This is the third and last paper in a series published by the National Alliance in partnership with Public Impact, highlighting the experiences of school leaders in charter schools across the country. While the impact school leaders have on student performance has been well documented, there has been little attention to how leaders' experiences…

Twenty years ago, when the late Albert Shanker, then president of the American Federation of Teachers, endorsed the notion of innovative schools operating outside conventional district bureaucracies, his aim was to put teachers at the helm. Fast-forward two decades from Shanker's then-radical proposition and there are nearly 80 teacher-governed…