Charter schools began as an experiment to improve public education in the United States of America (Weil, 2000). The theory was that these schools would operate outside of traditional public schools and would be free of the oversight and regulatory requirements constraining the current educational systems, in exchange for increased accountability…

In the past decade, education reforms implemented high-stakes teacher evaluation, limited tenure protections, and restricted collective bargaining. Large increases in compensation may be needed to offset these losses in employment protections to attract and retain teachers. We test this hypothesis by examining the impact of a set of policy changes…

The purpose of this study is to advance our thinking about race and racism in geospatial analyses of school choice policy. To do so, we present a critical race spatial analysis of Detroit students' suburban school choices. To frame our study, we describe the racial and spatial dynamics of school choice, drawing in particular on the concepts of…

Purpose: From book challenges to anti-critical race theory and anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning legislation, US English teachers have been on the receiving end of a considerable amount of far-right conservative pushback. This study aims to explore the effects of conservative pushback on individual English teachers…

In this article, we use originally collected survey data to determine how nonprofit charter school board members in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota define accountability. We find that charter board members generally define accountability downward toward student achievement and staff performance, inward toward board performance, or…

In recent years, policymakers in many states have enacted reforms to teacher evaluation, tenure, and collective bargaining in the traditional public school (TPS) sector. The implications for such changes across the broader labor market for K-12 teachers, however, are often left undiscussed. In this article, we use microdata from 2005-2016 to…

Public debate surrounds the success of charter schools in serving students and providing a generative environment for teacher innovation. Through semi-structured interviews with eleven (N = 11) K-12 charter school music teachers, this study aims to contribute to the understanding of charter school music teachers' perceptions of their setting in…

Access to music education in American schools is not guaranteed. Although national studies have demonstrated disparities based on poverty, race, and other markers, these studies miss a necessary level of local detail in describing access. Additionally, studies that exist are based on self-report surveys and prone to nonresponse bias. The purpose…

Charter schools are an integral part of the public school systems across America, but understanding these complex organizations has proved challenging. One unique attribute of charter school organizational structure is the charter school authorizer. These oversight agencies have a unique role in overseeing, and holding accountable, the schools…

In July 2011, the State of Michigan adopted a broad set of teacher labor market reforms, including a high-stakes evaluation system designed in part to remove low-performing teachers. We examine the characteristics of teachers rated as "minimally effective" and "ineffective," as well as their schools, and the relationship…

This article takes advantage of a recently released national data set on school site expenditures to evaluate spending variations between traditional district operated schools and charter schools operated by for-profit versus nonprofit management firms. Prior research has revealed the revenue-enhancement, private fund-raising capacity of major…

The rise of for-profit Educational Management Organizations (EMOs) often becomes evidence of substantial shifts in the governance of education, through which schooling may become privatized and commercialized. This study is designed to understand the economic behavior of for-profit educational management organization charter schools, by focusing…

This research applies critical race theory to investigate Michigan's system for funding public schools, focusing on structural racism and discrimination embedded in education finance laws, housing policies, and residential and educational segregation. We find that the average Black student receiving free or reduced-price lunch (FRL) receives $411…

Betsy DeVos, the new U.S. Secretary of Education, has a reform agenda to advance school choice. Her track record includes enabling charter school growth in Michigan at taxpayers' expense with little oversight or accountability. Although an effective advocate, DeVos represents a broader policy movement to privatize American education, much of it…

Purpose: Federal and state policymakers in the USA have sought to better differentiate the performance of K-12 teachers by enacting more rigorous evaluation policies. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether these policies are working as intended and explore whether district stressors such as funding, enrollment, and governance are…