ERIC Number: ED508469
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2004-Mar
Pages: 5
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
City-Wide Systems of Charter Schools: Proceed with Caution. Executive Summary
Education Policy Research Unit
The charter school movement dates from the late 1980s and became a popular education reform tool in the 1990s. Some 3,000 charter schools exist today. Charter advocates made a number of claims regarding how charter schools would improve education. The charter, or contract, would free the school of many state and local district rules and regulations. Liberated from these onerous bureaucratic rules, charter schools would be more efficient and would also offer parents more choices. Most of all, the fundamental promise of charter schools was that they would improve achievement. The City of Buffalo, New York has proposed to establish a network of charter schools under the aegis of the district school board. This appears to be the first time a large urban area has made such a proposal. This report addresses what the research literature to date has said about the performance of charter schools. It reviews the record of charter schools in the context of six questions asked in the planning document, "Creating a Network of Charter Schools in Buffalo", prepared by the Education Innovation Consortium, a Buffalo think-tank, at the direction of the Buffalo School Board. [For the full report, see ED508468.]
Descriptors: Charter Schools, Urban Schools, Educational Change, Boards of Education, Literature, Educational History, Change Strategies, Educational Improvement, Governance, Parent Participation, Networks, School Districts, Accountability, Academic Achievement, Special Needs Students, Educational Quality, Public Schools
Education Policy Research Unit. Arizona State University, Division of Advanced Studies in Education Policy, Leadership, and Curriculum, Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education, P.O. Box 872411, Tempe, AZ 85287. Tel: 480-965-1886; e-mail: epsi@asu.edu; Web site: http://epicpolicy.org/
Publication Type: Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: Arizona State University, Education Policy Research Unit
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A