There's considerable public debate about charter schools and students with specialized needs, focused mainly on the extent to which charters enroll students who are classified to receive special-education services. A new study by Elizabeth Setren of Tufts University shows that critics, who often charge that charters do not serve as many…

School principals often contend that having the ability to be the instructional leaders that they were trained to be hinges in part upon maximizing their decision making latitude. These leaders assert that policy flexibility allows schools to make necessary changes without the bureaucracy that they believe stifles reform, improvement strategies,…

This "ex post facto," causal-comparative quantitative study assessed the math and English language arts (ELA) 7th to 8th-grade academic growth among Black students enrolled in Philadelphia's black-operated public charter schools, non-black operated charter schools, and traditional public schools while controlling for 6th-grade exam…

The idea of privatization of the traditional U.S. public school system is a relatively recent historical phenomenon. The growing trend towards allowing private enterprises to become active players in the development and delivery of classroom learning is assumed to be a "public good." The following commentary provides a cursory look at…

Examining the experiences of families of students with disabilities seeking to exercise school choice is crucial to informing cogent policies and practices that will ensure equitable access. This report explores the perceptions and experiences of families of students with disabilities enrolled in charter and traditional district schools in…

This study seeks to understand the relationship between observable characteristics of schools operated by education management organizations (EMOs) and their organizational attributes. Most of the prior research on the relationship between EMO-operated schools and neighborhood and school sociodemographic characteristics considers the effect of…

This Data Point uses school questionnaire data from the 2015-16 National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS) and from the 2011-12 and 2007-08 Schools and Staffing Surveys (SASS). These data include nationally representative information for public K-12 schools, principals, and teachers in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. This Data Point…

This study uses an interview protocol made up of a cluster of questions that refer to five different stages of a charter school principal. This interview protocol is used to explore the skills and leadership qualities that charter school principals have in order to analyze the difference between charter school principals and traditional public…

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…

A defining characteristic of charter schools is that they introduce a strong market element into public education. In this paper, we examine through the lens of a market model the evolution of the charter school sector in North Carolina between 1999 and 2012. We examine trends in the mix of students enrolled in charter schools, the racial…

A defining characteristic of charter schools is that they introduce a strong market element into public education. In this paper, we examine the evolution of the charter school sector in North Carolina between 1999 and 2012 through the lens of a market model. We examine trends in the mix of students enrolled in charter schools, the racial…

This brief is the fifth in Baltimore Education Research Consortium's (BERC's) "Launching into Adulthood" series, which examines the trajectories of Baltimore graduates over six years. BERC established a partnership with Baltimore's Promise and the Maryland Longitudinal Data System (MLDS), which has made it possible to examine both…

Although much attention in the education research literature has been placed on comparing the effectiveness of charter schools to the effectiveness in traditional public schools, far less work has gone toward developing a better understanding of the differences in spending and resource allocation between the two sectors. This report aims to help…

The national debate over charter schooling has become increasingly heated in 2016, driven by polarized narratives about the students charters typically serve. Opponents argue charters cream-skim more advantaged students, while proponents hold they primarily serve historically disadvantaged students. National evidence on charter student selectivity…

This is a quantitative phenomenological study of the perceptions of principals of public secondary schools in rural Appalachian Ohio. The purpose of the study is to understand the experiences of the principals as online charter schools become feasible for students in their school district. A random sample of ten principals was obtained from the…