered to document effects that charter schools have on local or state systems of public education?
• Are charter schools developing models or reform strategies that other public schools are adopting?
• Is there evidence that the choice that parents and students make to attend charter schools has influenced other public schools or districts to change their practices?
• What lessons for public education can be learned from the successes and failures of charter schools?

Fieldwork is needed to address these issues. As previously mentioned, the Study is conducting case studies in five states and 12 districts to gather in-depth information on the possible impacts (positive or negative) of charter schools. The methodology involves analysis of the media, the collection of documents or other evidence about changes in policies or practices, and interviews that cover a wide variety of perspectives at the school, district, regional, and state levels.

D. Research Methodology

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; the administration of student achievement tests over time at a sample of charter schools; the collection of existing student assessments for a sample of charter schools and for other public schools at district and state levels; 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. The findings presented in this Report rely on our second wave of telephone surveys to all cooperating charter schools, visits to 91 field sites across the country, and extensive analysis of state charter laws.

[Executive Summary]

[II. State Approaches to the Charter Concept]