Cyber charter schools may increase access to a range of educational offerings, but they substantially underperform traditional public schools on measured academic performance, as demonstrated in a range of studies with distinct samples and methods. Artificial testing conditions offer a possible explanation. In contrast to face-to-face students,…

In the prior article, White and Huangoffer the most developed work extant categorizing charter school foci, to encourage further research regarding charter school effectiveness. In this research note, we test whether "having" a focus affects school survival and growth. Recognizing Arizona as an early adapter of charter schooling, we…

In response to concerns regarding school quality, state policy-makers reformed their charter school authorization processes to impose greater regulatory barriers to chartering. These barriers to market entry could impose substantial burdens for Black and Latino would-be charter operators, as well as independent operators, who may lack access to…

Substantial research has already examined how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected in-person schooling, but no prior work has explored its effects on cyber schools. Here, Robert Maranto, Dennis Beck, Tom Clark, Bich Tran, and Feng Liu compare the students entering a large national cyber charter school network in spring 2020, during the pandemic,…

Considerable published research explores drivers of parent choice for in-person schools, but few studies have addressed reasons for attending full-time cyber schools, and how student characteristics affect those reasons; hence, this study's unique contribution. Here we use a large national dataset (n= 95,259) to test whether students with…

Effective schooling requires teachers to have professional discretion; yet in the twentieth century, bureaucratization enhanced administrative control of teaching. Teacher unionization offered one response to bureaucratization, intended in part to protect teacher professional discretion. More recently, the charter school movement offered a second…

Reflecting post-bureaucratic organisation theory, education reformers intended charter schools to empower school-level leaders, most typically principals, with autonomy to pursue clear, student-centred missions. Yet little research explores whether charter school principals have more power than traditional public school counterparts. We summarise…

Recent Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) analyses find that cyber charter schools in seventeen states show consistently low reading and mathematics value-added test scores compared to traditional public schools serving comparable students. This generally accords with prior research. We hypothesize that the relatively poor…

Knowledge is Power Program Delta College Preparatory School (KIPP DCPS), an open-enrollment charter school,1 opened in 2002 in Helena, Arkansas. KIPP DCPS students have consistently outperformed their peers from neighboring districts on year-end student achievement scores, and KIPP's national reputation led Arkansas lawmakers to exempt KIPP from…

Research suggests that homework has moderately positive impacts on student learning in brick-and-mortar schools (Marzano & Pickering, 2007), but no prior research has explored such relationships in cyber schools. We surveyed parents (n = 232) and students (n = 269) at an American cyber school, and collected student achievement data. For…