Critiques a November 1999 "Kappan" article praising one charter school's special-education program, arguing that most Massachusetts for-profit charter schools receive funding for disabled students whom they refuse to serve. These schools have excluded, counseled out, mistreated, and withheld needed services from numerous students with…

School franchising (defined as the replication of a particular product or service across a wide geographic region) marks a radical departure from the traditional view of the community-based neighborhood school. This paper reports on a study of a growing niche of charter school private management contracts in Massachusetts. The focus is on the…

This paper examines the balance between autonomy and accountability in education from the perspective of Massachusetts and Texas charter schools and their state authorizers. By analyzing national survey data, interviews with key policymakers, and case studies of six low, medium, and high performing schools, the paper examines the organizational…

Charter schools must answer to public entities (bureaucratic accountability) and to participating parents, students, and teachers (market accountability). This study examines bureaucratic accountability, highlighting regulatory approaches of statewide charter-school authorizers in Arizona, Massachusetts, and Michigan. CSA's favor a…

In this article, the author profiles the Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter Public School (Hyde Park, Massachusetts) and describes the school's culture. The school's students, who are in grades 6 through 12, are surrounded by rituals, routines, and relationship-building activities. Pacific Rim's culture stems from and supports the school's…

This report is one of nine detailed case studies of small urban high schools that served as the foundation for the Education Resource Strategies (ERS) report "Strategic Designs: Lessons from Leading Edge Small Urban High Schools." These nine schools were dubbed "Leading Edge Schools" because they stand apart from other high…

This book examines charter-school legislation in the United States, as well as charter-school operations in Colorado, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Georgia. It reviews the legislative process in these four states, focusing on the compromises forged as lawmakers worked for adoption. It describes whether the states' resulting programs provide…

Education Resource Strategies (ERS) works with school and district leaders to help them more strategically use resources--people, time, and money--to improve student performance. They have found that many school districts begin creating small high schools without a clear sense of how much they will spend or how to ensure that small schools…

SABIS International Charter School was among 24 Commonwealth charter schools included in a study undertaken by the Office of the Inspector General in March 1998. The Office identified weaknesses in the contracting practices, procurement procedures, and financial management. Findings include: (1) the Board of Trustees did not employ sound business…

Massachusetts currently maintains several charter schools in its K-12 educational system. This paper applies the charter school idea to public institutions of higher education. Charter colleges are publicly owned institutions managed independent of most controls imposed by state bureaucracies and higher education systems. Charter schools are more…

When Benjamin Banneker Charter Public School in Boston realized that their students' 2002-2003 math scores on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System fell below the target set by Massachusetts for adequate yearly progress, they saw not one problem (poor math achievement), but two. Because it was the fifth year the school had not hit AYP…

School choice is a highly controversial topic in Massachusetts. It is estimated that a minimum of 200,000 students are participating in some form of school choice in Massachusetts; when considering intra-district school choice, at least one in four Massachusetts students are in a setting over which their families exercised some form of choice.…

This report is the third retention report published by the Massachusetts Department of Education (MADOE) to provide districts and the public general information on student retention in Massachusetts. Retention is defined as repeating a grade--students are retained when they are required to repeat the grade in which they were enrolled in the…

This report examines the extent to which proposals to decentralize public education can be implemented by individuals, groups, or institutions prepared to operate charter schools. Charter schools must be able to balance autonomy for decisions relating to educational programs and accountability with academic standards and market forces.…

There are English, math, science, and other core subjects, and there are young minds. Schools of education are supposed to prepare and furnish the guides who bring the former into the latter, but the bankrupt ideology they impart to educators obstructs that transfer. Sandra Stotsky says that if we give the job of training teachers to the…