We survey 137 charter school administrators and 129 board members and find that U.S. charter school internal controls are perceived to be relatively strong overall. However, board independence, board communication of internal control responsibilities to school personnel, lines of communication between the board and school personnel, and reporting…

Studies of charter closure rates typically focus on year-to-year closures. While important for researchers, such studies provide little guidance to families seeking to understand the risk of enrolling their child in a charter school. That is because studies determining how many schools close each year provide no information on how long the school…

In this study, the authors draw on 58 interviews with state policy makers and experts in five states to examine how state policy makers and education leaders think about school choice policy and how issues of equity show up in state-level discourse and action. The findings from these interviews suggest that more could be done to advance equity in…

School of choice has been touted as a solution to the alleged decay of the American educational system. Every year more and more "choice schools" (charter, magnet, expeditionary, and others) open across the United States. Although these schools are subject to the same federal legal requirements as traditional public schools to provide a…

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed the way that families and policymakers view K-12 education. Learning loss is having an outsized impact on students who were furthest from opportunity before the pandemic. And families are increasingly looking for new educational options for their children. For decades, access to educational options…

Examining the experiences of families of students with disabilities seeking to exercise school choice is crucial to informing cogent policies and practices that will ensure equitable access. This report explores the perceptions and experiences of families of students with disabilities enrolled in charter and traditional district schools in…

Improving public education has long been a cornerstone of the Democratic platform. Because progressives understand that access to a quality education is the gateway to a better life, their decades-long struggle to promote equal rights and opportunity for all Americans has been deeply tied to their struggle to create an effective public school…

Despite the myriad of challenges that families, students, teachers and policymakers faced in 2021, the momentum to transform education did not waver. New opportunities for students unfolded in more than a dozen states through expanded private and public school choice. An additional 1.7 million students gained eligibility for private choice alone,…

Background: In the United States, students' experiences are shaped by racioethnic, socioeconomic, and linguistic segregation. School choice, and especially charter schools, generally exacerbate existing levels of school segregation. Counter to this trend, hundreds of intentionally diverse charter schools (IDCS), with a mission to promote school…

To innovate for the future and improve equity, while also protecting foundational and proven principles that support high-quality education, ExcelinEd is committing to 5 goals over 5 years to impact 5 million students. Those goals hold the key to impactful and far-reaching changes in education, with the power to transform schools, students' lives,…

Denver Public Schools traditional and charter schools combined to create a single system that allowed all students to indicate their school choice preferences, replacing a system of more than 60 different selection processes. The new system also gave families a wealth of information regarding school quality. A study of the new system found it was…

A number of cities across the country are trying to make school choice work better for families by adopting new systems and policies that cover both district and charter schools. The common enrollment system is a promising new development that allows families to fill out a single application with a single deadline for any and all schools they wish…

Focused on educational quality, innovation and opportunity--both within and outside of the traditional system--ExcelinEd advances a broad range of student-centered policy solutions that are successfully: (1) increasing student learning; (2) Readying graduates for college and career; and (3) Advancing equity. This year's annual report highlights…

Given that independent schools have started to face competition from charter schools, the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) commissioned a study with current and prospective charter school parents to determine their perceptions of charter vs. independent schools, assess the relative impact of the variables that affect their school…

I study how competition played out between elementary schools in a Colorado school district. When the school board approved new schools without catchments, schools faced with declining catchment populations responded. Some schools adapted by altering programming away from the standard district curriculum. I model a school's success in recruiting…