In the late 1980s, the labor leader Albert Shanker first articulated his vision of autonomous, teacher-formed "charter" schools. He lamented what he saw as a "lockstep" approach to K-12 education across the country that neglected the input of classroom teachers and failed to take into account students' individual needs. Now,…

This article focuses on the reports produced by the National Center for Education Statistics which rely too much on subjective judgments. The two studies--which used data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress that were adjusted for student and school differences--reported generally favorable academic results for regular public…

Hoping to lend renewed momentum to a movement whose growth has slowed in recent years, charter school leaders are stepping up efforts to enhance their eclectic sector's political and organizational clout. After a series of missteps, a national organization that aims to serve as a unified voice for the nation's roughly 3,000 charter schools is…

Nine months after Hurricane Katrina crippled the New Orleans school district, two distinct systems of public schools are slowly emerging in the city. The highly unusual arrangement is fraught with questions, from the small--What should we call it?--to the large--Will it work? Where there once was a traditionally governed district, there now is a…

Even before a single student had signed up for High Tech High School, the founders of the new charter school on San Diego Bay knew they did not want that first school to be their last. They wanted to affect more children. To that end, Larry G. Rosenstock, the founding principal of the highly regarded 5-year-old school, and other leaders of the…

Mr. Barr, a Democratic political organizer who turned charter school mogul, has waged a contentious, two-year campaign to persuade leaders in the nation's second-largest school system to let him run one or more troubled high schools. Mr. Barr, with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, set to assume some control of the district on Jan. 1, 2007, where he may…

Struggling to jump-start education in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, the district school board has decided to reopen its first buildings not as regular public schools, but as charter schools. Indeed, the board's vote followed weeks of high-level talks among officials in the offices of the governor, the state schools superintendent, the state…

Chicago is embarking on a major initiative to convert at least 10 percent of its schools into small schools, most of which will be run by private operators. Mayor Richard M. Daley portrayed his plan, called Renaissance 2010, as a way to "shake up the system," introduce fresh ideas that could save its lowest-performing schools, and…

Thousands of California students were left to look for new schools after one of the nation's largest charter school operators shut its doors. The closure of the 5-year-old California Charter Academy (CCA), which ran about 60 schools under four charters and enrolled some 10,000 students, represents one of the largest charter school failures since…

As the high-profile Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) network of schools continues to expand, KIPP leaders are taking a close look at student attrition amid arguments from critics that the loss of students at some of those public schools of choice is alarmingly high. Attrition rates at a few KIPP schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, in…

Across the U.S., urban school districts are losing students and shuttering schools. In Detroit, some 35,000 students have left the city schools in less than a decade, and the city will close 34 schools and reassign more than 10,000 students in 2006. However, the trend is not limited to Rust Belt cities like Detroit, although their problems tend to…

Seeking to grasp what she called a "golden opportunity for rebirth" out of the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina, Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco asked the Louisiana legislature last week to embrace a plan that would give the state control of most New Orleans public schools. This article talks about the governor's plan to let the state…

It is not unusual to hear students at the Cesar Chavez Learning Center say that if they were not able to go to this kind of school, they would have given up on formal education a long time ago. Housed in a strip mall a mile and a half from the U.S.-Mexican border, the Chavez center allows students to attend school for a half day--morning or…

Four articles from this special report examine the charter school movement and whether it has the staying power to change American schooling. The articles are: (1) "Declarations of Independence" (Mark Walsh), which discusses the Boston Renaissance and Marblehead charter schools in Massachusetts, among others; (2) "Laws of the…

Washington is a safe distance from the powerful winds that have wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast, but a political storm continued to brew in the capital over President Bush's plan to help pay the costs of private school tuition for students displaced by Hurricane Katrina. As voucher opponents decried the president's plan, Louisiana's two U.S.…