Pennsylvania has "the highest cyber charter school enrollment in the country" with student enrollment soaring in 2020-21 due to concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic. School districts paid over $1 billion in tuition for students enrolled in Pennsylvania's 14 cyber charter schools in 2020-21, a $335 million increase over the prior…

This study focused on the effect of fifteen minutes of direct phonics instruction three days per week on student achievement, of Winter MAP goals, during the Response to Intervention block, during English language arts class. The literature suggests the use of both systematic and word-based strategies for instructional strategies, more scientific…

The purpose of this dissertation is to describe the environment of current Texas Subchapter E University charter schools in Texas and some of the teachers that currently work at those charter schools. Two research questions guided this study: (1) What are teachers' experiences in Texas University Charter schools? How do their experiences compare…

This article explores the relationship between teachers and policymaking, and in particular a contradiction at its center: Teachers are needed to "people" policy, yet are conventionally named as its objects. As part of a two-year participatory study, fourteen teachers in three schools, including the author, sought to investigate policy…

Purpose: We describe charter school leaders' beliefs and practices as they relate to student transportation in three choice-rich cities. Research Methods/Approach: Data come from a multiple comparative case study of district and charter school leaders' perceptions and implementation of transportation policies in three choice-rich cities with…

This cross-comparative study examines the personal transitions of the leadership from academies in England with the leadership of independent and charter schools in the United States. Findings from this qualitative study revealed the many similarities in how principals from both the U.S. and England processed personal transitions and how those…

In response to concerns regarding school quality, state policy-makers reformed their charter school authorization processes to impose greater regulatory barriers to chartering. These barriers to market entry could impose substantial burdens for Black and Latino would-be charter operators, as well as independent operators, who may lack access to…

In this paper, the author draws on a qualitative case study of a place-based food justice project (FJP) at an urban public charter high school to examine the role of community-school partnerships (CSPs) in the FJP and marginalized students' experiences of these partnerships. Observations and interviews with students, teachers, and community…

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…

In many ways, Arizona is on the forefront of school choice: in addition to a state-wide open enrollment law, it was one of the first states to adopt charter school legislation in 1994 and currently has the second-highest percentage of public school students attending charter schools in the nation. Despite the extensive research on school choice,…

As students and communities emerge from the ravages of a global pandemic, authorizing faces a key challenge: embracing its fundamental role of providing high-quality educational opportunities, while evolving to meet new demands and expectations, especially those created by the pandemic. How it navigates this tension will impact millions of…

The purpose of this action research is to evaluate the impact of gamified peer feedback in a high school English Language Arts classroom at Southern Charter High School. National assessments on writing show that student proficiency is low in part because many high school students lack revision skills. Compounding the problem is that as classroom…

In a technology-driven society, computing devices are used more in education to make learning engaging, individualize learning, and enhance instruction. Educators are implementing computing devices and ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) to access various learning programs and software. Using ICTs, students engage in project-based…

This study investigated reasons teacher leavers left urban, public secondary teaching positions in Kansas City, Missouri charter schools since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and what might have helped these teachers continue teaching in the schools they left. The research for this study was done by interviewing thirteen teacher leavers who…

Multistate networks are arguably the purest expression of the charter sector's original promise as an engine of innovation within the public school system. On its face, this contention may appear somewhat counterintuitive; the proliferation of schools affiliated with charter management organizations (CMOs) that have siphoned market share away from…