Since the start of the new millennium, many states have launched or expanded private school choice options, permitted and expanded independently operated public charter schools, eased restrictions on homeschooling, and enacted policies that allow and encourage various forms of public school choice. One thing that is not on the rise, unfortunately,…

Arizona enrolls a larger share of its students in charter schools than any other state in the country, but no comprehensive examination exists of the impact of those schools on student achievement. Using student-level data covering all Arizona students from 2006 to 2012, we find that the performance of charter schools in Arizona in improving…

This qualitative study examines students' perceptions of their bilingualism in a school that is attempting to disrupt inequalities through the promotion of social justice through bilingual/bicultural education. In order to understand students' perspectives of their bilingualism in Arizona's restrictive policy context, the researchers apply…

This article explores the discourse practices of an Indigenous, community-based charter school and its efforts to create space for Indigenous both/and identities across rural-urban divides. The ethnographic portrait of Urban Native Middle School (UNMS) analyzes the discourse of making "a space for you", which brings together rural and…

Educational reform policies in the United States promote school choice as a central tool to empower low-income and minoritized families in order to close the achievement gap. However, research on school choice rarely reflects the voice of minoritized families and offers little evidence that choice significantly addresses inequities in educational…

Online education is unique in part for the relatively high degrees of autonomy afforded learners. Self-direction and self-regulation, along with support, are essential for students to succeed. The site of this action research project was a new, small online public charter school for middle and high school students, Foothills Academy Connected…

This report provides a description of a study conducted by WestEd on behalf of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to examine how the affordances of the technologies in the blended learning environments of three charter schools impacted teaching and learning activities. A particular focus of the work was to examine whether the blended learning…

The focus of this descriptive research study was to compare charter and traditional public schools on the academic knowledge of fifth grade students as measured by Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS) in a suburb of a large southwestern city. This analysis also compared charter and traditional public schools on AYP status. It was…

The author reports on a new study which reveals that the lowest-performing public K-8 schools often linger in that state for years, neither improving enough to get off accountability life support nor being shuttered completely. The study adds that persistently failing charter schools fare no better than regular public schools. Of 2,025 chronically…

This study investigates the successes of the charter and district sectors in eliminating bad schools via dramatic turnarounds in performance and/or shutdowns. It identified 2,025 low-performing charter and district schools across ten states, each of which is home to a sizable number of charter schools. These particular schools were tracked from…

This study explored the relationships among the components of the Arizona Department of Education's new teacher evaluation model, with a particular focus on the extent to which ratings from the state model's teacher observation instrument differentiated higher and lower performance. The study used teacher-level evaluation data collected by the…

Across Arizona and the United States, there is widespread interest in how to successfully educate the growing number of English language learner students in K-12 schools. Research suggests that a school may face challenges in effectively teaching its English language learner students--and closing the achievement gap with native English…

More than $20 billion a year currently is being spent to construct public schools. Hundreds of billions are being spent to carry out public education. Everyone wants the best possible use of that money. Families want safe, nurturing, challenging, and effective schools for their children. Community members and policy-makers want schools to be…

The author's students were an unhappy, skeptical group of middle school students. Many of them had emotional issues. Many had drug addiction and prostitution in their broken and poverty-ridden families. Her school, which is a small charter school in a remote Arizona town, was a place of last resort for these students, who probably would not…