Teacher turnover is high in US public schools, and it is growing. Such turnover has academic and financial costs, but little is known about the impact on teachers themselves. How do teachers experience turnover? Using interviews of departed teachers and focus groups of new and veteran teachers, this qualitative multi-site case study examines how…

Some school districts have centralized school operations as a means to ensure universal access to schools of choice. Yet, centralization can infringe on charter school autonomy. We explore how district and charter school leaders in three contexts perceive and negotiate the trade-offs between centralized versus school-based autonomy. We find that…

A survey tasks young adults who graduated from virtual charters managed by a large education management organization to assess the degree to which virtual schools prepared them for postsecondary and career success. The same survey questions were also administered to a nationally representative group of American adults ages 18-29. Overall,…

Cyber charter schools may increase access to a range of educational offerings, but they substantially underperform traditional public schools on measured academic performance, as demonstrated in a range of studies with distinct samples and methods. Artificial testing conditions offer a possible explanation. In contrast to face-to-face students,…

States vary widely in their approaches to charter school regulation. We administered online surveys to charter school leaders in four of the most stringently regulated states and three of the least stringently regulated states to examine how their approach might influence perceived school goals and levels of goal agreement. Generally, survey…

In the prior article, White and Huangoffer the most developed work extant categorizing charter school foci, to encourage further research regarding charter school effectiveness. In this research note, we test whether "having" a focus affects school survival and growth. Recognizing Arizona as an early adapter of charter schooling, we…

Using student-level data, we analyze the post-secondary enrollment of high school graduates across 29 states from an online charter provider from 2017 to 2020. We estimate the association between virtual charter student characteristics and the likelihood of college enrollment. We find that students who enroll multiple years in the virtual school…

Using six waves of the Schools and Staffing Survey and the National Teacher and Principal Survey that span two decades, our study explores the differences between urban charter and traditional public school teachers and how those differences become more or less pronounced over time. During this time frame, the charter sector experienced…

Ample research has explored the nature and efficacy of urban charter schools since the turn of the century. However, much less attention has been given to the rural charter school sector. Using data obtained from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools from the 2018-2019 school year, we describe rural charter schools nationally in terms…

This paper explores how parents' COVID-19 safety concerns relate to school governance models (SGMs), instructional modes (i.e. in-person, hybrid, online), and perceptions of school quality during the pandemic. Leveraging two waves of household survey data across 47 states and the District of Columbia, we first conduct a series of multinomial…

School choice is spreading across the U.S. at the same time that scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) are stagnant. We examine the association between education freedom and 8th grade student NAEP score levels and gains in states in 2019. We construct the 2019 Education Freedom Index as a composite measure of the…

Charter schools are one of the fastest-growing forms of school choice. However, concerns have been raised about the quality of special education provided to students with disabilities. Results of a systematic review of court filings involving charter schools and special education and/or students with disabilities reveal recurring themes pertaining…

Using classroom-level data from nearly all California schools, we investigate whether Hispanic, Asian, Black, and Native students in grades K-5 are more likely to have a teacher of the same race at charter schools or traditional public schools in 2017-18, what school and student characteristics explain these differences, and how ethnoracial…

Charter schools have emerged as the most prominent manifestation of educational reform in the United States. As an alternative to traditional public schools, charter schools have been the schools of choice for Somalis. Through in-depth interviews, this phenomenological study explored the experiences of a dozen Somali parents of children who…

Five groups rank state charter school environments according to their laws, regulations, funding, and other characteristics, but none rank states by charter student performances on a national test. We rank states by demographically adjusted math and reading performances of charter students in 4th and 8th grade for the period 2009 to 2019 on the…