The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify decision-making factors from parents of Southeast Rural School District (SRSD) who chose to transfer their children to one of 14 cyber charter schools within Pennsylvania amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. This research study utilized a phenomenological design, consisting of qualitative electronic…

Pregnant and parenting teenagers in the United States face academic, social, and emotional hardships (Baney et al., 2022; Kinser & Masho, 2015; Masterson et al., 2021). Schools, programs, and policies can aid pregnant and parenting students by alleviating burdens or improving schooling outcomes (Brouwer et al., 2019; Modesto, 2018; Zief et…

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…

"Believing in Public Education: A Demographic and State-level Analysis of Public Charter School and District Public School Enrollment Trends" is a new data analysis that examines enrollment trends during the last four school years (2019-2023). Over the last four school years (2019-20 to 2022-23), charter schools have gained more than…

Access to public charter schools could theoretically reduce school safety problems by increasing competitive pressures, improving matches between schools and students, enhancing discipline policies, and allowing students to relocate to peer groups and cultures that discourage risky behaviors. Using publicly available data from the Pennsylvania…

There are two competing understandings on how school organizations behave when faced with competition. One is they respond to competitive pressure with innovation. The other is they pursue strategies of isomorphism, copying practices and avoiding innovation. This study examines competitive response patterns related to cyber charter schools in…

Background/Context: A primary argument that supports charter school policy assumes students favor schools with high academic performance ratings, leading to systemic school improvement. Previous research challenges this assumption but has limited generalizability because geographic and enrollment constraints limit student choice sets.…

An analysis from 2002 to 2014, aligning media reporting of the effectiveness of the fully online K-12 cyber charter school model with data on enrollment flows to cyber charter schools and expenditure and demographic indicators across all 500 residential public school districts in Pennsylvania, finds a three-part geospatial-social process. Initial…

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,…

In 2007, the U.S. Department of Education commissioned WestEd to develop a guide on using quality authorizing to promote high-quality charter schools. At the time, notions about how authorizers could contribute to the existence of such schools were in their infancy, and the publication, which profiles the oversight practices of eight selected…

In August, the Manhattan Institute (MI) contracted with Rasmussen Reports to survey public opinion in five states about school choice policies generally, as well as charter schools specifically. Working with MI, Rasmussen crafted nine questions that were added to the organization's regular polling of likely voters for presidential and senatorial…

This article examines how student movements between traditional public schools (TPSs) and charters--both brick and mortar and cyber--may be associated with both racial isolation and poverty concentration. Using student-level data from the universe of Pennsylvania public schools, this study builds upon previous research by specifically examining…

Using individual-level student data from Pennsylvania, this study explores the extent to which charter school racial composition may be an important factor in students' self-segregative school choices. Findings indicate that, holding distance and enrollment constant, Black and Latino students are strongly averse to moving to charter schools with…

This case study was inspired by visits to several different rural high schools in Pennsylvania. The case illuminates the challenges faced by rural principals and superintendents who want to integrate digital technology into their curriculum, but who lack certain financial and human capital resources. Although this case occurred in a remote, rural…

Pennsylvania is a state with significant proportions of students who attend rural schools, as well as students who attend charter schools. This study examines enrollment patterns of students in brick and mortar and cyber charter schools in Pennsylvania and how these enrollment patterns differ across geographic locale. We analyze student-level…