The performance of public education in Michigan has been significantly below average across the country for decades (US News, 2019). Lawmakers in Michigan sought to remedy this in the 1990's with the introduction of charter schools into the educational landscape. Throughout the years, there has been significant debate around whether charter…

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…

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…

The 2018 Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Report Card is the fourth edition in a series of analyses designed to measure high school performance. The first report was published in 2012 (ED541512) and was followed by analyses in 2014 (ED560065) and 2016 (ED588530). This report is a school-level assessment of academic performance…

The appointment of Betsy DeVos as education secretary of the United States has led to much debate across the nation about public charter schools. Opponents of charter schools typically argue that these schools fail if their average standardized test scores do not exceed those of traditional, district-run schools. These types of comparisons,…

Utilizing longitudinal data from the national Schools to Watch (STW) program, this paper examines school demographic characteristics and teacher ratings of the implementation of STW criteria in STW schools and schools that have applied but have not yet been designated as a STW. The STW program was established by the National Forum to Accelerate…

The 2016 Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Report Card is the third edition in a series of analyses designed to measure high school performance. The first report was published in 2012 (ED541512) and was followed by a 2014 analysis (ED560065). This report is a school-level assessment of academic performance based on a four-year…

In Michigan, schools and educators are held accountable for performance more than ever before. Charter school authorizers--the entities responsible for opening and overseeing new and existing charter schools--face almost no accountability for their performance. In Michigan's current charter landscape, the enormous responsibility of authorizing has…

In August, the Manhattan Institute (MI) contracted with Rasmussen Reports to survey public opinion in five states about school choice policies generally, as well as charter schools specifically. Working with MI, Rasmussen crafted nine questions that were added to the organization's regular polling of likely voters for presidential and senatorial…

Given that independent schools have started to face competition from charter schools, the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) commissioned a study with current and prospective charter school parents to determine their perceptions of charter vs. independent schools, assess the relative impact of the variables that affect their school…

In January 2014, as part of a multicity study, researchers from the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) met with a dozen parents in Detroit to learn about their experiences with education in the city. Parents struggle to navigate the city's complex education marketplace. A lack of information, confusing paperwork, and transportation gaps…

This brief examines the series of events that led to the Highland Park school district being converted to a system of charter public schools in 2012. Used as a strategy to help the district eliminate its large fiscal debt while still providing resident students with a local public school option, Highland Park's charter conversion is one of the…

The author reports on a new study which reveals that the lowest-performing public K-8 schools often linger in that state for years, neither improving enough to get off accountability life support nor being shuttered completely. The study adds that persistently failing charter schools fare no better than regular public schools. Of 2,025 chronically…

In 2007, Andrew J. Rotherham proposed a new approach to the contentious issue of charter school caps, the statutory limits on charter school growth in place in several states. Rotherham's proposal, termed "smart charter school caps," called for quality sensitive caps that allow the expansion of high-performing charter schools while also…

This paper examines the competitive effects of charter schools on the efficiency of traditional public schools. The analysis utilizes a statewide school-level longitudinal dataset of Michigan schools from 1994 to 2004. Fixed effect and two alternative estimation methods are employed. Overall, the results suggest that charter competition had a…