ABSTRACT

Sponsored by the National Center on School Choice, a research consortium headed by Vanderbilt University, this volume examines the growth and outcomes of the charter school movement. Starting in 1992-93 when the nation’s first charter school was opened in Minneapolis, the movement has now spread to 40 states and the District of Columbia and by 2005-06 enrolled 1,040,536 students in 3,613 charter schools. The purpose of this volume is to help monitor this fast-growing movement by compiling, organizing and making available some of the most rigorous and policy-relevant research on K-12 charter schools. Key features of this important new book include:

Expertise – The National Center on School Choice includes internationally known scholars from the following institutions: Harvard University, Brown University, Stanford University, Brookings Institution, National Bureau of Economic Research and Northwest Evaluation Association.

Cross-Disciplinary – The volume brings together material from related disciplines and methodologies that are associated with the individual and systemic effects of charter schools.

Coherent Structure – Each section begins with a lengthy introduction that summarizes the themes and major findings of that section. A summarizing chapter by Mark Schneider, the Commissioner of the National Center on Educational Statistics, concludes the book.

This volume is appropriate for researchers, instructors and graduate students in education policy programs and in political science and economics, as well as in-service administrators, policy makers, and providers.

section 1|6 pages

Assessing Teaching and Learning in Charter Schools

chapter 3|20 pages

Teams Versus Bureaucracies

Personnel Policy, Wage Setting, and Teacher Quality in Traditional Public, Charter, and Private Schools 1

section 2|4 pages

Charter School Finance, Governance, and Law

chapter 4|28 pages

Back to the Future

Sustaining an Equitable Public–Private Model of School Funding 1

chapter 5|18 pages

Charter School Governance

chapter 6|28 pages

Charter Law and Charter Operation

Re-examining the Charter School Marketplace 1

section 3|3 pages

Charter School Effects on Student Achievement

chapter 10|24 pages

Charter School Effects on Achievement

Where We Are and Where We Are Going

chapter 11|16 pages

School Choice

What the NCES Can and Cannot Tell Us