Although charter schools are frequently afforded flexibility from many state laws that govern traditional public schools, a growing number of charter school teachers have now unionized and introduced collective bargaining to the charter sector. Using data from a detailed content analysis of teacher CBAs from California, we compare the…

In the current research, there are missing voices of traditional administrators who transitioned into charter administration. This qualitative study included eight participants who are or were administrators in a large urban district in California with the purpose of understanding their experiences and differences in terms of how they learned to…

Charter schools represent an increasingly important form of school choice in the United States. Charter schools are public schools, with a difference. Compared to traditional public schools, they are exempted from some of the state laws and regulations that govern traditional public schools. In this way, parents come to have a greater number of…

Examining resource allocation practices, including savings, of charter schools is critical to understanding their financial viability and sustainability. Using 9 years of finance data from California, we find charter schools spend less on instruction and pupil support services than traditional public schools. The lower spending on instruction and…

The percentage of students who graduate from high school within four years in the United States has remained between 65 and 70% since the late 1960s. Despite various educational reforms, the number of students who are at-risk of dropping out of high school has remained constant, increasing in some years and decreasing in other years. Two…

Most discussions of charter schools assume that they are monolithic. While the media, researchers, and policymakers are obsessed with comparing charters to traditional public schools, there's been little interest in comparing different types of charter schools to one another--until now. This study--the first of its kind--categorizes the nation's…

This report contains the typology of charter schools that were sought, based on Carpenter's careful sorting of 1,182 charter schools, representing 87 percent of all those operating in 2001-2002 in the five states (Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan, and Texas) that then accounted for the lion's share of U.S. charter schools. Carpenter sorted…

Access to important educational resources in California's middle and high schools is not equal among schools that serve different student populations. Overall, the most disadvantaged populations of middle and high school students are likely to have the least access to the resources necessary for learning. California policymakers are focusing on…

This research brief recaps a study of California charter schools. After a discussion of the key distinctions among charter schools, the brief focuses on the following questions: (1) Who attends charter schools? (2) How does student achievement in charter schools compare with that in conventional public schools? (3) What oversight do chartering…