Yale - 2009 Fall - Readings - Public Schools Policy - Case III Washington

Case III: Charter Schools in Washington, D.C.
(3 February)
Yale University
Political Science Department
PLSC240
Spring 2009
John Bryan Starr

Case III: Charter schools in Washington, D.C.
Table of Contents
The case 3
Document #1: Education Commission of the States, “Education Issues: 4

Charter Schools”
(http://www.ecs.org/ecsmain.asp?page=/search/default.asp)
Exhibit #1: Public Opinion Polling Data on Charter Schools 7
Document #2: Karla Scoon Reid, “Minority Parents Quietly Embrace 11

School Choice,” Education Week, December 5, 2001
Exhibit #2: Charter school enrollment of selected populations 19
Document #3: Brian C. Hassel, The Charter School Challenge: Avoiding the 20
Pitfalls, Fulfilling the Promise (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1999).
Exhibit #3: “Strong” and “Weak” Charter Laws 35
Document #4: Bruno V. Manno, “Yellow Flag,” Education Next (Winter 37

2003)
Document #5: Frederick M. Hess, “The Political Challenge of Charter 44

School Regulation,” Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 85, No. 6, March 2004, pp.
508-512.
Exhibit #4: Charter School Enrollment and Closures, by State 52
Document #6: Caroline Hendrie, “Charter Authorizers Eye Rules on 53

Closings,” Education Week, February 2, 2005
Document #7: Ron Zimmer and Richard Buddin, Getting Inside the 57
Black Box: Examining How the Operation of Charter Schools Affect
Performance (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, October 2005)
Document #8: Darcia Harris Bowman, “Charter school openings 81

lowest in six years,” Education Week, February 18, 2004.
Document #9: Diana Jean Schemo, “Charter schools trail in results, U.S. 83
data reveals,” New York Times, August 17, 2004.
Document #10: “Charter vs. non-charter performance,” Education Week, 87

September 1, 2004.
Document #11: Diana Jean Schemo, “Education Secretary defends charter 87

schools,” New York Times, August 18, 2004.
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Document #12: Diana Jean Schemo, “A second report shows charter school 88
students not performing as well as other students,” New York Times,
December 16, 2004.
Document #13: Martin Carnoy, Rebecca Jacobsen, Lawrence Mishel, and 91

Richard Rothstein, The Charter School Dust-Up: Examining the Evidence on
Enrollment and Achievement (Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute,
2005)
Document #14: Erik W. Robelen, “NAEP Gap Continuing for Charters: 96
Sector’s Scores Lag in Three Out of Four Main Categories,” Education Week,
May 21, 2008.
Background information on Washington, D.C. and its public 99

schools
Exhibit #5: School system statistics 105
Exhibit #6: Washington, D.C. School Governance 106
Exhibit #7: Student performance 107
Exhibit #8: Timeline of events in Washington, D.C. 108
Document #15: Robert Allen Blair, “‘To Fix a Broken City:’ Home Rule 109
and the Origins of School Choice in Washington, D.C.,” Unpublished
senior thesis, Education Department, Brown University, April 2006.
Chapter 1: “The Charter Schools Movement in D.C. 1995-96.”
Document #16: Melissa Schoeplein, “Washington D.C.: The Charter 125

School Revolution In the Wake of a Congressional Takeover,” Unpublished
paper for ED164, December, 2001
Document #17: DC Appleseed Center, Charter schools in the District of 134

Columbia: Improving systems for accountability, autonomy, and competition
(Washington, DC: DC Appleseed Center, 2001)
Document #18: Mark Schneider (SUNY Stony Brook) and Jack Buckley 142
(Boston College), “Making the Grade: Comparing DC Charter Schools to
1
Other DC Public Schools,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 25:2
(Summer 2003)
Epilogue 161
1
The work reported in this article was begun with support from the Smith Richardson Foundation and has
continuing support from the National Science Foundation. Thanks to Dann Millimet for suggestions
regarding the propensity score model.
2
Document #19: Alex Hemmer, “The Pride of His City? Adrian Fenty and 161
Mayoral Leadership in the Washington, D.C. Public Schools,” Unpublished
paper for PLSC260, “Public Schools, Politics and Policy,” Yale University,
December 2007.
Suggested Study Group Questions 172
Appendix #1: DC Charter Legislation 173
Appendix #2: Last year’s clarifying questions 173
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The case.
This week’s case is our second foray into the world of school choice. Here again, the
market argument in favor of charters is that of providing choices for parents with students
in failing schools. We saw several variations of the argument in favor of choice last week:
(1) “Public” schools are not public. Parents should have the same choice among “public”
schools as they do among “public” buses. (2) Markets are preferable to government
monopolies in education just as is the case in the economy. (3) The education bureaucracy
is bloated and adversely affects the quality of education. (4) Some children are trapped in
underperforming schools and should be given the opportunity to escape.
We will also hear a non-market argument in favor of charter schools. Charters can serve
as laboratories for innovative practices, operating free of the encumbrances dogging
ordinary public schools. Indeed, public schools can learn from the successes experienced
in charter schools.
As of 2007, 4,000 charter schools were operating in 40 states and enrolling over a million
students, or 2.1% of public school students nationwide.
We will use Washington, D.C. as our case study exploring charter schools. The city has
71 charter schools that enroll upwards of 33% of its student population. Its situation is
complicated by the fact that the charter regulation was enacted at a time when Congress
had stepped in to take control of the city and, subsequently, its school system.
We begin with an introduction to charter schools from the Web site of the Education
Commission of the States, and follow that introduction with some public opinion polling
data on charters. An article from Education Week suggests that poor parents of color are
looking more favorably on charter schools than they once did.
The politics of charter schools is introduced with a chapter from a Brookings Institution
study published in 1999. An excerpt from a second chapter from the same study looks at
the question of how charter schools are to be held accountable. There follows an article
outlining the sources of opposition to the charter movement and its strengths.
The casebook continues with five articles dealing with current issues in the charter
movement: the decline in the pace of opening new charter schools, and the controversy
over student performance results in charter schools that erupted with the publication of an
American Federation of Teachers study in the summer of 2004.
The Washington case is introduced by a senior thesis and a research paper from two
Brown University students. These descriptions of the introduction of charter schools in
the District of Columbia is followed by the executive summaries from two evaluation
studies of the performance of Washington’s charter schools.
The casebook concludes with an epilogue describing the efforts of the recently-elected
mayor, Adrian Fenty, to follow the examples of Richard Daley in Chicago and Michael
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Bloomberg in New York City in establishing a system of mayoral control in the District
of Columbia Public Schools.
• • •
We begin with a general description of charter schools from the Education Commission of the States.
Document #1: Education Commission of the States, “Education Issues: Charter Schools”
(http://www.ecs.org/ecsmain.asp?page=/search/default.asp) (Consulted 14 August 2008)
Charter schools are semi-autonomous public schools, founded by educators, parents,
community groups or private organizations that operate under a written contract with a
state, district or other entity. This contract, or charter, details how the school will be
organized and managed, what students will be taught and expected to achieve, and how
success will be measured. Many charter schools enjoy freedom from rules and regulations
affecting other public schools, as long as they continue to meet the terms of their charters.
Charter schools can be closed for failing to satisfy these terms.
As of November 2004, 40 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico had enacted
charter school legislation. As of September, 2006 there were about 4,000 charter schools
serving over 1.1 million students across the country. Charter school laws often vary from
state to state, and often differ on several important factors, including who is allowed to
sponsor charter schools, how much money charter schools receive for operational and
facilities expenses and whether the teachers in a charter school have to be certified.
Several recent studies have examined the impact of charter schools on students, schools
and school districts. While it is difficult to draw any definitive conclusions on the impact
of charter schools, these studies shed light on who is attending charter schools, how
charter schools operate and how school districts are reacting to, and interacting with,
charter schools. As the charter school movement matures, the relationship between charter
schools and student achievement will receive heightened scrutiny, and what is learned will
significantly impact the future of the movement.
Quick Facts: As of August 2008, about 4,000 charter schools are open in the United
States. The states with the most charter schools are California (618), Arizona (464), Florida
(356), Michigan (229), and Texas (207). There is only one charter school in Mississippi.
2
(Source: http://www.uscharterschools.org ).
2 Cf. The ECS State Policies for Charter Schools Database
(http://www.ecs.org/html/educationIssues/CharterSchools/CHDB_intro.asp) . This database contains

information about the state policies for charter schools in each state. From this database, you can generate
profiles of the state policies for charter schools in individual states, create comparisons of specific types of state
policies for charter schools across several states and view predetermined reports on state policies for charter
schools.
At the present time, 40 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have enacted charter school laws, so
this database only contains information for them. It does not contain any information for the 10 states that
have not enacted charter school laws.
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Frequently Asked Questions:

What is a charter school?
Charter schools are semi-autonomous public schools that operate under contract with a
state, school district or other governing entity. This contract—or charter—stipulates how
the school will be organized and managed and how student success will be measured. In
exchange for deregulation, which frees charter schools from following many of the
requirements faced by traditional public schools, a higher level of student accountability is
expected from a charter school, and institutions can be closed if expectations are not met.
Do students who attend charter schools achieve higher test scores?
There is conflicting data regarding this question. A recent study in Arizona found that
charter school students showed stronger gains on reading tests than their counterparts in
public schools. However, another recent study in Michigan found that charter school
students actually performed below traditional school students on statewide exams. Until
more data can be synthesized, the issue of charter school impact on student performance
will remain debatable.
Do charter schools provide increased accountability for student performance?
According to recent studies, charter schools’ claims of greater accountability for student
performance are only partially accurate. One group of researchers points to an
“accountability bind” faced by charter school authorizers in several states, in which
performance is difficult to define or measure, leading to confusion in many places. Charter
schools are also difficult to close once students, parents and teachers become invested in
and attached to a particular school. Many of these problems stem from growing pains, as
legislators and educators attempt to chart unknown territory in the charter school
movement.
What is the impact of charter schools on traditional schools and school districts?
Some district leaders complain about lost revenue and budget problems caused by students
transferring from district to charter schools. Others report that charter schools force
traditional schools to adopt a “customer service” approach to education delivery in their
districts. A report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education finds that most
school districts across the country instituted new education programs or changed the
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education structures in their schools to either replicate or compete with charter schools.
This database contains information about the state policies for charter schools in each state. From this
database, you can generate profiles of the state policies for charter schools in individual states, create
comparisons of specific types of state policies for charter schools across several states and view predetermined
reports on state policies for charter schools.
3
Erickson, John, and Silverman, Debra, Challenge and opportunity: The impact of charter schools on school districts
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 2001)
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Positive or negative, charter schools are often changing the way traditional school districts
manage their education systems.
Pros and Cons:
According to proponents:
• Charter schools present students and parents with an increasingly diverse array of
education options.
• The competition provided by charter schools forces school districts to improve the
performance of their schools in order to attract and retain students and dollars.
• If managed properly, charter schools serve as laboratories for education

experimentation and innovation. The easing of certain regulations can free teachers
and administrators to develop and implement new learning strategies.
• Increased accountability for charter schools means that schools have to perform or
risk closure. This extra incentive demands results, showing increased student
achievement.
According to opponents:
• Because charter schools operate as a business, as well as a learning institution, they

are subject to market forces that may eventually force them to close, depriving
students of a continuous education.
• Charter schools sometimes segregate students along racial and class lines and fail to
adequately serve students with disabilities or limited English proficiency.
• Accountability for student performance is difficult to measure and enforce in the

burgeoning charter school movement. The usual complications of accurate student
measurement are compounded by the often-conflicting demands of the state
government’s need for accountability and the marketplace’s desire for opportunity.
• The emergence of education management organizations as proprietors of charter

schools creates new, “pseudo-school districts” in which decisions are made far
removed from the school.
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Polling data suggests that the public finds charter schools to be a more benign and appealing form of
school choice.
Exhibit #1: Public Opinion Polling Data on Charter Schools

th
1. Lowell C. Rose and Alec M. Gallup, “The 39 Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll
of the Public’s Attitudes toward the Public Schools,” September 2007 4
(http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/kpollpdf.htm ) (Consulted 14 August 2008)
Charter Schools
Charter schools may be out of place in this section on alternatives, since they are actually
public schools. However, we include them here because they operate outside the normal
public school structure. Table 20 provides the data regarding the public’s view of these
schools. The percentage that favors charter schools has climbed steadily since the question
first appeared in the poll. The 60% in favor of charter schools I up 7% from 2006 and up
18% since 2000.
Table 20. As you may know, charter schools operate under a charter or
contract that frees them from many of the state regulations imposed on
public schools and permits them to operate independently. Do you favor
or oppose the idea of charter schools?
National Totals No Children In Public School

School (%) Parents (%)
2007 2005 2000 2007 2005 2000 2007 2005 2000
Favor 60 49 42 58 49 42 63 48 40
Oppose 35 41 47 36 40 47 34 43 47
Don’t Know 5 10 11 6 11 11 3 9 13
2. Steve Farkas, Jean Johnson, and Anthony Foleno, On Thin Ice: How Advocates and
Opponents Could Misread the Public’s Views on Vouchers and Charter Schools (New York:
Public Agenda: 2000) (Excerpt of findings)
Most Americans know very little about vouchers, charter schools or for-profit schools, and
most have a limited grasp of the essentials of the expert debate. Experts and advocates may
hold carefully thought-out positions, but the public has barely begun to learn how these
4
The 2003 and 2004 Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup polls did not include questions on charter schools.
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proposals might work. Even parents in areas with school choice policies in place are
surprisingly unaware of the pros and cons of this debate…There can be no more striking
contrast of the state of the public’s thinking about alternatives to the traditional public
school system than to compare it with public attitudes toward welfare reform. In 1996,
when Public Agenda conducted a study on welfare reform, Americans were far more
likely to have spent time thinking about this issue. Bringing up the issue in focus groups
opened the floodgates, and people leaped into the discussion. With welfare, people also
had strongly held notions about what should be done: work and time limits coupled with
education and child care. With vouchers and charters, little is certain and virtually
everything negotiable.
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How much do you know about charter schools?
Percentage saying they know “very little” or “nothing”:
General public 81
Parents 79
Charter communities 52
Do you need to learn more about charter schools before you can have an opinion, or do you know
enough already?
Percentage saying they need to learn more:
General public 89
Parents 89
Charter communities 68
Community leaders 54
The public knows even less about charter schools than about vouchers, but the more
people learn, the more they like the idea. Most appreciate typical charter school features
such as less regulation, special themes or educational approaches, and community
involvement. This appreciation stems in part from the public’s dissatisfaction with the
bureaucracy they associate with traditional public schools. In the focus groups, people
tended to assume that charter schools are “boutique” schools — small, specialized and
similar to good private schools, but free of charge.
Out of the many topics discussed with focus group participants, the charter school idea
was the most difficult to get across. A typical discussion of charter schools began with
general confusion over the difference between a charter school, a public school and a
private school. Once participants became engaged with the idea, charter schools for the
most part were lauded as innovative and energetic, liberated from the burden of
regulation. There was surprisingly little wariness about deregulation, provided that charter
schools are held accountable in some way for student performance. A remark by a satisfied
father of two charter school students sums up this feeling: “The charter school gave us a
5
Survey data from June, 1999. All figures are %.
9
feeling like we’re taking control back. We’re giving our money to the government, and
they’re doing this mess. This is our way of saying, ‘You can’t have our money like that
anymore, we’re gonna do it our way.’” However, since many parents are still not sure
what a charter school is, it’s likely that many would like to see one for themselves before
making a decision; only 8% would “definitely” send their child to a charter school.
Charter schools are public schools that have a lot more control over their own budget, staff and
curriculum, and are free from many existing regulations. In general, do you favor or oppose this
idea?
Strongly/somewhat Strongly/somewhat
favor oppose
General public 68 18
Community leaders 77 15
Charter schools are free from a lot of the regulations and day-to-day supervision that regular public
schools face. Which do you think is more likely to happen?
Teachers and principals will concentrate on teaching instead 54

of paperwork.
Charter schools will be more likely to experience 28

mismanagement or fraud.
When charter schools are started by groups of teachers or parents, which do you think is more likely to
happen?
More schools will be started by motivated people who will 51

do a good job.
Too many people who don’t know what they’re doing will 35
open schools.
Would you approve or disapprove of these aspects of charter schools?
Approve Disapprove
More control over hiring and firing employees, 71 19
including teachers
Can be started by groups of teachers or parents 59 28

in a local area.
Often focus on a special theme, such as science 56 33
or art.
10
If charter schools were started in your local area, do you think they would be an overall success, an
overall failure, or would they not make much difference as far as the quality of education kids
received?
Overall success 40
They would not make much difference 27
Overall failure 10
It depends/I don’t know 24
3. Greater Washington Community Research, Inc., Charter schools in the District of

Columbia: What residents know about them and how they feel about them (March 2001)
(Telephone interview with 601 Washington residents)
District of Columbia Charter Schools Polling Data
1. Have heard about charters 80
2. Can name a charter school 15
3. Misconceptions:
a. Partly private, partly public 54
b. Can exclude applicants 55
c. Set own standards 54
d. Charge tuition 37
e. Choose students other than by lottery 90
4. Positive aspects of charters:
a. Smaller class size 64
b. Flexibility in teaching 68
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c. Variety in curriculum 49
d. Able to meet individual student needs 55
5. Effect on public schools:
a. Threaten 28
b. Strengthen 36
c. Neither threaten nor strengthen 36
Those with kids in school are better informed about charters than those
without, but misconceptions exist in both groups.
African-Americans are more likely to know somebody with kids in a

charter and are slightly more favorably inclined toward charters.
Information and socioeconomic status co-vary, but misconceptions are

equally distributed across socioeconomic groups.
Although initially skeptical of school choice—perhaps viewing it as part and parcel of a right-wing
anti-public school agenda—minority parents began to warm to the idea.
Document #2: Karla Scoon Reid, “Minority Parents Quietly Embrace School Choice,”
Education Week, December 5, 2001
The critics of vouchers and other free-market-style approaches to education should be
able to rally African-Americans and Latinos against the movement for alternatives to
traditional public schooling.
After all, the most typical advocates of wide-open school choice are conservative
Republicans and libertarians; the staunchest opponents tend to be Democratic and liberal,
and can usually count on blacks and Hispanics as political allies.
But in cities where tuition vouchers, charter schools, and large-scale private scholarships
are available, such options have proved popular and are quietly attracting more minority
parents. People of color are now emerging as vocal and visible leaders in the school choice
movement, and parents are increasingly listening to their messages.
School choice, its advocates say, can no longer be dismissed as a white, conservative
movement that takes advantage of unwitting minority families.
“It’s easy to make the complaint if all of the folks leading the school choice movement are
white, and all of the complainants are black,” said T. Willard Fair, the president of the
Urban League of Greater Miami, which operates a charter school. “Now, you’ve got
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people on the other side who are credible, who are legitimate, who have a history of
being concerned, and have no economic or political interest that is obvious.”
Proponents of school choice have yet to sway large numbers of parents of any racial or
ethnic background into their camp. About 90 percent of America’s students attend public
schools. Polls and surveys on school choice often yield conflicting results. And voters in
California and Michigan soundly defeated voucher initiatives last year.
Yet there’s a strong undercurrent of support for alternatives from African-Americans and
Latinos who have gravitated toward school choice—from charter schools, which are
considered a less radical step, to publicly financed vouchers that pay for tuition at private
schools. Many minority parents are impatient at what they see as the plodding pace of
school reform; they’re concerned that their own children won’t benefit from long-term
improvements to the current public school system.
Some national education-watchers believe that minority parents’ growing interest in
school choice demands greater attention.
“This new movement from communities of color and low-income parents is certainly a
threat to leaders in public education,” said Warren S. Simmons, the executive director of
the Annenberg Institute for School Reform in Providence, R.I. “If these parents opt out,
who is the constituency in these urban areas?”
Signs of ‘Restlessness’
In Dayton, a total of 6,000 students are expected to be enrolled in charter schools in that
southwestern Ohio city by next fall. About 1,000 more Milwaukee students are using
state-financed vouchers to attend private schools this year, bringing the total number of
students using vouchers to 10,700. The private, New York City-based Children’s
Scholarship Fund received 1.25 million applicants for 40,000 scholarships to attend private
schools in 1999.
What do those numbers mean?
“It’s a sign of the restlessness with the state of play in public schools,” acknowledged
Hugh B. Price, the president of the New York City-based National Urban League and an
opponent of publicly financed vouchers for private schooling. “I understand the
restlessness of people.”
That sign has yet to be addressed by the leadership of civil rights organizations, politicians,
and teachers’ unions, argues Terry M. Moe, the author of Schools, Vouchers, and the
American Public.
“Their own constituents—poor people and minorities—are the ones in the worst schools
and the biggest supporters of school choice,” Mr. Moe asserted, citing his research that
found that high percentages of African-Americans, Hispanics, and low-income people
backed vouchers. “Under normal circumstances, they would support their constituents.”
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Mr. Moe added that the teachers’ unions, whose interests are rooted in the current system,
seem to be the key obstacle to advancing the dialogue about school choice in political and
civil rights organizations.
But John H. Jackson, the national education director for the Baltimore, Md.-based
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said its members want
high-quality education in their neighborhoods, not an unstable “corporate movement,” as
he calls the push for choice.
Bob Chase, the president of the National Education Association, also disputed Mr. Moe’s
contention. He pointed to the overwhelming support the union received from minority
voters in its successful efforts last year to defeat the voucher proposals on the statewide
ballots in California and Michigan.
“We’re not out of touch,” Mr. Chase declared. “According to the votes, we’re not out of
touch. Those are the facts.”
While Mr. Moe conceded that the unions were unlikely to change their positions on
vouchers, he said that in the case of civil rights groups, older leaders would be replaced by
a younger generation more supportive of such options.
In fact, new organizations have emerged during the past year to take up the charge for
minority parents who support a wide range of choices in education. The Black Alliance
for Educational Options, which reports a membership of 1,000 people and 23 chapters
across the country, was founded in Milwaukee last year to push for school choice and
public school improvement.
Kaleem Caire, the president of BAEO, which is now located in Washington, said that his
organization’s base is growing while the NAACP’s base is aging. BAEO launched a
national advertising campaign this year promoting the benefits of vouchers and charter
6
schools.
“If black folks sit on the sidelines of the school reform effort,” Mr. Caire said, “we’re
going to be left behind again.”
Similarly, the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options, which was formed
this year, hopes to help Hispanics gain access to vouchers, charter schools, and magnet
schools to improve students’ academic achievement.
Robert B. Aguirre, who is a board member of the San Antonio Children’s Educational
Opportunity Foundation, which provides privately financed vouchers for children living
in that city, founded the Hispanic council. The new organization must also be concerned
about the quality of public education, he said, since most Hispanic children attend public
schools.
6
See also “Black Alliance Weighs in With Pro-Voucher Campaign,” Education Week, May 30, 2001.
14
Still, Mr. Aguirre, a local businessman, added that the focus of the Hispanic council is
clear: “We’re not concerned about the system. We’re concerned about the kids.”
Charter School Push
As such groups add a new voice to school choice advocacy, some civil rights organizations
and community leaders are helping to establish charter schools for minority students. Some
school choice advocates say this trend shows that they are warming to education
alternatives.
For example, several local affiliates of the National Urban League operate charter schools.
NEA affiliates, with support from the national organization, run a handful of charter
schools, which are independently operated public schools.
The Washington-based National Council of La Raza, which advocates on behalf of

Hispanics, has raised $10 million to create and support 50 charter schools nationwide that
7
will be aimed at Latinos.
And the ASPIRA Association, a national organization based in Washington devoted to the
education and leadership development of Puerto Ricans and other Latinos, has five charter
schools and plans to open more.
“We’re definitely not abandoning our work with traditional public schools,” said Ariana
Quiñones, the education director for La Raza. “But we do think that sometimes you do
need an option that is more readily available.”
‘Leaving Door Open’
Johnny Villamil-Casanova, the executive vice president of ASPIRA, said his organization
has worked for 35 years trying to improve public schools by providing students with
mentors and tutors and by training parents to run for school board seats. He described
running charter schools as a natural extension of that effort, not a departure.
But while support for charter schools in such quarters is growing, most of the groups
involved are wary about government-financed vouchers, at least for now.
Mr. Price of the Urban League opposes the use of public money for private schooling
because of what he sees as a lack of accountability.
Although La Raza is opposed to vouchers in their current form because they often do not
cover the entire cost of tuition, Ms. Quiñones characterized the group’s voucher position
as “leaving the door open for discussion.” ASPIRA has no official position on vouchers.
The emergence of the national black and Hispanic organizations pressing for school
choice—and now the National Council of La Raza’s charter school effort—show the
development of a school choice movement independent of the established minority
leadership, said Howard L. Fuller. He is a former superintendent of the Milwaukee public
7
See also “Hispanic Group Quietly Initiates Big Charter Push,” Education Week, Nov. 21, 2001.
15
schools and one of the first prominent African-American proponents of vouchers and
charter schools.
“The ‘leadership’ is saying one thing, but under that, there’s a movement of people
coming to a different opinion,” according to Mr. Fuller, the president of BAEO’s board of
directors. “Over time, it reaches the leadership.”
Yet school choice proponents who attempt to show the diversity of the movement often
cite the same names of African-American supporters: Mr. Fuller, Mr. Fair of the Urban
League in Miami, and Dwight Evans, a Philadelphia Democrat and Pennsylvania state
representative.
“It’s absolutely a select few” African-Americans, said Michael Watson, a vice president of
Children First America, a Bentonville, Ark.-based organization that offers private school
scholarships to needy students nationwide.
“But there’s a crack in the door and that crack is going to widen,” he said. “You’ve got
the minority community beginning to emerge on this issue.”
Both Jeanne Allen, the president of the Center for Education Reform, a Washington-
based research and advocacy group that supports school choice, and Mr. Fuller said they
see a change in the minority community based on reactions at their own speaking
engagements.
Ten years ago, Ms. Allen said, she was booed at a National Council of La Raza event.
Now, people at least listen to Ms. Allen and Mr. Fuller at such gatherings.
What Ms. Allen describes as the myth that a “bunch of white, public-education-hating
people with horns” are pushing school choice is finally being exposed, she said.
“Little by little, they’re introduced to people who don’t have horns,” she added.
Mixed Messages
Recent public-opinion surveys about charter schools and vouchers yield varying results,
making it difficult to determine with precision the prevailing mood about school choice
among minorities.
A 1999 survey of 1,200 adults by Public Agenda, a New York City-based, nonprofit
opinion- research group, found that 68 percent of African-Americans and 65 percent of
Hispanics “strongly favor” or “somewhat favor” government-financed vouchers.
A National School Boards Association-sponsored survey of about 1,211 adults this past
May found that 41 percent of the African-Americans polled “strongly oppose” vouchers,
while 19 percent “strongly favor” them.
The National Urban League’s “State of Black America Survey for 2001” found that 58
percent of the 800 black adults polled said that education tax dollars should be used solely
16
for public schools. But 52 percent of the respondents favored the creation of charter
schools.
Generation Gap
Meanwhile, a generation gap seems to be emerging among African-Americans when it

comes to opinions about school choice.
A poll by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington think tank
that focuses on black issues, found that about 57 percent of the African-Americans
surveyed supported vouchers, compared with 49 percent of all of those surveyed of any
race. For African-Americans under age 35, however, the proportion approving of
vouchers climbed to 75 percent. The center did not survey Hispanics.
“It’s not like black parents or Hispanic parents have some philosophical preference for
alternative types of education settings,” said David A. Bositis, a senior political analyst for
the center. “It’s rather how satisfied they are with local public schools.”
Older African-Americans are more pro-government and suspicious of the conservatives

who back school choice, Mr. Bositis pointed out.
Mr. Jackson of the NAACP said the younger African-American generation did not grow
up in a time when black people couldn’t eat at certain restaurants because of their race and
were barred in many states from attending public schools with whites.
“We need to link with our historical past to change the institutions,” he said, rather than
forsake the public system.
Less Committed?
While agreeing that the struggles of previous generations should be honored, some stress
that the social landscape is different today.
African-American parents in their late 20s and early 30s are simply seeking the best
education possible for their children, said Vernard T. Gant, the director of urban school
services for the Association of Christian Schools International, a Colorado Springs, Colo.-
based group representing 3,800 religious schools.
Younger blacks are less committed to institutions and systems, he said, which is why they
often are more accepting of educational options outside the public schools.
Mr. Gant, who formerly ran private schools in Birmingham, Ala., noted that there is a
history of black families sending their children to private schools. His mother, for
example, sent Mr. Gant and his four brothers to a Lutheran school in Mobile until the
family could afford to move to the suburbs and attend public schools there.
17
But in some quarters, if African-Americans don’t see school choice through “the lenses of
the past,” said Mr. Fair of the Urban League in Miami, others in the community believe
they have “sold out.” Blacks who are receptive to school choice may be silenced and
ostracized, he said, and meanwhile have no options for their children.
“There has been a paradigm shift, emotionally and psychologically,” Mr. Fair said of the
sentiment in favor of school choice. “We can’t afford to play around.”
Impatient With Waiting
Most parents have been waiting patiently for better schools in their communities, but to
no avail, Mr. Simmons of the Annenberg Institute said. Individual schools have achieved
innovation and success, he said, yet “we’re not creating communities of successful
schools.”
“Most people are unwilling to sacrifice their children to support their ideology,” Mr.
Simmons warned.
It is that impatience that has driven more African-Americans and Hispanics to view school
choice as a way to improve their children’s educational opportunities, many observers say.
While there must be a multipronged approach to improving education, Ms. Quiñones of
La Raza said, “some communities’ needs are so great, parents aren’t willing to wait.”
But Mr. Jackson of the NAACP countered that parents must wait for education reform,
especially in the absence of proven alternatives. Rather than support vouchers, the
NAACP launched a national campaign last month that will work to end racial inequities
in public schools, colleges, and universities.
In a related effort, the National Black Caucus of State Legislators last week announced
legislative strategies to target the achievement gap between minority students and their
white classmates.
And Shirley Igo, the president of the National PTA, cautioned that parents must ensure
that exercising choice “doesn’t negatively impact on the 90 percent of children in public
schools.”
That may be a difficult responsibility for parents to fulfill in some communities, such as the
nation’s capital, which has seen tremendous growth in charter school enrollment.
“I think the schools in D.C. are in such horrendous shape I could never begrudge a parent
for trying to make the right decision for their child,” said Peggy Cooper Cafritz, the
president of the District of Columbia school board.
While she believes Washington’s schools will improve, that will only happen if the
community supports public schools, she said.
18
“We absolutely have an overarching duty to support public education, but I don’t think
it’s just an African-American thing or a Jewish thing,” Ms. Cafritz said. “Every single
group has benefited from it. As a nation, we cannot splinter that commitment.”
For some African-Americans, as urban districts struggle to reach their children, charter
schools and vouchers are “in the meantime” solutions, said Imani Bazzell, a parent
coordinator with African-Americans for Accountability in Education, a community group
in Champaign, Ill. Those who are disillusioned with public education, she said, often
decide that they will create their own schools.
“But I’m real nervous about the bedfellows,” Ms. Bazzell, the mother of three public
school children, said, alluding to the political conservatives and corporate leaders who
support school choice. “What I really want is for black folks to take the public schools
back and not leave the public schools.”
The Choice Challenge
Striking a precarious balance between providing parents with viable education alternatives
while continuing to support a struggling school system consumes the Rev. Vanessa Oliver
Ward.
Ms. Ward and her husband, the Rev. Daryl Ward, lead the Omega Baptist Church, one
of the largest African-American churches in Dayton.
Three years ago, the church “adopted” a public elementary school, where members of the
congregation volunteer their time as tutors and mentors. The church also ran an after-
school program for students. Then, last year, Ms. Ward helped open a charter school for
middle school students, although the church membership favored starting a private
religious elementary school. Currently, 150 students, including one of her children, attend
the school, which is housed in the church. Her other children attend a private school.
Ms. Ward admitted that opening the Omega School of Excellence has been a “major
challenge” because many of the church’s 4,000 members are public school employees.
The tension was palpable in the city as the district’s enrollment decreased by about 4,700
children since 1996, and charter schools attracted more students, she said.
Still, the 19-year-old church’s young congregation was willing to try something new.
While Ms. Ward is the charter school’s director, her congregation continues to play a
visible role in the school district. This fall, an Omega Baptist Church member was part of
a slate of successful “reform-minded” candidates that was elected to Dayton’s school
board.
“We felt such urgency that we had to address the issue of our children not being
educated,” Ms. Ward said about starting the charter school. “We have to find a solution.
But at the same time, you have to support the public school district.”
19
Exhibit #2: Charter school enrollment of selected populations
Source: Center for Education Reform

(http://www.edreform.com/_upload/cer_charter_survey.pdf
20
In the following chapter from his book, The Charter School Challenge, Brian Hassel discusses the
great variety among charter school laws across the states and the effect that “weak” and “strong”
charter laws has on the proliferation and operation of charter schools.
Document #3: Brian C. Hassel, The Charter School Challenge: Avoiding the Pitfalls, Fulfilling
the Promise (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1999).
Chapter 2: A Bird’s-Eye View of Charter School Politics
Despite some common threads, charter school laws across the country differ from one
another so greatly that they appear to have been cut from different fabrics altogether. One
set of laws, termed “strong laws” or “live laws” by charter school proponents, empowers a
wide variety of groups to start charter schools; allows these groups to petition some entity
other than the local school board to obtain charter status; gives charter schools wide
latitude in their curriculums, teaching practices, and operations; and authorizes the
8
creation of a large number of the new institutions. Another set, known as “weak” or
“dead” laws, restricts the range of groups eligible to propose charter schools, often to
existing public schools; grants local school boards veto power over charter schools in their
jurisdictions; allows only minimal independence and latitude; or strictly limits the number
9
of charter schools that may open.
In addition to these variations, of course, 16 states had not enacted any sort of charter
legislation, weak or strong, by the end of 1998. The bird’s-eye view of charter school
politics provided in this chapter looks at what political variables distinguish charter states
from noncharter states and weak states from strong ones. This analysis uncovers a few
interesting patterns and challenges at least one piece of conventional wisdom about charter
school politics.
Variations in Charter School Laws
As of January 1996, only 20 states had charter school laws on the books (see Table 2-1).
Though states have continued to adopt laws (and will probably do so for the next few
years), this analysis focuses on the relatively early adopters of charter school laws. As more
and more states adopt charter laws, fewer characteristics will differentiate charter states
from non-charter states.
8
Louann A. Bierlein, “Existing Charter School Laws: Analysis of ‘Stronger’ Components,” mimeograph,
1995; Louann A. Bierlein, Charter Schools: Initial Findings (Denver: Education Commission of the States,
1996); Ted Kolderie, The Charter Idea: Update and Prospects, Fall ‘95, Public Services Redesign Project (St. Paul,
Minn.: Center for Policy Studies, 1995).
9
This book uses the terms “strong” and “weak” to distinguish different types of charter laws. This
terminology, of course, reflects the perspective of charter school advocates. Opponents of charter schools do
not regard “strong” laws as strong at all. Because of the prevalence of these terms, however, the strong-weak
distinction provides the most straightforward way to differentiate the types of laws.
21
To differentiate strong from weak statutes, this analysis focuses on five characteristics of
charter school laws that seem most important to the ultimate success of charter school
10
programs and that set state laws apart from one another.
First, did the charter law empower some public body other than local school boards to
authorize charter schools? The strongest laws enabled several different entities to approve
charter schools, helping to lower barriers to entry. The weakest laws allowed only the
local school board to approve charters, a restriction that likely limits the potential for
innovation and significant competition. Second, did the law allow a wide range of
individuals and groups to propose charter schools? The strongest laws invited almost any
citizen or organization, with the exception of religious organizations, to make proposals.
The weakest laws allowed only existing public schools to apply for conversion to charter
status.
Third, did the charter law grant charter schools significant legal and fiscal independence
from local school districts? The strongest laws established charter schools as legally separate
entities and provided funds directly to charter schools. The weakest laws made charter
schools legally and fiscally part of existing school districts. Fourth, did the charter law
exempt charter schools automatically from a wide range of public school laws and
regulations? The strongest laws did so; the weakest allowed exemptions in only a few cases
or required charter schools to ask for exemptions on a case-by-case basis. Finally, did the
law make it possible for a large number of charter schools to open? The strongest placed
no limits (or high limits) on the number of schools and provided charter schools with
enough resources to make them financially viable. The weakest strictly limited the
number of charter schools or provided the schools with inadequate resources.
These five characteristics appear most important to the success of the charter school idea
and distinguished state charter school laws from one another. Without this second
criterion, a sixth feature would surely be added to this list: the extent to which charter
school laws held charter schools accountable for producing acceptable academic results.
No charter school law could be regarded as strong unless it included provisions to ensure
that only successful charter schools survive, provisions that are as essential to the charter
idea as those regarding autonomy. But state charter school laws as enacted showed very
little variation on this issue. Some required the students in charter schools to take state
tests; others did not. Charter laws specified somewhat different procedures for revoking
and renewing charters. But on the core issues of accountability—limiting the terms of
charters, stating the grounds upon which charters can be revoked, and laying out the
essential criteria for removal—charter laws looked very similar.
10
For a more detailed discussion of these issues, see Bryan Hassel, “The Charter School Idea: Elements of an
Effective Charter School Program,” Taubman Center Working Paper Series (John F. Kennedy School of
Government, Harvard University, 1995). For other analyses of state laws that include more than the initial
20 statutes, see Angela Dale and David DeSchryver, eds., The Charter School Workbook Your Roadmap to the
Charter School Movement (Washington: Center for Education Reform, 1997), chap. 2; RPP International, A
National Study of Charter Schools: Second-Year Report (Washington: U.S. Office of Educational Research and
Improvement, 1998), pp. 13-25.
22
The exceptions were the laws in Arizona and Michigan that allowed charter terms of 10
11
to 15 years; in most other charter states the term was three to six years. This distinction,
however, does not warrant the inclusion of accountability provisions in an analysis of how
the first 20 state laws differ, for two reasons. First, though two of these laws allowed
longer charters, they each required a review every five to seven years. As a practical
matter, low-performing charter schools in all states were at equal risk of having their
charters revoked. Second, those two jurisdictions would be regarded as having strong laws
even if they were weak on this one dimension. The analysis that follows would not turn
out any differently if accountability provisions were included in the list of features worth
considering.
Table 2-1 shows how each state law addressed the five issues. Although each law can fall
somewhere on a continuum from strong to weak, the table classifies each state as either
strong or weak on each dimension. One state—Arizona—possessed all five attributes of
strong laws. Six others possessed four of the five. These seven were unquestionably at
the “strong” end of the continuum. Three states—Massachusetts, Minnesota, and

Colorado—possessed three strong characteristics each. This analysis considers them strong,
however, because they had what many observers regard as the most essential characteristic
of strong laws: the availability of an authorizer other than the local school board.12 On the
weak side of the line were ten states with two or fewer strong characteristics. Two of
these states—New Mexico and Rhode Island—empowered some entity other than the
11
In Texas, the duration of the charter is not specified in the charter law; each charter contract sets out its
own duration.
12
Bierlein, “Existing Charter School Laws”; Kolderie, The Charter Idea.
23
local school board to authorize charter schools. But the absence of any other strong
13
provisions renders these laws weak.
Political Factors
What political factors lead some states to adopt weaker charter school laws than others?
Presumably, the extent of compromise depends upon the legislative balance between
proponents and opponents of the proposed reform. The stronger the opponents, the more
compromised a reform is likely to be after churning through the legislative process.
Among the potential indicators of power in state policymaking in general and education
policymaking in particular are partisan balance, the power of teachers’ organizations,
objective educational conditions, and political culture.
Partisan Balance
14
States have increasingly become partisan battlegrounds. Although parties have long
battled for control of state policymaking, the number of states in which one party was
more or less assured of control has declined since the 1970s.15
One aspect of partisan control is the balance of power in state legislatures, which are often
16
regarded as the central players in education policymaking. But the literature on state
policymaking in general, and on education policymaking in particular, also points to the
importance of the governor. As they have gained the power to stay in office longer, to
initiate budgets, to veto legislation, and to hire larger staffs, governors have become much
more effective in policymaking, especially as policy innovators.17 Perhaps nowhere has
their heightened profile been more evident than in the education arena, where since the
1980s governors have played a larger role in framing and resolving policy debates.18
In popular discussions of the politics of charter schools, the reform is widely regarded as
“bipartisan.” appealing to both Republicans and Democrats.19 Republicans may see charter
schools as an imperfect but still promising step on the road to their desired system of
school governance, in which public dollars follow students to the schools they choose,
13
[For a ranking of all states’ charter laws on a “strong” to “weak” continuum, see Exhibit #2 below.]
14
John F. Bibby and Thomas M. Holbrook, “Parties and Elections,” in Virginia Gray and Herbert Jacob,
eds.. Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis, 6th ed. (Washington: CQ Press, 1996), pp. 105-6.
15
Austin Ranney, “Parties in State Politics,” in Herbert Jacob and Kenneth Vines, eds., Politics in the
American States: A Comparative Analysis, 3d ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976); Thomas R. Dye, “Party and
Policy in the States,” Journal of Politics, vol. 46 (November 1984), pp.1097-1116.
16
Catherine Marshall, Douglas Mitchell, and Frederick Wirt, Culture and Education Policy in the American
States (New York: Falmer, 1989).
17
Larry Sabato, Goodbye to Good-Time Charlie: The American Governorship Transformed (Lexington, Mass.:
Lexington Books, 1978); Thad Beyle, “Being Governor,” in Carl E. Van Horn, ed., The State of the States,
3d ed. (Washington: CQ Press, 1996); Thad Beyle, “Governors: The Middlemen and Women in Our
Political System” in Gray and Jacob, Politics in the American States, Thad Beyle, “The Governor as Innovator
in the Federal System,” Publius: The Journal of Federalism, vol. 18 (Summer 1988), pp. 131-52.
18
Margaret E. Goertz, “State Education Policy in the 1990’s,” in Carl E. Van Horn, ed., The State of the
States, 3d ed. (Washington: CQ Press, 1996).
19
Kolderie, The Charter Idea; Chris Pipho, “Bipartisan Charter Schools,” Phi Delta Kappan, vol. 75 (October
1993), pp. 102-3.
24
public or private. By contrast, Democrats may regard charter schools as a way to

encourage experimentation and limit family choice, perhaps staving off calls for more
radical “market” reforms in the process. If this bipartisan story is right, one would not
expect differences in the balance of party power to distinguish charter from noncharter
states. But although both Democrats and Republicans may support charter legislation of
some kind, Republicans are more likely to favor strong charter laws. Strong charter laws
20
more closely resemble the broader school choice that Republicans tend to favor.
Power of Teachers’ Organizations
Beyond the partisan balance in state legislatures and governors’ mansions, one might also
examine the power of relevant interest groups in state politics, which have become more
and more important state-level actors.21 Of course, interest groups exert power in part
through their influence on the partisan balance, so this variable is not wholly separable
from the previous one. But interest groups also wield power through lobbying and other
political campaigns.
Historically, state-level battles over education pitted “schoolmen,” proponents of

expanding funding for universal public education, against elements opposed to such
expansion. It was these broad-based coalitions interested in expanding the “pie,” rather
than more narrowly focused interest groups intent on getting bigger “slices,” that defined
22
state-level education politics. Increasingly, though, observers have noted the progressive
fragmentation of interest groups, though they still mobilize for collective action in times of
crisis.23 A great deal of this attention has focused on educators’ unions, which have much
more influence in state politics than they used to. Contrast the remark of Bailey and
others, who argued in the early 1960s that unions had little influence at the state level
except as witnesses in legislative hearings, with Thomas and Hrebenar’s 1996 analysis of
20
This broad-brush characterisation of partisan positions, of course, masks significant differences within the
parties. Within the Democratic Party, moderate elements associated with the Democratic Leadership
Council (DLC) have been early advocates for strong legislation. The DLC, in fact, published one of the first
charter school manifestos, Ted Kolderie’s Beyond Choice to New Public Schools: Withdrawing the Exclusive
Franchise in Public Education (Washington: Progressive Policy Institute, 1990). Within the Republican Party,
certain conservative factions have opposed charter schools. Market true-believers have argued that charter
schools do not go far enough toward the system of choice and competition they favor; religious
fundamentalists and some back-to-basics advocates also worry that charter school programs will foster exactly
the sort of educational experimentation they despise.
21
Clive S. Thomas and Ronald J. Hrebenar, “Interest Groups in the States,” in Gray and Jacob, Politics in the
American States, pp. 122-58.
22
Stephen K. Bailey, Richard T. Frost, Paul E. Marsh, and Robert C. Wood, Schoolmen and Politics: A Study
of State Aid to Education in New England (Syracuse University Press, 1962).
23
Fragmentation: Laurence Iannacone. State Politics of Education (New York: Center for Applied Research in
Education, 1967); Roald F. Campbell and Tim L. Mazzoni Jr., State Policy Making for the Public Schools: A
Comparative Analysis of Policy Making for the Public Schools in Twelve States and a Treatment of State Governance
Models (Berkeley, Calif.: McCutchan, 1976); Joel Spring, Conflict of Interests (New York: Longman, 1988);
Frederick M. Wirt and Michael W. Kirst, Schools in Conflict, 2d ed. (Berkeley, Calif.: McCutchan, 1989),
chaps. 4 and 5. Collective action: Jane H. Karper and William Lowe Boyd, “Interest Groups and the
Changing Environment of State Educational Policymaking: Developments in Pennsylvania,” Educational
Administration Quarterly, vol. 24 (February 1988), pp. 21-54; Michael W. Kirst and Stephen A. Somers,
“California Educational Interest Groups: Collective Action as a Logical Response to Proposition 13”
Education and Urban Society, vol. 13 (February 1981), pp. 235-56.
25
state-level interest-group activity. This survey of political knowledgeables found that the
schoolteachers’ union was ranked “most effective” in 43 of the 50 states. Only business
groups ranked “most effective” in anywhere near as many states (36). No other group
24
earned this rating in more than 26 states.
In many places, teachers’ unions have led the fight against charter school laws; in others,
they have pressed for the passage of weak state laws.25 Charter schools run against union
positions in several respects. First, the schools generally are not bound by local union
contracts. Second, they are often exempt from laws unions have fought hard to institute,
especially laws concerning the certification requirements for educators and the
employment rights of teachers. With teachers’ unions nationwide mobilizing to block
charter school laws altogether, or to render them weak, one would certainly expect states
with strong teachers’ organizations to have no charter school laws, or to have weak ones.
Objective Educational Conditions
Another set of factors that might affect the balance of power of charter school proponents
and opponents is the objective condition of public education in a state. One possibility is
that in low-performing states advocates of charter schools and strong charter laws may find
it advantageous to point out the existing system’s dismal results. At the same time, because
high-performing states are generally more reform-minded, they are more likely to
consider and enact “cutting-edge” reforms such as charter school laws. To attain high
levels of achievement in the past, high-performing states have had to seek out and enact
innovative legislation to spur improvement. Thus their very openness to new ideas makes
high-performing states more likely than low-performing states to consider, and ultimately
pass, charter school legislation.
Political Culture
Finally, students of policymaking frequently suggest that states differ in their political
“cultures” and that these differences produce different policies. Daniel Elazar devised a
typology of state political cultures that divides states into three categories: traditionalistic,
moralistic, and individualistic.26 Individualistic cultures tend to emphasize the
marketplace, favoring a limited role of government. Moralistic cultures stress “the
commonwealth,” fostering a more active role for the government in advancing the public
good. In traditionalistic cultures, government is controlled by a relatively small elite and
acts primarily to maintain existing hierarchies.
24
See Bailey, Frost, March, and Wood, Schoolmen and Politics; Thomas and Hrebenar, “Interest Groups in the
States,” pp. 122-58.
25
See American Federation of Teachers, Charter School Laws: Do They Measure Up? (Washington, 1996),
which cites Rhode Island’s law as a model charter statute.
26
Daniel J. Elazar, American Federalism: A View from the States, 3d ed. (Harper and Row, 1984). Among the
applications of these categories to education policymaking are: Catherine Marshall, Douglas Mitchell, and
Frederick Wirt, Culture and Education Policy in the American States (New York: Falmer, 1989); Susan H.
Fuhrman, “State Politics and Education Reform,” in Jane Hannaway and Robert Crowson, eds., The Politics
of Reforming School Administration: The 1988 Yearbook of the Politics of Education Association (New York:
Falmer, 1989).
26
It is difficult to see how this broad category scheme could help predict outcomes on a
particular policy question such as charter schools. Would one expect charter laws to
emerge mostly in individualistic states, since the programs invoke various market-oriented
ideas such as school-based entrepreneurialism and customer choice? Or would moralistic
states be more likely to seize on the charter strategy as a way for state government to use
its power to promote local school improvement? Perhaps all that one could safely predict
is that states with traditionalistic cultures would shy away from charter laws altogether, and
from strong charter laws in particular, in light of their disinclination to experiment with
system-challenging reforms. Perhaps a more promising line of cultural inquiry is the
literature on the “innovativeness” of states, which posits that some states are more inclined
27
than others to be on the cutting edge of reform. Typically, leaders in innovation tend to
be the most “developed” states, with high per capita incomes and levels of urbanization.
Perhaps the differential adoption of charter schools simply reflects states’ different
propensities to innovate. Higher-income urban states may be more inclined to adopt
charter school legislation, and strong legislation, for other reasons as well. For example,
wealth and urbanness may be important underpinnings of the potential supply of school
operators charter school programs demand. The wealthier states with large urban
populations may place a higher value on education in general and thus be more eager to
seek out methods of improvement. Urban schools, in addition, are often the most visible
examples of the shortcomings of current arrangements; it may be that the case for change
is more easily made in states with large urban populations. For many reasons, then, we
might expect states with high incomes and large urban populations to be earlier adopters
of charter laws, and of strong charter laws.
Analysis
To what extent are these “bird’s-eye” political variables related to the outcomes of charter
school politics in the 50 states?
Partisan Balance
First, consider party control of state legislatures. This analysis divides states into two
categories: “high-GOP” (those in which Republicans controlled both houses in half or
more of the years between 1991 and 1995) and “low-GOP” (those in which Republicans
controlled both houses in less than half of the relevant years). But over which years should
one calculate these proportions? This study examines the years 1991 (the year the first
charter school law passed) through 1995. Some states, of course, passed no charter law.
For these states, the relevant years are the whole period: 1991-95. For states that passed
charter laws, the relevant years are all the years from 1991 to the year in which the law
passed. For example, for a state that passed a charter law in 1993, the relevant years are
1991 through 1993.
Table 2-2 shows the percentages of high- and low-GOP states that adopted charter laws of
some kind: 66.7 percent of states with high levels of Republican control had passed
27
Jack L. Walker Jr., “The Diffusion of Innovations among the American States,” American Political Science
Review, vol. 63 (September 1969), pp. 880-99; Virginia Gray, “Innovations in the States: A Diffusion
Study,” American Political Science Review, vol. 67 (December 1973), pp. 1174-85.
27
charter laws by January 1996; only 35 percent of states with low levels of GOP control
had done so. And 44.4 percent of high-GOP and only 15 percent of low-GOP states had
passed strong laws. These patterns suggest that high-GOP legislatures were substantially
28
more likely to pass early and strong charter school laws.
Table 2-2 contains the same sort of information for a different political variable: partisan
control of the governorship. States are again divided into two categories: “high GOP”
(those in which Republicans occupied the governor’s office in half or more of the relevant
years) and “low GOP” (those in which they did not). States with high levels of GOP
control of governorships were only slightly more likely to pass charter laws (42.1 percent
and 38.7 percent), an insignificant difference. By contrast, Republicans governors were
relatively successful at passing strong charter laws: 36.8 percent of states with high levels of
GOP control passed strong laws compared with only 9.7 percent of low-GOP states, a
highly significant difference. In fact, eight of the ten strong statutes were signed into law
by Republican governors; seven of the ten weak laws by Democratic governors.
When one considers the legislative and gubernatorial information together, the
importance of Republicans becomes even more evident. No state with a Democratic
governor and two Democratic houses of the legislature passed a strong charter school law
in this period.29 In all ten strong-law states, at least one house of the legislature or the
governorship was controlled by the Republican Party when the strong law passed.
In sum, charter school laws have emerged in states with a variety of partisan
configurations, a fact that lends credence to the charter strategy’s reputation as a bipartisan
reform. But: (1) Republican control of state legislatures appears to have created more
hospitable circumstances for charter laws; (2) almost all strong charter laws have been
signed by Republican governors; and (3) no state in which Democrats controlled the
House, the Senate, and the governorship had put a strong charter school law on the books
by January 1996.
Teachers’ Organizations
Teachers’ organizations are active in every state, but they are politically stronger in some
states than in others. Since teachers’ organizations generally have opposed charter school
laws and have without exception opposed strong charter laws, one would expect states
with lower union membership to be more likely to adopt charter laws and to adopt strong
laws. The two major teachers’ organizations whose state affiliates are involved in politics
are the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association (NEA).
28
It is also possible to determine whether the observed differences are statistically significant by conducting a
test of “the equality of independent proportions”; see Richard J. Larsen and Morris L. Marx, An Introduction
to Mathematical Statistics and Its Applications, 2d ed.(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1986), pp. 378-80).
The discussion treats a difference as important only if it met standards of statistical significance. Full details of
this procedure and the test statistics from this analysis can be found in Bryan Hassel, “Designed to Fail?
Charter Schools and the Politics of Structural Choice,” Ph.D. diss.. Harvard University, 1997.
29
Across the board, Democratic control is fairly common. Of the 245 state-years in the period 1991-95 (five
for each state, excluding nonpartisan Nebraska), Democrats controlled both houses of the legislature and the
governorship in 72 state-years.
28
The combined membership in these two organizations as a percentage of a state’s

population is a good measure of the potential political strength of teachers’ organizations
in the state. In 1991 this measure ranged from under one-half of 1 percent in some states
to just over 2 percent in others, with a median of 1.1 percent.30
30
Membership data for 1991 from American Federation of Teachers, “Membership by State,” mimeograph
(Washington: American Federation of Teachers, 1998), and National Education Association, NEA Handbook
(Washington, 1991-92), table 2. Population data for 1991 from U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Estimates of the
Population of States: Annual Time Series, July 1,1990, to July 1,1997” (Washington, 1997).
29
As Table 2-2 indicates, the prevalence of teachers’ organizations in states bore little
relation to charter school policymaking outcomes in the early to mid-1990s. Contrary to
prediction, states with high teacher association membership were slightly more likely than
low-membership states both to pass charter school laws and to pass strong charter school
laws, but neither difference is statistically significant.
Educational Conditions
Are states with relatively high- or low-performing education systems more or less likely to
pass charter school laws? To pass strong charter school laws? This analysis employs a
measure of mathematics proficiency for the states’ eighth-graders: their average proficiency
31
in all content areas of the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
The median state’s average score on this assessment was 267.4, with state averages ranging
from 246.5 to 283.4.
One can divide the states into two groups—”high-score” (those with better-than-median
performance) and “low-score” those with median-or-worse performance—on each of
these two measures. Table 2-2 shows how many states in each group passed charter laws
and strong laws. States whose eighth-graders scored at or below the median NAEP math
tests were more likely than their above-median counterparts to pass charter laws, but the
difference was not statistically significant. Higher- and lower-performing states were
almost equally likely to pass strong charter school laws. NAEP performance, then, does
not appear to have differentiated charter-law adopters from nonadopters, or states that
adopted strong laws from those that did not.32
“Culture”
Since many contemporary theories of state-level political culture derive from Elazar’s
typology, this part of the discussion begins by examining whether states with different
Elazar-type cultures passed different types of charter school laws in the 1990s.33
According to Elazar’s classification, 16 states exhibited “individualistic” cultures, 18
34
exhibited “moralistic” cultures, and the remaining 16 exhibited “traditionalistic” cultures.
Table 2-2 shows that states with moralistic political cultures were more likely than other
states to pass charter laws (and to pass strong ones) by January 1996, but the differences are
not statistically significant.
A second notion of political culture concerns the innovativeness of states. The literature
on policy innovation in the states suggests that more “modern” states are more likely to
31
The analysis uses 1992 data because 41 of the 50 states participated in that year, many more than in 1990.
The NAEP math test includes several content areas; this analysis uses pooled scores for all content areas. Data
used for this analysis were derived from NAEP’s revised figures, which reflect corrections made in 1996.
National Assessment of Educational Progress, “Revised Mathematics Assessment Data for Grade 8”
published on NAEP’s website: http://www.ed.gov.NCES/naep.
32
A similar analysis that examined the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) rather than NAEP showed that
higher- and lower-performing states on the SAT were equally likely to pass charter laws. And though lower-
performing states were slightly more likely to pass strong laws, the difference was not statistically significant.
33
Elazar, American Federalism.
34
Ibid., p. 137.
30
adopt innovative policies early. Two common indicators of modernity in this literature are
income and urbanization. The 1990 census provides state-by-state data on both of these
35
indicators.
In general, charter school laws, and strong charter laws in particular, were more likely to
be adopted in wealthier and more urban states. Higher-income states adopted charter laws
at twice the rate of lower-income states. More strikingly, they adopted strong charter laws
at four times the rate of lower-income states. Much the same was true for the more urban
states. More urban states adopted charter school laws at just short of twice the rate of less
urban states. And they enacted strong charter laws at nine times the rate of their less urban
counterparts (see Table 2-2).
Combining the two variables, one finds that only three of the 20 states that were at or
below the median on both income and urbanization adopted charter school laws, whereas
17 of the 30 that were above the median on at least one measure did so. And not a single
state that was at or below the median on both income and urbanization passed a strong
charter school law in this period. It appears that traditional determinants of states’
“innovativeness” would have been reasonably good predictors of the adoption of charter
school laws in the first half of the 1990s.
One problem with analyses such as these is that, because they examine only one factor at a
time, they may fail to account for what happens when all of the factors are at play at the
same time. Variables that appear unrelated to charter decisions may take on more
significance when one takes account of other factors. By the same token, variables that
appear important in these simple analyses may look less significant when all factors are
considered. Ideally, one would include all the hypothetically important factors in a single
analysis to produce more compelling results. With only 50 states to examine, however, it
is difficult to conduct an analysis that includes so many independent variables.36 A second-
best approach is to conduct an analysis that includes the factors that appeared important in
the above analyses (partisan control of the governorship and legislature, indicators of
economic development traditionally linked to innovativeness, and political culture) along
37
with union strength. If any major problems arising from a failure to control for relevant
variables exist, such a procedure should reveal it.38
35
The income measure is median household income for a state in 1990; see U.S. Bureau of the Census,
Current Population Reports, series P-60 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996), table H-8.
Urbanization is the percentage of residents living in urban areas in 1990; see U.S. Bureau of the Census,
“Population and Housing Unit Counts, CPH 2-1” 1990 Census of Population and Housing (Washington: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1995), table 1. Household income in states ranged from $20,178 to $40,805,
with a median of $29,253. The percentage of residents in urban areas ranges from 32.2 percent to 92.6
percent, with a median of 68.8 percent.
36
Instead of regarding states as observations, one could regard state-years as observations. Such a procedure
would increase the “n” from 50 to 228 and enable a more sophisticated analysis. The problem with this
technique is that the only independent variables that change significantly from year to year within a state are
partisan control and, to a lesser extent, educational conditions. The others—union membership and the
various measures of culture—either remain constant or are not measured each year.
37
Union strength was included because, among the variables that appeared insignificant in the bivariate
analyses, union strength carries the most theoretical importance, since unions are typically among the most
vocal opponents of charter legislation. Other analyses, not reported here, included the other nonsignificant
31
The importance of a state’s level of economic development, a traditional correlate of

“innovativeness,” comes through strongly in this analysis. As in the simpler analyses above,
charter school laws were both more likely to emerge and to be strong in more developed
states. The results are more mixed for the degree of Republican control. When other
factors are taken into account, it appears that charter laws were no more likely to emerge
in states with strong Republican control. However, strong charter laws were still much
more likely to emerge in states where Republicans held the upper hand.
The most interesting finding to emerge from this more complex analysis, however,
concerns the relationship between Republican control and high levels of teacher
unionization: strong charter school laws were most likely to be formulated in states where
Republicans held the upper hand and teachers’ unions were strong. Fully half of the
strong laws were developed in states where Republicans consistently controlled the
governor’s mansion and where unions were strong.
Given the apparent importance of governors in determining the strength of charter laws,
how did these political actors shape the outcomes of charter school policymaking in their
states? In light of the significance of at least partial Republican control of state legislatures
in the passage of strong charter laws, how did the legislative process unfold when charter
laws were considered? How did states’ income and urbanization affect their charter school
politics? And how can one account for the finding that high-union Republican states were
the most fertile territory for strong charter school laws? Finding answers to these questions
requires more than a bird’s-eye view of the politics of charter schools. More detailed case
studies of the process of charter school policymaking in several states may shed light on
these questions…
Chapter 7. Politics, Policy, and the Future of Charter School Programs…
New Paradigms of Oversight
For charter schools to be viable, they need support. But they also need to exist in a
regulatory climate that holds them accountable without imposing unnecessary burdens.
Both of these two points—accountability and minimal burden—are vital to the charter
idea. In some respects they are the two sides of the bargain offered by charter schools:
accountability in exchange for a grant of autonomy. But designing a system that strikes this
balance has proven challenging for charter-granting agencies. It is useful to consider these
challenges in two categories: those relating to charter schools’ accountability for academic
results, and those relating to charter schools’ accountability for compliance with whatever
residual regulations apply to charter schools.
variables (indicators of educational conditions) and found that (1) they remained insignificant and (2) their
inclusion did not affect inferences about the importance of the other variables.
38
These results derive from two probit analyses, one in which the dependent variable was the passage of a
charter law by January 1996, and one in which it was passage of a strong charter law by January 1996.
Independent variables included a composite variable summarizing the degree of control held by Republicans
in both the legislature and the governorship; a composite of income and urbanization; a variable indicating a
moralistic political culture; and the measure of the strength of the unions used in Table 2-2. Full details of
the construction of variables and the results of the models are available in Hassel, “Designed to Fail?”
32
Accountability for Academic Results
In principle, each charter school signs a contract with a charter-granting agency that spells
out the academic results the school is expected to achieve over the term of its charter. For
example, a school might promise that a certain proportion of its students will perform
above grade level on a particular assessment or achieve a specific level of improvement
over a period of time. When it comes time to consider renewing the school’s charter, the
charter-granting agency can evaluate the school’s progress against these clearly articulated
standards. And in cases of extremely low performance, the charter-granting agency could
revoke a school’s charter before the charter’s renewal date.
Behind this simple formulation, though, lies a complex set of issues with which most
charter-granting agencies have only just begun to grapple. As a result, the Hudson
Institute’s nationwide study of charter schools concluded that “today’s charter school
accountability systems remain underdeveloped, often clumsy and ill-fitting, and are
39
themselves beset by dilemmas.” Charter-granting agencies are struggling with how
charter schools should fit into existing state and district standards and testing regimes; how
to handle accountability for charter schools with unconventional goals, learning processes,
or student populations; how precisely to implement the “meet your goals or lose your
charter” requirement; what actions to take before a school’s renewal date (if any) if a
school is not performing adequately; and the basic question: how good is good enough?
Some charter-granting agencies (notably the Massachusetts state board of education, the
District of Columbia Public Charter School Board, and the Chicago Public Schools) have
developed detailed policies on these issues, but many others have not. Thus, from the
public’s point of view, the degree to which charter schools will truly be held accountable
for performance is unclear. Until charter-granting agencies have policies in place that
define charter schools’ accountability for results, taxpayers cannot feel confident that the
bargain of autonomy for accountability is working. From the perspective of charter
schools, the absence of clear accountability systems makes it difficult to act decisively in
the development of their schools. And uncertainty about how they will be judged presents
problems for charter schools when they approach lenders and landlords about undertaking
long-term obligations. If the charter renewal process is cloaked in mystery, lenders and
landlords have trouble evaluating the risk of offering loans or leases to charter schools, a
problem that exacerbates already severe facilities problems.
Consequently, both the public at large and individual charter schools have a direct interest
in the development of systems for holding charter schools accountable for results. More
indirectly, the broader public school system might benefit from the work charter-granting
agencies do to develop these systems. Public school districts and state education agencies
everywhere are struggling with how to hold schools accountable for results…[C]harter
school programs are potential laboratories for finding answers to these questions.
39
Bruno V. Manno and others, Charter School Accountability: Problems and Prospects, part IV of Chester E. Finn
Jr. and others, Charter Schools in Action: A Final Report (Washington: Hudson Institute, 1997), p. 1.
33
Accountability for Compliance
Though free from many laws and regulations, even charter schools in states with the
strongest laws are subject to some restrictions. These fall into three categories. First,
charter schools remain subject to federal law, which state charter laws, of course, cannot
waive. Charter schools must provide a “free and appropriate public education” to
children with special needs, respect students’ constitutional rights, maintain
nondiscriminatory policies in admission and other areas, and refrain from teaching
religion. Second, most charter school laws leave at least some state-level school law in
place for charter schools. For example, some charter laws require charter schools to hire
only certified teachers or to meet regular state reporting requirements for student
attendance and finances. Third, some charter laws impose requirements that are unique to
charter schools. For example, some state laws require each school to submit an annual
report on its activities. Others require that the student body of each charter school
replicates the demographic characteristics of its surrounding district.
…[E]ven charter schools in states with relatively strong laws have reported that a great
deal of their leadership’s attention has been devoted to handling the details of
administration required by residual regulation. Recall that residual regulation in states
with strong laws has not kept charter schools from choosing their own paths in the areas
that matter most, like what to teach and how to spend money. Rather, residual
regulation’s main effect has been to divert schools’ attention and resources away from
these more critical responsibilities. Without district bureaucracies to rely upon, charter
schools must fulfill a host of reporting requirements and carry out other compliance
activities on their own.
As the infrastructure of support develops, charter schools receive more help in handling
these requirements. But a more effective way to relieve charter schools of these burdens
may be for chartering authorities to rethink how they ensure that charter schools comply
with the laws and regulations. Simply including charter schools in pre-existing systems of
monitoring and enforcement is not sufficient. These systems were designed on the
assumption that central school district bureaucracies, not individual schools, would be
responsible for compliance. Since districts can spread the costs over a large number of
schools and students, they can afford to hire specialized staff who become well versed in
the arcane details of fulfilling a specific requirement or completing a given report. Since
charter schools cannot do that, the burdens of complying with these systems are often
much greater than those shouldered by conventional schools.
Chartering authorities could relieve this burden by rebuilding reporting and compliance
systems from the ground up for charter schools. They could begin by asking what
information an agency truly needs to fulfill its obligations under the law and then design
systems accordingly. In isolated cases, regulatory authorities have taken this approach with
charter schools, with good results. In Massachusetts, for example, charter schools do not
have to engage in the same financial reporting activities that regular districts carry out.
Instead, schools submit monthly reports to the state department that include financial
statements, annual reports summing up the year’s activity, and annual external audits of
their finances. This streamlined system gives state officials most of the information they
34
need to evaluate charter schools’ spending patterns. And if they have further questions,
they can always conduct additional audits. At the same time, the system places a minimal
burden on charter schools. The monthly reports they are required to prepare contain
information school leaders would probably pull together in any case for their own
management purposes.
Retooling administrative systems in this way would be of great benefit to charter schools.
But the potential prize is larger than that. By experimenting with new ways of gathering
information from schools and ensuring compliance with critical laws and regulations,
regulators may begin to develop models of monitoring and enforcement that fulfill public
obligations while placing lighter burdens on schools. If these models work in the charter
school environment, there is no reason why they could not be exported to more
conventional public schools as well.
Conclusion
For charter schools to have a positive impact on public education as a whole, policymakers
will need go back to the drawing boards of charter school legislation. Charter schools and
those who support them will need to develop an infrastructure of support that allows
charter schools to focus on teaching and learning while remaining viable as enterprises.
And regulators will need to retool systems of oversight to ensure accountability while
minimizing the administrative burdens on this new form of independent public school.
None of these tasks will be easy. But charter schools have already established a reputation
for forging ahead even under the most difficult circumstances. They have surprised many
by surviving in less-than-ideal physical surroundings and despite philosophical opposition;
in that regard, at least, they stand out as a compelling example to all involved in the
enterprise of public education. Perhaps despite the host of political and operational
challenges they face, charter schools will surprise skeptics yet again.
35
Exhibit #3: “Strong” and “Weak” Charter Laws
36
Source: Center for Education Reform (http://www
37
Bruno Manno talks about some of the challenges facing charter school operators and chartering
agencies.
Document #4: Bruno V. Manno,40 “Yellow Flag,” Education Next (Winter 2003)
Since 1991, 40 states have enacted laws allowing for the creation of charter schools—
independent public schools of choice that are freed from many regulations but accountable
for their results. There are now 2,700 schools that serve some 600,000 students in 34 states
and the District of Columbia (see Figure 1), with cities like Washington, D.C., and
Dayton, Ohio, now enrolling upwards of 17 percent of all their children in these new
institutions.
While such numbers are impressive—a decade ago there were no charter schools—we also
see worrisome indications that the charter movement is in trouble. In July 2002, Newsweek
reported that a raft of recent charter “reports find that too often, charters haven’t lived up
to their end of the bargain.” A Brookings Institution study released in September 200241
concluded that student performance in charter schools was significantly lower than that of
district schools on state tests in reading and math.
At the same time, signs of a vital and thriving charter school movement abound.
Nationally, demand for these schools remains high, with more than 75 percent of charters
having waiting lists that together could fill at least 900 more schools. The parents,
students, and educators involved with charter schools report high levels of satisfaction. A
California State University, Los Angeles, study of California charters, released in March
2002, found that their test-score gains outpaced those of students in regular public schools.
In Massachusetts, the test scores of charter schools on the Spring 2002 state test showed,
according to the Boston Herald, “a greater number of improved scores . . . with more and
more of the [charters] scoring higher than their home districts.” Even the Brookings study
may say less than it seems. The investigators themselves acknowledge that their findings
may be due to the fact that charters are attracting “students who were already low
achieving,” a suspicion supported by other studies that find charter students to be
relatively disadvantaged.
Not only are many charter schools enjoying success, but they are also held accountable in
a way regular public schools are not. When a charter school experiences severe troubles, it
usually faces severe consequences. To wit, more than 200 failed or failing schools have
been closed on fiscal, educational, and organizational grounds.
40 Bruno V. Manno is senior associate for education at the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation and
coauthor, with Chester E. Finn Jr. and Gregg Vanourek, of Charter Schools in Action: Renewing Public Education
(Princeton University Press, 2000).
41
See Hill and Lake (2002) in the bibliography in Appendix #2.
38
Can Success Survive?

In the education world, however, success often breeds second-guessing if not downright
resentment. The more traction a successful reform gains, the more sour grapes it harvests.
Despite strong, bipartisan political support, charter schools have not been immune from
this attitude. America’s deeply conservative public education system is striking back at this
disruptive innovation, which shifts power from producers to consumers; demonstrates that
more can be done with less at the school level; and moves control of resources from
central bureaucracies to autonomous schools. Such tectonic shifts bring new uncertainties
and imply that many hoary public education practices are no longer the only imaginable
way to do things.
The initial efforts to stop the spread of charter schools took three main forms: preventing
the enactment of charter laws; limiting the number of new charters; and ensuring that
existing charter schools were as meagerly funded and as heavily regulated as possible.
These strategies succeeded to some extent. For example, Washington State, among other
states, still has no charter school law—mostly because of intense opposition from the
teacher unions and other interests vested in the status quo. Among those states with
charter laws on the books, more than a third have fewer than 20 charter schools in
operation. In addition, the early growth of the charter movement may be reaching a
plateau—in part due to the hostile tactics of charter opponents.
One by one, however, states continue to come on board. In 2001, Indiana passed a strong
law that allows charters to be granted not only by school districts but also by public
universities and by the mayor of Indianapolis. To date, school districts have allowed two
39
schools to convert to charter status; Ball State University has chartered seven new schools;
and Indianapolis mayor Bart Peterson has approved four new charters. Eleven of the 13
approved schools opened their doors in September 2002.
Three-Front War
Opponents are now regrouping, as the vigorous growth of the charter movement and its
impact on traditional district schools has alarmed its adversaries. The resulting attacks come
from three directions: state policymakers, local school systems, and organized public
education interest groups.
State policymakers have an entire arsenal of charter-harassing weapons at their disposal.
These include depriving charters of full per-pupil funding; denying them access to (or
financing for) facilities; placing new restrictions on existing schools or moratoriums on
future growth; and weakening charter laws. Two states provide vivid illustrations.
Indiana’s entry into the charter movement was nearly arrested in early 2002 when Suellen
Reid, the Republican state superintendent of public instruction, balked at giving Indiana’s
new charters any money during their first semester, basing her opinion on legal advice
from members of her staff. Nor would these schools be reimbursed for expenses incurred
during that semester. Only a contrary ruling from the state’s attorney general (at the strong
urging of Indianapolis’s Democratic mayor, Bart Peterson) led to a reversal of that
decision. The reversal, however, prompted an outcry from some legislators and from the
superintendents of the 11 school districts located within Indianapolis. They protested “the
adverse financial effects for public schools resulting from the formation of charter schools
in our county” and called for a moratorium on the creation of new charters until the
“financial inequities” were resolved. Mayor Peterson refused to yield, however, and
proceeded to consider a second round of 13 charter applications for the 2003–’04 school
year.
California passed its charter law in 1992 (the second state to do so) and now has 362
operating charter schools. But the enemies are circling. The 2001–’02 legislative session
passed five anti-charter-school bills, four of which were signed into law by Governor Gray
Davis (who felt compelled, in one of his signing messages, to claim that he still “supported
charter schools”). The most controversial bill gave the state board of education extensive
powers to regulate independent study or “nonclassroom”-based instruction that uses
computers as the main instructional tool. The bill’s intent was to force “virtual” charter
schools to spend a high proportion of their budgets on certified staff rather than on
technology, stifling their capacity to innovate. These “cyber” charters must now
document their instructional minutes, and their per-pupil funding may be reduced if they
offer less than the minimum number of student course minutes per year—a district-style
regulation of the process of education without regard for outcomes.
Other proposals to cut funding for California charters emerged from the state department
of finance. These would have slashed funds for students over age 18 (including former
dropouts whom the charters were seeking to “recover”) and ended summer-school
funding for many charter students. While these proposals were defeated by an organized
charter school community led by the California Network of Education Charters, charter
operators expect them back in a future legislative session.
40
Local Opposition
The local districts where charters choose to
locate, and from which they draw students,
have felt the impact of charters most heavily.
When a district loses students to a charter, most
(sometimes all) of the per-pupil funding travels
with those students. This places charters in
direct competition with districts—and the
districts, instead of competing, often try to
influence the rules of the game.
In Houston, where 46 of Texas’s 219 charter
schools are located, the district estimated
recently that it will lose about 13,000 students
to charters during this school year (up from
12,000 the previous year) at a cost of $53.5
million in state revenues. The city’s school
board is thinking of asking the state to consider,
before it grants any more charters, the financial
impact a new charter school will have on
district revenues.
Charters may cause trouble for school districts,
but they often wind up saving money for the
state. For instance, the Dayton, Ohio, school
board claims that charters are bleeding the
district of some $20 million a year. Of course,
they no longer have the students to educate,
either. And it costs less to educate a student in a
charter than in a district school. Scholars Bryan
Hassel and Deborah Page showed that during
the 1999–2000 school year, charters in Ohio
received about $2,300 less per pupil than local
school districts. The seven largest districts in
Ohio would each have received $20 to $160
million less in state funds had they operated
under the charter school funding formula.
Local school districts can harass charters in many ways. They can devise application
procedures with absurd time-tables or use meager funding formulas to slash the dollar
allocations to charters. City development agencies, zoning boards, or fire inspectors can
raise a host of regulatory problems, especially on the most difficult issue that charter
schools face: finding a facility.
41
In 2000, California voters approved Proposition 39, entitling California’s charter schools
to facilities that are “reasonably equivalent” to those enjoyed by district schools. The
Sequoia Union High School District in Redwood City, California (one of the wealthiest
in the state), filed suit in May 2002 in San Mateo County Superior Court to stop Aurora
Charter High School from receiving its fair share—either in the form of rent money or
buildings—of the $88 million bond measure that Sequoia passed in 2001. Sequoia believed
that it had no legal obligations to Aurora High because, while the school is located in
Sequoia, it was approved by Redwood City, an elementary-school district. Aurora argued
that a substantial majority of its students live within the Sequoia district. Aurora
countersued the Sequoia district in July 2002. In late August, Judge Quentin Kopp (who
served in the California state senate when the Charter Act was passed) ruled that Sequoia
must provide facilities for Aurora Charter High School. As of this writing, the district was
considering an appeal of this decision.
In Washington, D.C., both the city and the school district are making it nearly impossible
for charters to find classroom space, even though the mayor and the school district are
broadly sympathetic to charter issues. D.C. law requires city officials to give charter
schools the first option to buy surplus buildings—unless the city can make substantially
more money by selling them to others. Naturally, this leads the fiscally strapped city to
seek private buyers for those buildings in the least disrepair and to offer charters more
dilapidated buildings that will cost millions to be made safe for children. One charter
founder reported that the building his school was offered had “$3 million worth of
asbestos issues and [would have] cost us $10 million [more] to renovate.” Meanwhile, the
D.C. school system offers charters only one-year leases on vacant schools in the (unlikely)
event that the district needs to reclaim the school for its own purposes.
42
Interest Group Attacks

A phalanx of interests, from teacher unions to school boards and superintendents,
principals’ associations, teacher colleges, disabled-rights groups, and even private schools,
often find reasons to view charter schools as a threat. Let’s consider two of these: the
teacher unions and private schools.
The unions’ initial response to charter laws was defiance. In time, they realized that this
looked bad—the charter idea was popular in too many quarters. So they moved from
outright hostility to a highly conditional embrace, with the National Education
Association beginning its own charter school project in 1996 (and subsequently
abandoning it). In the words of an Education Week reporter, “Both national unions have
endorsed the charter idea within fairly narrow limits, requiring district control over the
schools and collective bargaining for the teachers within them.” (What would distinguish
such a charter school from traditional public schools remains unclear.) The American
Federation of Teachers’ July 2002 report, Do Charter Schools Measure Up? which calls for a
moratorium on the expansion of charters, signals a renewed hostility toward charter
schools …
Today, the unions’ stance toward charters is convoluted, sometimes trying to co-opt the
movement, other times trying to stop it cold.
A once-secret report prepared by the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA)
lays out a strategy that would organize all charter employees under the NEA affiliate’s
collective bargaining agreement, thereby depriving charter operators of a key element of
their autonomy. As the authors explained, “The main source of the PSEA’s influence is
that almost all Pennsylvania teachers are unionized. If we want to maintain influence, our
ability to do anything, we must make sure that education remains a unionized industry.”
Here the union is hedging its bets, trying to weaken the charter movement while also
ensuring that any teachers who do slide into charter schools will remain union members.
In Ohio the unions have mounted a new effort to sink charter schools. Tom Mooney,
president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers, is leading two ever-widening lawsuits
seeking to have the state’s charter law ruled unconstitutional. Tactics include involving all
of Ohio’s charter schools in the lawsuit and requiring them to deliver school records on a
variety of issues, tying up time, energy, and resources in matters far removed from
classroom instruction. This courtroom effort is also apt to chill charter enrollments,
teachers, and public perception of the charter movement.
Private schools also sometimes see charter schools as a threat to their finances and
influence. For instance, some charter schools are attracting large numbers of students from
Catholic schools. The Archdiocese of Newark has lost 139 students to charter schools; the
Archdiocese of Detroit, 300 students. Of the 776 students enrolled in St. Louis charter
schools, 21 percent came from private schools—13 percent from Catholic schools and 8
percent from nonreligious private schools. While private-school leaders have not
grumbled openly about charters, Sister Glenn Anne McPhee of the U.S. Catholic
Conference has noted that they are watching the situation closely to see what effect the
charter movement is apt to have on Catholic schools over time.
43
Enemies Within
Some self-inflicted wounds of the charter movement have strengthened the hands of its
critics and opponents. These include greedy charter operators keener to make a quick
buck at public expense than to educate children; inept operators whose schools are fiscally
disastrous and academically inadequate; sponsors that exercise little care in reviewing
charter proposals or monitoring the schools’ progress; and supporters who press sponsors
to leave the schools alone—even to renew their charters—notwithstanding their
organizational, financial, and instructional failures.
Some of these schools have engaged in egregious misbehavior. In Houston, Reverend
Harold Wayne Wilcox opened the Prepared Table Charter School in 1998. It rapidly
grew to 1,500 students on three campuses, making it one of Texas’s largest charters. After
state auditors investigated the school’s operations, however, the Texas Education
Authority concluded that Prepared Table had overstated its attendance at a cost to the
state of $1.3 million; that it had commingled school funds with those of Reverend
Wilcox’s church; and that it was governed by virtually the same board members as the
church. It also found that members of Wilcox’s family were working for the school and
that Wilcox, who also served as head of the school, was given a $235,000 buyout package
one week before the state convened a hearing to determine what to do with the school.
The school was closed and its charter revoked in August 2002.
Forty-six California charters had their funding reduced when the state scrutinized their
financial records during the 2001–’02 school year. They could not document how they
had spent substantial sums of money and were unable to show what instructional services
they were purchasing from private contractors. In some instances, the private vendors
were members of the charter boards, posing conflict-of-interest questions.
In Arizona, a record number of that state’s charter schools—31 of 288 reviewed—were
fined in 2002 because of “late audits, ignored testing requirements, and financial fraud.”
This represented more schools than the total number disciplined since charters began in
Arizona in 1994.
The basic charter “bargain” grants independence to school operators in return for superior
academic results. But with that independence come opportunities for misbehavior—and
these are apt to arise well before the results are measured. This places a heavy burden on
authorizers to do careful due diligence before awarding charters and to perform ongoing
reviews—without clamping down in classic bureaucratic fashion. Some sponsors are not
up to this subtle, solemn responsibility.
Consider Techworld Charter School in the District of Columbia. The school was
chartered by the elected D.C. board of education in 1997 and opened the following year.
It was finally closed in June 2002 after three years of accounting irregularities, governance
tiffs, and over reporting of enrollments. It was placed on probation several times during
those three years, but was never adequately monitored by the board, which in 2000 was
replaced by a new hybrid board of elected and appointed members. The new school board
set out to close down the school but encountered a belligerent principal. Just before its
closing, he instructed the school’s financial manager to award him a $20,000 bonus, along
with $5,000 each to eight other employees, including his wife. The school’s board of
44
directors began to consider legal action against the principal, whose wife then changed the
password to the computer files containing students’ grades, hoping to force the board
members not to prosecute her husband. The school’s directors eventually retrieved the
grades through a costly reconstruction of the computer records and turned the matter over
to federal prosecutors.
The new D.C. school board moved during the 2001–’02 school year to close three other
schools chartered by the previous board. They had an array of problems: overcrowded
classrooms with little ventilation, high absentee rates, few textbooks and other
instructional materials, abysmal academic results, and failure to file financial reports and to
offer the advertised courses. This “cleanup” action could be traced to the failure of the old
board to exercise adequate due diligence in approving the original charter application and
monitoring the schools. This behavior contrasts sharply with the approach of the
alternative, nondistrict chartering authority in D.C., the D.C. Public Charter School
Board, which has chartered nearly 20 schools, none of which has been closed.
Counter Attack
The charter movement can no longer coast on a theory and a hope. It has a track record,
if not a solid one. This has given new opportunities to those who never liked the charter
movement in the first place. But there are ways to strengthen the charter movement to
counter the attack. The National Association of Charter School Authorizers, created in
2001, is the kind of institution necessary to support the charter school movement as it
matures. Members regularly receive information on topics of high interest to charter
authorizers, such as evaluating charter applications and school performance, negotiating
accountability agreements, renewal/revocation decisionmaking, policy updates, and state-
by-state information on authorizers.
Also needed is a national organization dedicated to pressing the charter movement to clean
up its act and deliver the results promised by charter boosters. It would also recruit new
charter supporters at the state and local policy level, especially since many governors,
legislators, and local activists who gave birth to the charter effort have since moved on to
other endeavors. Their successors are disposed to view charters as someone else’s idea; are
more aware of charters’ problems than their successes; and are being skillfully manipulated
by interests that have finally recognized that charters aren’t going away.
Despite the premise that charter schools are to be given flexibility in return for being held accountable
for their results, few charter schools have actually been closed because of poor academic performance.
Frederick Hess sees the problem as a political one: the differing stakes between charter school families
and members of the broader community.
42
Document #5: Frederick M. Hess, “The Political Challenge of Charter School
Regulation,” Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 85, No. 6, March 2004, pp. 508-512.
42
Frederick M. Hess, a former high school social studies teacher, is director of education policy studies at
the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C. His latest book is Common Sense School Reform
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
45
In the era of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, charter schooling holds out the
promise of meaningful accountability without the heavy hand of assessment systems based
on standardized testing. As an alternative to state-designed systems that apply to all schools,
school charters can provide more nuanced accountability models that address particular
issues raised by a school’s mission, the nature of its student population, and so on.
In fact, a great irony of education reform is that many critics of standardized accountability
have also often opposed choice-based reform. The reality is that choice-based reform
offers a way to address the public’s demands for accountability without leading to the
standardization that has characterized test-based statewide systems.
Recognizing the promise of the charter school model, many proponents have sought to
refine its accountability mechanisms and authorization processes. These are good and
useful steps. However, given that charter schools are publicly funded and ultimately
accountable to public entities, the largest hurdle to effective accountability may be the
political challenge—one that has too rarely been given its due consideration.
Consequently, the current system for shuttering ineffective charter schools is compelling
in theory but uneven in practice, and most proposed remedies do not address the root of
43
the problem.
Charter schooling faces challenges to effective accountability on both the “front end”—
the authorization of schools—and the “back end”—the closure of ineffective schools. In
this discussion, I focus entirely on “back end” accountability, which poses the toughest
political problems (for reasons that will shortly become obvious).
The essential “deal” implicit in charter schooling is that, in return for being freed from
many of the rules and regulations endured by traditional district schools, charters are to be
held accountable for their results.44 Those schools failing to meet the performance
provisions specified in their charters or failing to uphold applicable state and local laws can
be closed by their authorizing body.45 As the Center for Education Reform has posited,
“[Charter] closures provide real contractual accountability, a feature that too often is
46
missing at many traditional public schools.”
43
Sandra Vergari, ed., The Charter School Landscape: Politics, Policies, and Prospects (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002).
44
Joe Nathan, Charter Schools (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996).
45
In various states, chartering bodies include state boards of education, state charter school boards, local
school districts, universities, and municipalities. However, because most chartering bodies are public boards,
our discussion will focus on these.
Charter Schools Today: Changing the Face of American Education (Washington, D.C.: Center for
Education Reform, 2000), p. 95.
46
Charter Schools Today: Changing the Face of American Education (Washington, D.C.: Center for Education
Reform, 2000), p. 95.
46
Two Visions of Charter School Accountability
In fact, the most recent figures show that charter school accountability is primarily about
shuttering schools with low enrollment, facility problems, financial improprieties, or
mismanagement rather than about monitoring or ensuring adequate academic
performance. As of 2002, 194 (6.95%) of the 2,790 schools that had ever received charters
and opened their doors had been closed, but just 0.005% had been closed for reasons
47
related to academic performance. While some schools that deserve to close are indeed
being shut down, this record does not fulfill the promise of charter school accountability.
Accountability must be more stringent if it is to provide a viable long-term alternative to
state assessment systems.
Why have the accountability provisions in existing charters not led to more aggressive
enforcement? What would it take to fulfill the promise of charter school accountability?
Clearly part of the answer is technical—improving and expanding the tools and capacity/
expertise of oversight bodies and addressing the lack of solid data. These concerns are valid
and important; however, a greater challenge for charter schooling is that it faces two
competing and contrasting visions of accountability: the “market model” and the
“regulatory model.”
The market model presumes that families will hold charter schools accountable by fleeing
bad schools. Such a model is agnostic about what constitutes a “bad” school, leaving
consumers free to decide in the same way they judge whether a gourmet vegetarian bistro
or a renowned steakhouse is “better.” In such a system, schools are free to operate in any
fashion, take on any mission, and measure their performance in any manner, just so long
as they are able to attract and retain a sufficient number of students.
The regulatory approach is a response to two democratic concerns.48 First—as there is no

consensus on what schools should do—the broader community fears that some families
may prefer schools that violate shared norms regarding the need for schools to teach
certain content, perform at a certain level of competence, or cultivate certain attitudes and
49
behaviors. Second, the community fears that some families are too incompetent or ill
informed to make choices in their child’s best interest. Regulation ensures that families
make “appropriate” choices by shutting down schools that the larger community deems
unacceptable.
Regulatory accountability, in judging which schools are acceptable, requires the broader
community to do two things that strike at the heart of the market model. First, it requires
the community to agree on standards against which schools will be judged. These
standards can include graduation rates, student test performance, teacher certification,
47
Charter School Closures: The Opportunity for Accountability (Washington, D.C.: Center for Education
Reform, 2002). Reasons for closure could not yet be determined for 40 of the closed schools, suggesting
that a few additional schools might also have been closed for reasons related to academic performance.
48
Stephen Macedo, Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2000).
49
An important point needs to be made here. "Community" does not refer to the local community. Rather,
we are referring to the larger political community -- generally at the state level -- that is responsible for
shaping the relevant dimensions of education policy.
47
curricular elements, or any number of things. Because the public is of multiple minds
about which elements of schooling or which outcomes are most important, standards tend
to be vague and focused more on inputs (i.e., certain procedures must be followed) than
50
on outputs (i.e., the value that schools add).
Second, regulatory accountability requires the community to close charter schools that fail
to meet these standards—even if families choose to continue sending their children to
these schools. If every family chose its children’s schools in an acceptable manner, such
regulation would be unnecessary; so the basic assumption of the regulatory model is that
regulators will countermand the choices of some families.
The problem is that we all tend to care more strongly about what is best for our own
children than what is best for the anonymous masses. This means that, although the vast
majority of Americans support the regulation of charter schools in the abstract, attempts to
hold a particular charter school accountable will feature a clash between the marginally
concerned public and the intensely concerned families who have chosen that school.
When an oversight board decides to close or not to renew an existing school, it must
enforce the abstract preferences of an inattentive majority against the wishes of families
who have decided that the school is both satisfactory and desirable.
The Challenge of Regulatory Accountability
The challenge posed by charter school regulation is obvious once we understand it as a

political, rather than an educational, issue. The challenge becomes concrete when the
dispersed interests and loose association of the broader community confront the intense
interest and relative concentration of a charter school community.
Children are enrolled in a charter school because their families have chosen that school.
Parents who seek out, apply to, and transport their children to a charter school obviously
regard it as superior to their local public school. Moreover, even if parents did not strongly
believe this prior to enrolling their child, it is likely that they will come to view the school
positively over time, if only to justify their decision and subsequent efforts.
A charter school community is a self-selected and easily organized group. Charter school
families share a common concern, are in repeated contact, and have an organizational link
that can facilitate communication and the dissemination of information. Similarly, charter
school teachers have chosen to become faculty members of the school, are in daily
contact, and find it a simple matter to share information with one another and with the
parents of their students.
Meanwhile, members of the broader community have no particular stake in a charter

school that their children do not attend. Consequently, the inattentive broader
community is unlikely to get exercised enough to want to close a school, unless a situation
arises that is so egregious as to command public attention. For instance, when a school is
50
See Terry Moe, Schools, Vouchers, and the American Public (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press,
2001), for extensive discussion of public attitudes on these issues.
48
preaching racist doctrines or engaging in financial improprieties, the violation of agreed-

upon norms is clear enough that the broader community will endorse intervention to
prohibit families from “wrongly” choosing the school. This helps explain why the vast
majority of shuttered charter schools are closed for reasons relating to finances, facilities, or
mismanagement. Such cases, however, say little about our ability to shutter academically
mediocre but otherwise inoffensive charter schools.
The influence of charter school constituents is strengthened by our system of

representative democracy and permeable bureaucracy. Democratic governments do not
give the preferences of all voters equal weight. The political process permits those with
strong preferences to exert a disproportionate level of influence in a number of ways.
Consequently, elections reflect not simply the amount of support for and opposition to a
proposal, but also the intensity of those views. This dynamic is even more evident in
legislative and bureaucratic processes, where only those with an intense interest in an issue
seek to influence governmental decisions at this level. Voters who will be only marginally
affected by the resolution of an issue have little incentive to spend time or resources
seeking to influence the outcome. Moreover, in our system of government, the actions of
legislators and public administrators can be readily monitored by those who have the
incentive to do so, enabling concerned voters to identify, pressure, and punish
“unfriendly” officials.
In the case of charter school regulation—especially given the openness of most charter
review processes—it is a simple matter for mobilized communities to bring pressure to
bear. Meanwhile, the larger public has no reason to mount a parallel effort. Because
charter school regulatory boards are generally state bodies with roles and budgets shaped
directly by the state legislature, they have little incentive to offend vocal constituencies in
the name of the abstract ideal of accountability.
So long as a school is enrolling students, those students’ families clearly believe the
performance to be acceptable. Closing a school by failing to renew its charter requires that
the authorizing body tell the school’s supporters that they are either ignorant (unable to
judge school quality) or misguided (unconcerned with quality). When the aggrieved,
emotionally invested, and easily organized charter school community rallies to oppose the
decision, there is no similar incentive for the broader community to seek enforcement. In
fact, if the school in question is not breaking laws or operating in a scandalous fashion, a
push to close it down raises uncomfortable questions about how to “fairly” measure school
performance and when parents should be denied the right to choose a school that they
deem appropriate. As a result, it will be the exceptional situation in which regulators will
refuse to renew the charter of even a mediocre school, so long as it enrolls more than a
handful of students and has not engaged in gross misconduct. What can be done about
this?
Improving Regulatory Accountability for Charter Schools
Today, the promise of regulatory accountability in charter schooling is largely unfulfilled,

permitting incompetent school operators to stay in business, weakening the cause of
charter reform, and providing ammunition to critics and those who would subject charter
49
schools to more standardized accountability regimes. Charter school proponent Bruno

Manno has noted that some self-inflicted wounds of the charter movement have
strengthened the hands of its critics and opponents. These include . . . inept operators
whose schools are fiscally disastrous and academically inadequate . . . and supporters who
press sponsors to leave the schools alone—even to renew their charters—notwithstanding
51
their organizational, financial, and instructional failures.
Moreover, failing to recognize the source of the problem, proponents too often
exaggerate the benefits that the current system of charter school accountability is likely to
deliver. Political forces will tend to render regulatory accountability ineffective unless the
system is intentionally crafted to resist such pressures. A failure to address this fact will
strengthen those who oppose charter schooling and make it more difficult for it to fulfill
its promise.
There are four basic strategies that legislators and program designers might use to enhance
regulatory accountability for charter schools. Because we don’t live in Wonderland, none
of these strategies offers an instant remedy and each incurs real costs. However, they do
provide options that may deliver on the promise of charter school accountability—if we
are serious about doing so.
Raising the bar. Charter school communities do not become political constituencies until
the members come together over a common interest and form an organized network. So
the easiest solution to the political dilemma of accountability is to prevent communities of
advocates for low-performing charter schools from forming in the first place. This suggests
a rigorous screening of charter schools before they are permitted to open. While current
authorization processes are demanding, they tend to focus on procedural requirements
rather than on evidence that the proposed school is likely to achieve its agreed-upon goals.
A rigorous screening approach cannot eliminate the possibility that ineffective schools will
emerge, but it can minimize the number of such schools.
Such an approach would constrain innovation and would strongly encourage applicants to
replicate models that had succeeded elsewhere. Our current approach is far more receptive
to the notion that charter schooling offers the opportunity for innovative schools to form.
However, it is important to recognize that the current authorization process—despite the
well-intentioned efforts of screening committees and authorizing boards—inevitably helps
to ensure that ineffective charter schools will open. Once open, some of these schools may
continue to attract students, bringing us back to the central regulatory dilemma.
Tying their hands. A second approach to reducing the politicization of charter school
accountability systems is to limit regulatory discretion. Rather than require regulators to
make judgment calls about closures or nonrenewals, legislators can transform authorizing
boards into the executors of automatic decisions. The easiest way to do this is by writing
charter school contracts with clear, quantitatively measurable goals and then making
charter renewal contingent on achieving those goals. Such an automatic trigger will permit
oversight boards to sympathize with sanctioned schools while pleading helplessness.
51
Bruno Manno, "Yellow Flag," Education Next, Winter 2003, p. 21. [Document #4 above.]
50
Meanwhile, such a stance can be defended as reflecting an unwavering commitment to

high standards.
Cities such as Chicago and Washington, D.C., have taken steps to implement such a
model but then granted regulators substantial leeway when deciding whether schools have
fulfilled their contract terms. Efforts to build regulatory discretion into the evaluative
process, while admirable, will inevitably undermine the effectiveness of this remedy.
The “mandatory nonrenewal” approach requires some standardization of assessment

measures in order to enable regulators to automatically determine whether or not a charter
school has met its goals. Theoretically, such standardization can coexist with campus
flexibility—allowing schools to design an array of appropriate indicators and to find
creative ways to measure their goals. However, interpreting non-quantitative
measurements tends to require judgment calls, while increasing the number of indicators
to be considered in evaluation may result in more mixed outcomes and a less
straightforward assessment of school performance. Both situations would require regulators
to exercise more discretion and would put them back into a politicized environment in
which aggressive regulation would be difficult. In practice, therefore, clear-cut decisions
on nonrenewal of school charters are much more likely when based on a limited number
of quantitative measurements.
The Federal Reserve model. A third approach is a “Federal Reserve” model, in which
charter oversight boards are isolated from public pressure and provided with significant
resources and a clear sense of institutional mission. Such an approach would require
extended terms for board members, a “professional” and less partisan approach to board
appointments, and sufficient staffing to permit board members to thoroughly and
independently analyze school performance. Insulating charter school regulators from
public pressure while providing them with the reputational and organizational resources to
defend their decisions would enable them to more effectively defend the diffuse “general”
interest against particularistic sniping. Of course, this model runs counter to the conviction
of many charter school advocates that education ought to be more democratic, that the
role of professional educators should be reduced, and that public schools already suffer
from excessive bureaucratization and intrusive regulation.
Competitive authorizers. A final approach shifts from the explicitly regulatory focus of the
first three models and relies on a quasi-market that is driven by authorizer self-interest. If
charter school oversight boards have an incentive to protect and cultivate a “brand
name”—either because they are competing for-profit entities or because they are
nonprofit institutions (such as universities) that may suffer real costs from a loss of
reputation—there is cause to presume that they will aggressively police the schools they
authorize. Public regulatory boards, on the other hand, traditionally have had little cause
for such concerns because, while a reputation for probity gains them little, aggressive
regulation will increase the enmity of aggrieved school communities. Thus far, our very
limited experience with universities charged with authorizing charter schools has provided
little evidence on this matter.
51
Of course, a market model threatens notions of lay control, site autonomy, and
community influence that have been central to the argument for charter schooling.
Charter schools authorized and overseen by brand-conscious firms may be less diverse and
autonomous than those under the current system, as firms seeking to enhance their market
share are apt to assess performance on the basis of popular and saleable measures—not
necessarily those most appropriate to the school at hand.
The Promise of Charter School Accountability
The larger lesson here is twofold. First, if we are serious about charter school
accountability, we have to consider which arrangements will be most effective. Thus far,
policy has been marked more by high hopes and good intentions than by realistic
appraisals. Second, meaningful accountability will require us to carefully design regulatory
mechanisms, but we must also recognize the trade-offs implied by the nature of charter
schooling itself.
If we are to devise a more balanced and defensible system of charter school accountability,
we need to take a hard look at the requirements of meaningful regulation. In the world of
NCLB, if charter schooling is to provide a safe space for distinctive educational visions to
demonstrate their value, powerful accountability mechanisms that can rival mandatory
testing systems are imperative. To date, we have not seriously addressed this challenge. It
is past time for us to get started.
· · ·
52
The following table gives information to update the figures contained in Documents #3-5:
Exhibit #4: Charter School Enrollment and Closures, by State
Source: http://www.edreform.com/_upload/cer_charter_survey.pdf
53
And here, from the trenches, is some evidence that closing a charter school ain’t eay.
Document #6: Caroline Hendrie, “Charter Authorizers Eye Rules on Closings,”

Education Week, February 2, 2005
Ask James N. Goenner the hardest part of closing down a charter school, and he
doesn’t hesitate for a moment.
“One of my toughest days on the job,” he said, “was when I had a 5- or 6-year-old
girl ask me, ‘Mr. Goenner, why are you taking away our school?’ ”
As the executive director of the charter school office of Central Michigan University
in Mount Pleasant, Mich., Mr. Goenner has been through the ordeal of shuttering a
school more times than he wants to recall. Now he is among a growing cadre of
charter school authorizers who are giving hard thought to how to manage a process
that can be painful and messy for all concerned.
With the nation’s charter sector now encompassing some 3,200 schools in 40 states
and the District of Columbia, shutdowns have become more common occurrences in
the past few years. An estimated one in every 10 charter schools has now closed its
doors, up from only about 4 percent four years ago.
Most authorizers who take their responsibilities seriously agree that weeding out bad
schools is a vital component of the autonomy-for-accountability bargain at the heart
of the charter school concept. But amid the sparks thrown off by closings, those
authorizers are often ending up singed.
As shutdowns grab headlines—particularly when schools collapse in midyear,
stranding students, families, and staff—their authorizers may come under fire for how
they’ve handled the process. Even orderly, planned closures have sparked fierce
political battles that have sometimes led authorizers to give struggling schools another
chance. Publicized failures have spurred states to implement new rules aimed at
tightening oversight, sometimes to the anguish of freedom-loving charter operators
and their authorizers.
As a result, leaders among the authorizers that grant the publicly financed but
independent schools their contracts to operate—including states, school districts,
universities, and others—are getting serious about sharing their experiences and
finding better ways to pull the plug.
“It’s easy to talk about the theory of closing down schools, but it’s much more
difficult to really close a school,” Mr. Goenner said. “And until you’ve done it once,
you really can’t understand the ramifications.”
As they struggle to develop policies and protocols to shut weak charter schools,
authorizers are grappling with issues that may increasingly apply to regular public
schools as they fall under sanctions for subpar performance imposed by the federal No
Child Left Behind Act.
54
At the same time, charter closings pose some unique challenges to those who want to
see the sector succeed. The very process that charter advocates can point to as
“accountability in action” can help opponents paint grim pictures of charter
schooling. Revocation or nonrenewal of a school’s charter to operate can undermine
support among parents and the public, who may see closed schools as a failure of the
whole chartering idea. Closures may not go over big with policymakers, either.
Catch-22
“There’s definitely a Catch-22 at play here,” said Mark Cannon, the executive
director of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, based in
Alexandria, Va.
Hundreds of charter schools have now folded, usually after being open just a few
years, or even a few months.
According to the Center for Education Reform, a pro-charter organization based in
Washington, approximately 350 such schools had gone belly up as of the end of the
2003-04 school year, for a closure rate of nearly 10 percent of all the charter schools
that had opened since the first charter was awarded in Minnesota in 1992.
That contrasts with a closure rate of 4 percent listed in the center’s 2001 report,
when just 86 of the 2,150 charter schools that had opened by that point were known
to have shut down.
The center is still confirming and analyzing the reasons for last school year’s closures
for a report expected in the coming months. In the past, though, the center has
found that closures have been triggered principally by factors other than academic
performance—such as fiscal difficulties, mismanagement, low enrollment, or facilities
problems.
Some charter school critics say that pattern needs to change. Joan A. Devlin, an
associate director in the educational issues department of the American Federation of
Teachers, said authorizers need to close more schools for poor academic
performance, and then be upfront about their reasons, instead of citing various
operational deficiencies.
“They need to be more honest about it,” she said. “That was part of the bargain:
‘We’ll give you this autonomy, and in turn you’ll raise student achievement.’ ”
Whatever their reasons for shutting a school, authorizers are finding that the process
can become drawn-out and disruptive. Especially for those authorizers aiming to
strengthen the charter sector—in contrast to those who devote scant resources to the
job—getting their act together on closures has become a major topic of debate.
Sharing Experience
Processes for dissolving unsuccessful schools are not usually what authorizers focus on
in their early years, when they are still figuring out how to handle applications for
new schools, noted Nelson Smith, the president of the Charter School Leadership
Council, based in Washington.
55
But as authorizers have been around for a while, and as the charters they have
granted come up for renewal, they are finding a need to make up for lost ground, he
said.
“Honestly, there’s a lot of catch-up to be done, and I’m speaking as a former
authorizer,” said Mr. Smith, who was the first director of the District of Columbia
Public Charter School Board, which was formed in 1996 to focus on chartering
schools in the nation’s capital.
Interest in the closure issue was evident in Philadelphia last October at the national
conference of Mr. Cannon’s group, NACSA, where sessions on ending unsuccessful
schools were well attended.
“There are two things that can be damaging to the charter school movement:
keeping open bad schools and mucking up closures,”Martin S. Dezelan, the director
of the office of charter schools at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., said at one
such session. “Both are communications nightmares.”
When faced with shutting a fledgling Indiana school for poor performance last year,
Mr. Dezelan turned to Mr. Goenner’s staff at Central Michigan University.
The CMU staff provided him with a “wind-up and dissolution checklist,” a six-page
document outlining the tasks involved in terminating a school. Seven of the 87
schools that Central Michigan has chartered over the past 10 years have folded, and
the checklist was drawn up to handle those situations.
Need for ‘Triage’
That sort of sharing is becoming more common. According to Mr. Cannon,
authorizers are learning that they need to expect the worst and assume that an
operator who has done a poor job of running a school will come up equally short in
shutting it down. And sometimes, experience has shown that disgruntled operators
go out of their way to “exit in the worst way possible,” he said.
“The authorizer really has to develop a triage team that swoops in quickly before an
unscrupulous operator is able to do damage,” he said. “The big issues are protecting
the kids and the money.”
An example of a particularly unfortunate exit came just last summer, Mr. Cannon
said, with the meltdown of a chain of charter schools run by the California Charter
Academy. The Victorville, Calif.-based organization ran roughly 60 sites under four
charters that were serving more than 12,000 students as of last June, according to the
California Department of Education.
Academy officials decided to abruptly fold amid an investigation by the state
education department into alleged wrongdoing, which the academy denied. The
closings left thousands of students in the lurch shortly before the start of a new school
year. And while other charter schools absorbed many of them, the episode was still
hugely disruptive.
56
Another high-profile closing last year was of the 450-student John A. Reisenbach
Charter School in New York City. The school was among the first three schools
authorized by the State University of New York’s Charter Schools Institute to come
up for review of their five-year charters.
Over bitter protests from parents, the university’s board of trustees decided against
renewing the Reisenbach school’s charter last February. The decision was backed by
an extensive report by the institute’s staff recommending closure for academic, fiscal,
and other deficiencies.
Parents complained that they lacked better options for their children, a factor that
SUNY officials say made their decision harder. And as the summer shutdown date
approached, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein of New York City and City
Councilwoman Eva S. Moskowitz were among those who urged the board to
reconsider. But the university stuck to its guns.
This year, the SUNY institute has 13 more schools up for renewal, and lessons
learned last year have prompted some changes. Last summer, the institute gave the
boards of the schools a heads-up that nonrenewal was an option. And in response to
complaints from Reisenbach parents that they had learned too late that the school
was in trouble, the institute’s executive director, James D. Merriman, met personally
with parents from each of the five schools this past fall and explained the situation.
During those meetings, Mr. Merriman said, “I was struck by the low level of
knowledge about the charter concept itself.” So he has decided to produce and
distribute a primer on chartering to the parents of all SUNY-authorized schools,
which will include warnings about the risks of closure for poor academic
performance.
Even with such information, parents are unlikely to be happy about the idea, Mr.
Goenner of Central Michigan University said.
“When you preach the accountability message—if they don’t perform, we’ll shut
them down—it’s a complete red flag to parents,” he said. “Parents of the kids say, ‘If
the school’s not performing, change the leadership, don’t put my child on the street.’
”
In the long run, many charter experts say that the best way to cut down on closures
is to screen charter applicants better and continuously monitor schools’ progress. For
that to happen, they say, authorizers need the will and resources to perform their
roles effectively.
At the moment, though, as charter leaders pursue the twin goals of expanding the
number of charter schools and upgrading their quality, few see the need for closings
disappearing anytime soon.
“The toughest part of this,” Mr. Smith of the Charter School Leadership Council
said, “is to get parents and other people to accept that sometimes closing a school is a
healthy thing.”
57
Considerable research has been conducted to determine whether and to what degree charter schools are
an improvement over non-charter public schools. Among the more ambitious studies is that of
Zimmer and Buddin, who compared a sample of 352 California charter schools with a sample of
245 non-charter schools looking at some 24 student, school, teacher and principal characteristics.
Following is their paper:
Document #7: Ron Zimmer and Richard Buddin, Getting Inside the Black Box: Examining
How the Operation of Charter Schools Affect Performance (Los Angeles: Rand Corporation,
2005)
Abstract: In recent years, a series of papers have examined the performance of charter
schools with mixed results. Some of this research has shown that charter school
performance varies by charter type or the age of the school (Buddin and Zimmer, 2005;
Sass, 2005; Bifulco and Ladd, 2005; Hanushek et al., 2002). However, this research has
not examined the school attributes that lead to high- or low-achieving charter schools. In
this paper, we use student-level achievement and survey data of charter schools and a
matched-set of traditional public schools from California to take an initial step into
examining correlations between school operational features and student achievement.
While we did not find characteristics that consistently lead to improved student
achievement, we did identify some features that are more important at different grade
levels or in charter schools versus in traditional public schools. We also examined the
relationship between greater autonomy within schools, which is a major tenet of the
charter movement, and student achievement and found very little evidence that greater
autonomy leads to improved student achievement.
Introduction
In education, few topics have created as much debate as charter schools, which are
publicly supported schools given greater autonomy of operation in exchange for public
accountability. Since charter schools’ inception in 1991, the charter school movement has
seen tremendous growth as 40 states plus the District of Columbia have passed charter
school laws. Currently, more than 3,500 charter schools enroll nearly 1 million students
nationwide. As the charter school movement has grown, rhetoric from advocates and
opponents has dominated the debate about their effectiveness. Only recently have
researchers been able to provide any quantifiable results, which are mostly mixed.
However, this research has generally treated charter schools as a monolithic group, which
might not be the case.
Part of the impetus for charter schools is to create autonomous schools, which would
become incubators of creative and innovative ideas (Kolderie, 2004; Finn et al., 2000;
Nathan 1996; 1998). As with any innovation, successes and failures will occur, but part of
the point is to learn from them. Therefore, it is imperative that researchers begin prying
open the black box of charter schools and look for the correlates of success and failures. In
this paper, we take a first step toward this goal by using both student achievement and
school survey data to examine how the organizational structure and operation of charter
and traditional public schools affect performance. In the next section, we first outline the
58
findings from the previous research. Then we describe the data and research approach for
our analysis and finally, provide results and conclusions.
Literature Review
As the charter movement has grown, so has the research of the performance of these
schools. Most of this research has examined charter schools in individual states, including
Arizona (Solmon et al., 2001), California (Zimmer et al., 2003; Buddin and Zimmer,
2005), Florida (Sass, 2005), Michigan (Eberts and Hollenbeck, 2002; Bettinger, 2005),
North Carolina (Bifulco and Ladd, 2005), Texas (Gronberg and Jansen, 2001; Booker et
52
al., 2004; Hanushek et al., 2002), and Pennsylvania (Miron, et al., 2002). In addition, a
few recent studies have examined student achievement in charter schools nationally, but
these have primarily relied on point-in-time school-level data, which cannot account for
the effects charter schools have on the growth of student achievement (AFT, 2004;
Hoxby, 2004; Carnoy et al., 2005).
Overall, the research on charter schools has revealed mixed results ranging from slightly
positive, to no effect, to negative impacts. Zimmer et al. (2003) and Buddin and Zimmer
(2005) argue that measuring the effect of charter schools is complex and it is difficult to
paint a single picture of the performance because charter schools vary from school to
school. The authors illustrate this point by showing that the performance of charter
schools varies by schools started from scratch (startup schools), schools that convert from
public schools (conversion schools), and schools that offer a significant portion of
instruction outside of traditional classrooms (nonclassroom-based schools). These results
suggest that charter school performance could vary by the operation and organizational
structure of schools and underscores the need to examine these aspects of charter schools
in greater detail when evaluating their performance.
However, part of the challenge of addressing this need is that researchers have generally
treated charter schools as a black box, and have failed to examine the actual organization
or operation of these schools. Most of the research has focused on teachers. For instance,
Bomotti, Ginsberg, and Cobb (1999) and Burian-Fitzgerald, Luekens, and Strizek (2004)
examined teacher experience and turnover rates and found that charter schools tend to
have less-experienced teachers and more turnover than traditional public schools. In
another study, Burian-Fitzgerald (2004), utilizing a national sample of charter and
traditional public from the nationwide Schools and Staffing Survey, found that charter
schools can create slightly higher levels of collaboration among teachers. Other studies
have examined the operation of charter schools more broadly; such studies include Miron
and Nelson (2002), which used a survey of all of Pennsylvania charter schools. Zimmer et
al. (2003) surveyed both charter and traditional public schools in California. This analysis
52
Hoxby and Rockoff (2004) also examined four charter schools in Chicago, which provided some evidence
that charter students outperform noncharter students. Their analysis capitalized on the fact that these schools
are oversubscribed and used a lottery mechanism to admit students. Presumably the lottery winners and
losers are similar in every way except admission into these schools. Tracking performance of both sets of
students then creates an unbiased perspective of performance. However, Hoxby and Rockoff’s study has a
major drawback in that it may have limited implications for those schools that do not have waiting lists. In
fact, you would expect schools with waiting lists to be the best schools, and it would be surprising if they
had the same results as other charter schools
59
suggested that charter schools provide more instructional hours in non-core subjects, such
as fine arts and foreign languages, but are less likely to offer some types of programs,
including gifted programs. Also, startup charter schools are more likely to mainstream
students for special education. In addition, charter-school principals reported having less-
experienced and less-credentialed teachers.
While the above research has been informative, the authors have not taken the next step
and examined how these variations may affect student achievement. Ted Kolderie (2004),
who was instrumental in passing the first charter law in Minnesota, argues that charter laws
are intended to create schools with a wide variety of educational and operational
approaches and that learning from their experiences requires understanding differences in
how different charter schools operate. By having a better understanding of how charter
schools operate, we can begin to understand what leads to improved performance. Such
understanding is a critical step toward realizing the hope that charter schools could be
laboratories and incubators for promising educational practices that might be used in all
schools.
Data
Our analysis uses data from a survey of charter and traditional public schools as well as test
score data from schools included in the survey sample. Below, we describe these two data
sets.
Surveys
To examine the operation of charter and traditional public schools, we surveyed principals
of charter schools and a matched sample of traditional schools in spring 2002. These
surveys used consistent questions as much as possible to allow comparisons. To identify
the universe of California charter schools, we created a list by merging the California
charter school office’s publicly available data with the charter schools listed in the 2000–
2001 California Basic Educational Data System (CBEDS). Schools were eligible if they
opened before September 15, 2001, and had a status of “operating” as of February 2002.
In total, 357 schools met these requirements. We then contacted the individual schools
and their respective chartering authorizers to verify the data in our initial list. We made
changes in our database to reflect updated information obtained during these interviews,
including adding schools that were not in our original list. Twenty schools were added to
our sample this way, while 25 were eliminated. Thus, the final sample included 352
charter schools. One limitation to this method is the small possibility that a charter school
was not included in our sample because it was not entered in either the California charter
office data or the CBEDS data.
The creation of a match sample of noncharter comparison schools was crucial to our
analysis. In the past, researchers have generally found that charter schools disproportionally
serve low-income and high-minority students (Gill et al., 2001; Zimmer et al., 2003;
Finnigan et al., 2004), which may influence the schools’ cost and governance structures.
To avoid confounding differences associated with school type with differences related to
students served, we matched charter and noncharter schools by an estimated propensity
60
score (Rosenbaum and Rubin, 1983). The propensity score is the probability that a school
with a given set of characteristics is a charter school as opposed to a traditional public
school. These propensity scores can then be used to match charter schools to noncharter
schools by finding those with similar propensity scores. To carry out the propensity match,
we used a four-step process. First, we stratified charter schools into eight categories
(elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, county schools, continuation schools,
juvenile hall schools, special education schools, and alternative education schools) used by
53
the California Department of Education (CDE) to designate all public school types.
Roughly 60 charter schools were new in the 2001–2002 school year and were not
included in the 2000–2001 CBEDS data, and thus, could not be matched to public
schools. Second, within grade range strata, we fit a logistic regression model to predict
designation (1 = charter; 0 = traditional public) as a function of aggregate school
characteristics, including percentage ethnicity (percentage White, Black, Asian, and
54
Hispanic), pupil socioeconomic status (percentage free and reduced-price lunch), and
percentage English language learners. Using these characteristics, predicted values for
charter school i and traditional public school j were created (pi and pj). Then, the distance
between these schools (dij) is estimated as the absolute value of the difference between
their propensity scores, dij = | pi – pj |. We calculated the distance between each charter
school and every traditional public school. Fourth, we matched to each charter school a
traditional school that minimizes dij over all California traditional public schools j.
As part of the matching process, we allowed a traditional public school to be matched to

multiple charter schools because of budget and time constraints. While the propensity
scores do not create perfect matches, they do create a sample of traditional public schools
with characteristics that closely resemble those of charter schools. Table 1 displays the
characteristics of the matched elementary, middle, and high schools for charter and
traditional public schools.
53
Some charter schools had grade ranges that intersected multiple strata (e.g., kindergarten through grade 12
school intersects the elementary, middle, and high school strata). In these cases, the charter schools were
included in each category and matched to a traditional public school for each category. Because of the small
sample of county, continuation, juvenile hall, special education, and alternative education schools, a
propensity match was not used in these cases. Instead, if demographic data were available for these schools,
the schools were matched based on the criteria of getting schools within 10 percent or racial characteristics
of the charter schools. In many cases, demographic characteristics were not available for these schools and
schools were matched to a traditional public school of the same school type within the district or the closest
district.
54
It was later discovered that many charter schools do not participate in free and reduced-price lunch
programs. Because the original propensity match included percentage free and reduced-price lunch, the final
sample had to be weighted to account for this bias.
61
Table 1: Ethnic/Racial and Low-English Proficient Breakdown55
School Schools % % % % % %
Type White Black Hispanic Asian Other LEP
Elementary Charter 48.5 14.9 27.8 2.7 6.1 15.6

Non-charter 51.5 13.3 27.7 2.9 4.6 17.1
Middle Charter 51.8 11.7 23.8 2.3 10.4 9.4
Non-charter 54.3 13.8 22.5 4.0 5.4 10.6
High Charter 52.9 9.6 26.4 4.0 7.1 1010
Non-charter 53.2 5.3 23.8 6.8 5.9 10.2
Source: 2001–2002 CBEDS data.
However, not all of the charter or matched traditional public schools responded to our
survey. Table 2 highlights the number surveyed, the number of respondents, and the
percentage response rate for each sample. The response rates were nearly 75 percent for
both charter and traditional public schools.
Table 2: School Survey Response Rate
Survey Sample Respondents % Response Rate

Charter Schools 352 257 73%
Non-charter Schools 245 184 75%
To adjust for differential response rates among and across charter and traditional schools,
which may create bias in our results if types of charter schools are underrepresented, we
weighted the data so that the sample of charter schools reflected the population of charter
schools in the state. Traditional public school results were weighted to ensure
comparability with the full sample of traditional public schools created through the
propensity match. To weight the data for non-response, we used a logistic regression that
predicts whether a school responds or not based on its demographic characteristics,
including percentage racial/ethnic breakdowns, percentage free and reduced-price lunch
(including a dummy variable for whether the school participated in the free and reduced-
price lunch program), and percentage language proficient (Little and Rubin, 1987). In this
approach, the universe of charter and traditional public schools are included in a single
data set. Using the coefficient estimates from the regression, we enter each school’s
characteristics to gain a predicted probability (p) of responding. This analysis weight for
each charter and traditional public school that responded is the odds of responding p/(1-p)
as described by Hirano, Imbens, and Ridder (2000). Table 3 displays the characteristics of
the sample after weighting.
55
We only matched conventional public schools to charter schools for those schools about which we had
demographic information.
62
Table 3: Student Characteristics of Weighted Sample
School Type % % % % % %
White Black Hispanic Asian Other LEP
Charter 50.1 13.5 26.8 2.8 6.8 14.8

Non-charter 47.4 11.6 30.7 3.9 6.4 17.7
Source: 2001–2002 CBEDS data.
Before proceeding, we should mention some possible drawbacks of our survey data. First
and foremost, we relied on self-reported information through a survey of 9 school
principals, which may contain some errors. In addition, although we had a high response
rate and weighted the sample for nonresponse, we did not have a 100 percent response
rate. This may have created small errors in our percentages and averages. Finally, the
survey data we collected are from a single point in time, while our student achievement
data (described below), are longitudinal. Our analysis combined these data to examine
how operational and structural characteristics of schools affect performance. This analysis
rests on the assumption that these school characteristics are consistent over time. In many,
but not all cases, this appears to be a safe assumption.
Student-Level Data
The CDE provided individual records for all California students who took the Stanford 9
56
from 1998 through 2002. The test is administered in the spring of each year at
elementary and secondary schools. Test scores are reported in terms of the percentile
normal curve equivalent based on the Stanford 9 norming sample. If, for example, a
student is in the 45th percentile for math in the third grade and in the 50th percentile in
the fourth grade, the student’s achievement level is increasing relative to his/her grade
cohort. The analysis divided students into two groups: elementary- (grades two through
five) and secondary-level (grades six through eleven). The main limitation of the data is
that it does not provide a student-level identifier to track year-to-year changes in a
student’s test scores. Individual identifiers are important for this type of analysis because
they would allow the analysis to isolate a baseline achievement level for individual
students. Baseline achievement would allow the analysis to better adjust for the student’s
unmeasured background, which has an ongoing effect on his or her achievement.
Nevertheless, it does represent one of the most comprehensive data sets of charter schools
ever compiled.
For our analysis, these test score data were restricted to the sample of charter and
traditional public schools included in our survey data, which includes 131, 117, and 77
charter elementary, middle, and high schools and 87, 42, and 55 traditional public
elementary, middle, and high schools, respectively. The data include characteristics of
charter and traditional public school students, including information on English learner
56
Starting in 2002–2003, CDE switched from the Stanford 9 to the California Achievement Tests, Sixth
Edition (CAT/6) in 2003–2004. Therefore, our data sets include the full range of test scores for the Stanford
9.
63
status, race/ethnicity, parent’s education,57 school lunch eligibility, and student mobility
(i.e., whether the student is in the first year at his or her current school). Later in the
analysis, these variables are used to adjust test scores for the effect of student background.
The data file also identifies the student’s school and grade in school.
Analysis
Survey Analysis
Table 4 presents operational or structural differences between charter and traditional

public schools. We categorized these features into five categories: schoolorganizational
features, school-level control, teacher quality issues, curriculum allocations, and principal
background.
Because many California charter schools (and some traditional schools) incorporate home
schooling as part of their instructional design (Guarino et al., 2005), we asked principals
what portion of their student population is instructed at home. Table 4 shows that home
school instruction is much more popular among charter schools. Furthermore, 6Students
were asked to report the education level of the most educated parent or guardian with
whom they reside. The categories were non-high-school graduate, high school graduate,
some college (including associate’s degree), college graduate, and graduate school. 11 the
percentage of students instructed at home increases at higher grade levels, with charter
high schools having on average, more than 25 percent of their student population
instructed through home schooling.
57
Students were asked to report the education level of the most educated parent or guardian with whom
they reside. The categories were non-high-school graduate, high school graduate, some college (including
associate’s degree), collee graduate, and graduate school.
64
Table 4: School Characteristics by School Type for TPS and Charter Schools
Elementary Middle High

TPS Charter TPS Charter TPS
Charter
School Features
Students schooled at home (%) 4.1 11.6* 5.7 20.5* 7.0 25.6*
Instructional days per year 179.7 180.9 180.1 185.1* 177.8 186.0
School-level Control (4-Point Scale Where 4=Full Control
Student disciplinary policies 3.1 3.5* 3.2 3.6* 3.2 3.7*
School assessment policies 3.0 3.5* 3.0 3.6* 3.0 3.8*
Staff salaries and benefits 1.3 2.6* 1.4 2.9* 1.4 3.1*
Other budgetary expenses 2.9 3.4* 2.8 3.5* 2.8 3.5*
Curriculum 2.6 3.4* 2.6 3.6* 2.7 3.7*
Staff hiring, discipline, and dismissal 2.8 3.3* 2.9 3.4* 2.9 3.6*
Teacher Quality Issues
Emphasis on full standard credential 3.7 3.7 3.6 3.5 3.6 3.4*
College major in teaching field 2.9 2.9 3.0 2.9 3.5 2.9*
Professional Development (Annual Participation Quartile)
Workshops or conferences 3.5 3.6 3.4 3.5 3.2 3.5*
Courses for college credit 1.8 2.1* 1.8 2.1* 2.0 2.2
Teacher study groups 2.7 2.8 2.7 2.7 2.3 2.4
Mentoring or coaching 2.0 2.6* 1.7 2.4* 1.8 2.3*
Curriculum Allocations (5-Point Scale: 1=0 Hours/Week…5=7 or more Hours/Week
English/language arts 4.7 4.4* 3.9 4.1 3.4 3.3
Mathematics 4.1 4.1 3.6 3.9* 2.1 2.3
Computer skills 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.3 0.5 0.7*
Social studies 3.1 3.2 3.4 3.4 2.9 2.9
Sciences 2.8 3.0 3.3 3.4 1.9 1.9
Foreign language 1.2 1.8* 1.6 1.8 0.7 0.9
Fine or Performing arts 2.1 2.4* 2.2 2.3 0.9 1.1
Principal’s Background (Years)
Leadership at current school 4.5 3.6* 4.4 3.1* 4.8 2.6*
Administrative experience 12.2 8.7* 11.5 8.2* 11.9 9.6
Teaching experience 12.8 12.6 12.3 11.7 12.7 11.9
Sample Size 87 131 42 117 55 77

Notes: An asterisk indicates that the corresponding charter school value varies significantly from the TPS
value at the 5 percent significance level. Some schools (especially charters) have grades that span across the
classification of elementary, middle, and high schools. These schools are included in the 12 category for each
type of school. The curriculum allocations reflect fourth, seventh, and twelfth grade students for elementary,
middle, and high schools, respectively.
Another structural feature that may vary between charter and traditional public schools is
the instructional days per year. Many charter school proponents argue that one way to
improve learning is through more instructional time. For instance, the educational
management organization (EMO) of Edison schools, which includes a large number of
charter schools nationwide and in California, provides longer school years (Gill et al.,
2005). The data in Table 4 indicates that charter schools in this study have longer
instructional days than traditional public schools at middle and high school levels, but not
at the elementary school level.
One of the strongest arguments put forth by charter advocates for these schools is the
ability to make autonomous decisions to meet the needs of their students and allow greater
65
innovation (Kolderie, 2004; Finn et al., 2000; Nathan 1996; 1998). However, in cases
when the charter arrangement is formed between a district and a school, the district may
restrict certain liberties. Therefore, we also asked both charter and traditional public school
principals about the level of control over certain operational decisions within their schools.
In the survey, principals responded to a four-point scale, where 1 represented no control
and 4 represented full control. Table 4 indicates that charter school principals across all
levels, reported a greater level of control than traditional public school principals on all the
dimensions listed. These data suggest that charter school principals do indeed have a
higher level of autonomy in their schools.
One of the ways in which charter schools could use this greater freedom is in the hiring
58
and professional development of teachers. To examine these issues, we asked principals
how much emphasis (as measured in a four point scale that ranged from not important to
very important) they put on hiring credentialed teachers and teachers who majored in the
field in which they teach. We also asked what percentage of teachers (through a four
quartile response, with 1 indicating 0 to 25 percent and 4 indicating a 75 to 100 percent)
participated in different professional development activities, including workshops or
conferences, courses for college credit, teacher study groups, and mentoring and coaching.
In terms of hiring practices, elementary and middle charter schools and traditional public
schools placed a similar emphasis on hiring credentialed teachers as well as teachers who
majored in the field in which they will teach. However, at the high school level, charter
schools placed less of an emphasis on both. For professional development, charter schools
at all levels placed a greater emphasis on mentoring and coaching than traditional schools.
The rest of the results for professional development are more mixed with charter
elementary and middle school emphasizing college courses more, while charter high
schools emphasized workshops or conferences more.
Another way in which charter schools could use their autonomy is through the amount of
instructional time spent on curriculum subjects. We asked both charter and traditional
public school principals how much time they spent on various subjects (through a five-
point scale in which 1 represented zero hours and 5 represented seven or more hours).
Both charter and traditional public schools reported similar number of hours spent on core
subjects, with only a few statistically significant differences. Charter elementary schools
reported spending a little less time on English/language arts, and charter middle schools
reported spending a little more time on mathematics. However, charter schools reported
spending significantly more time on computer skills at the high school level and foreign
language and fine or performing arts at the elementary level.
Finally, we examined the principal’s background in both charter and traditional public
schools. The literature has noted the importance of principal leadership (Gates et al., 2003)
to student achievement. Leadership skills may be even more important for charter schools
when the principals are not only the instructional leader but also manage the operation
58
Although evidence from the literature is mixed on whether credentialing matters in relation to student
achievement (e.g., Goldhaber and Brewer, 2000, 2001), politicians and educators across the country often
advocate increasing the proportion of credentialed teachers within the classroom, especially in low-income
schools (e.g., Darling-Hammond et al., 2001).
66
and finances of the school, in many cases from scratch. Table 4 shows that principals at
charter schools have significantly less experience at their current school across all levels,
less general administrative experience for elementary and middle charter schools, and
teaching experience similar to their traditional public school counterparts at all levels.
In our student achievement analysis, we examine how variations in these operational and
structural features affect performance by combining the survey data with the student
achievement data.
Achievement Analysis
Model
The statistical model of student achievement in public schools is based on a multilevel

approach where random effects are estimated for each school and each grade cohort
within each school. The school-level random effect allows for unobserved 15
heterogeneity across schools—i.e., the learning environment may vary systematically at
different schools in ways that have a common achievement effect on the students that
attend those schools. The grade-cohort effect is designed to capture the possibility that
some groups of students may have a persistent achievement score effect. For example, if
third grade students at a particular school score high in math in one year (relative to the
classes with similar student characteristics), then the forth grade students at the same school
are also likely to excel in math because of unmeasured attributes of students in the grade
cohort.
In addition to the random components, the model also adjusts for the individual
characteristics of each student taking the test and the observed characteristics of the school
as estimated in the school survey. The key student characteristics available are limited
English proficiency, race/ethnicity (white non-Hispanic, black, Asian, and Hispanic),
gender, and eligibility for the free or reduced-price school lunch program (a common
measure of socioeconomic status). The California test data also include an indication of the
parental education for each student. Finally, the data indicate whether students are in their
first year at their current school. Students (and their parents) may have difficulty in making
the transition to friends and teachers at a new school, so their test scores in the new school
may be lower than those of similar students who remain at the same school (Zimmer et
al., 2003; Buddin and Zimmer, 2005).
The school characteristics are drawn from the survey data described above. Five types of
school operational measures are included in the analysis: school features, school-level
control, teacher quality issues, curriculum allocations, and principal background. 16 The
formal model describes the relationship between student-level test scores, student
characteristics, school operational measures, a random school effect, and a random grade-
cohort effect within each school. The model includes dummy variables to describe any
possible time trend in test scores over the five years from 1998 through 2002. The
67
dependent variable is the student percentile test score, Tijkt, observed for student i in
school j and grade cohort k at time t.59 The formal model is
Tijkt = xit + wjt + j + j(k) + ijkt (1)
where xit and wjt are vectors of measured time-varying student and school characteristics,
respectively; and are parameter vectors for student and school effects; and school and
grade-cohort time heterogeneity are represented by j and j(k), respectively. The last
component of the model is a random error term, ijkt, which is orthogonal to all other
effects in the model.
The model is somewhat simplified, because the student and school characteristic measures
in the analysis do not vary over the five years of the data. Most student-level measures
(race/ethnicity, gender, and parental education) do not vary. Limited English proficiency,
free or reduced-price lunch status, and student mobility may vary from year to year. The
school characteristics are based on a 2003 surveys of schools. These factors are unlikely to
vary from year to year over the five-year analysis period.
The multilevel model in Equation 1 is run separately for several specifications, so model
parameters are not inherently constrained across dissimilar groups of students or schools.
• Reading and mathematics scores. Separate models are estimated for reading
and mathematics test scores because student and school characteristics may have
different effects on the learning environment in each area.
• Elementary, middle, and high schools. The size and mission of schools vary
substantially across these grade groups. The analysis plan allows flexibility so effects
of school operational factors are not restricted to the same values across different
types of schools.
• Traditional and charter schools. Models are estimated for traditional and
charters schools separately to assess how differences in school operations among
each type of school affects achievement. In addition, a pooled regression shows
whether differences in operations between traditional and charter schools affect
student achievement.
The results are reported in separate tables for elementary, middle, and high schools
students (Tables 5, 6, and 7). In each table, reading and mathematics score regressions are
reported for traditional and charter schools as well as for both types of schools pooled
together.
The main focus of this analysis is on the effects of school operations variables on student
achievement, and the regression controls for student characteristics are designed largely to
isolate the effects of the operations measures. The patterns of student effects largely mirror
59
Assessments of standardized achievement tests are often subject to score inflation (Hamilton, 2003).
Researchers find that scores in a state or school tend to rise over time without any commensurate increase in
general learning or proficiency. This is often attributed to “teaching to the test.”
68
those of previous student achievement analyses in California (Zimmer et al., 2003; Buddin
and Zimmer, 2005). As expected, limited English proficiency, minority status, low
socioeconomic status (eligibility for free or reduced-price school lunch or low parental
education levels) are inversely related to reading and mathematics test scores in 18
elementary, middle, and high schools. Other things being equal, girls generally score
higher than boys especially in the reading test. New students at a school consistently score
lower on both tests than do students who are continuing in the same school. The overall
trend in test scores is upward—an indication of overall improvement in students or schools
or perhaps evidence of schools “teaching to the test.” Student characteristics have similar
qualitative effects on test scores in both traditional public and charter schools.
Elementary School Results
Home schooling is inversely related to reading and math test scores. While charters have
more home-schooled students, the magnitude of this effect is similar in traditional public
and charter schools. There is no clear evidence on whether the lower test scores for home
school students reflect poorer learning opportunities or whether these students differ in
some unmeasured way from students who receive classroom instruction.
The results show that the number of instructional days has no effect on achievement in
reading or math. Calendars are largely standardized across districts and school types, so this
result may reflect the limited variation in instructional days. Controlling for differences in
operational measures and students, the overall scores of charter school students are about 1
percentile point lower in math than those for traditional public school students. In
reading, the differences in scores by school type are not statistically significant.
The results also indicate that greater school-level autonomy in charter schools has no
significant effect on student achievement scores. Table 1 showed that charter school
principals had more control over discipline, assessment, salaries, expenses, curriculum, and
staff management than did traditional public school principals. After controlling for other
student and school characteristics, the regression results in Table 5 show that school
autonomy does not translate into better academic success in the classroom. Greater
autonomy may have other benefits for teachers, parents, and students, but the evidence
does not show that autonomy translates into test score improvement.
A school’s emphasis on teacher quality issues is largely unrelated to test scores. An

emphasis on teachers having a full teaching credential is positively related to reading and
mathematics scores for traditional public schools, but not on scores in charter schools.
Scores do not vary significantly based on whether the school focuses on hiring teachers
60
with a major in their teaching field. Professional development opportunities in both
traditional public and charter schools are largely unrelated to the achievement scores of
students in those schools.
60
Teaching in field is probably more relevant for middle and high school teachers. In these higher grades,
schools may try to recruit teachers with math and science majors for instruction in these subjects. At the
elementary level, teachers generally have a multi-subject credential, teach a variety of subjects in their
classrooms, and have a college minor in elementary school education.
69
The amount of time devoted to mathematics and foreign language study do appear to
affect reading and math scores. More hours per week in mathematics correlate positively
with higher math scores, but the effect is significantly different from zero only for
traditional schools. Surprisingly, more math instruction is also associated with higher
reading scores for public schools students. Time commitments to English, computer skills,
social sciences, sciences, and fine or performing arts do not significantly affect reading or
math scores in either traditional public or charter schools. Foreign language instruction
may be “crowding out” other learning, however. Schools with more foreign language
instruction have consistently lower achievement scores in both reading and mathematics.
Principal experience has little impact on student achievement. However, the principal
experience measures may not capture the leadership skills, enthusiasm, and creativity that
may contribute to school success.
Table 5: Multilevel Regression Results for Traditional Public and Charter

Elementary Schools
Reading Mathematics
TPS Charter Both TPS Charter Both
Student Characteristics
Limited English proficiency -11.01* -11.14* -11.1* -7.17* -7.7* -7.43*
(0.17) (0.22) (0.14) (0.18) (0.23) (0.14
Black -9.45* -11.47* -10.27* -11.56* -13.01* -12.16*
(0.23) (0.3) (0.18) (0.24) (0.31) (0.19
Asian 2.47 2.86* 2.7* 7.62* 8.16* 7.86*
(0.29) (0.41) (0.24) (0.31) (0.42) (0.25)
Hispanic -3.54* -5.12* -4.17* -3.31* -3.77* -3.51*
(0.17 (0.23) (0.14) (0.18) (0.24) (0.14)
Non-high-school graduate -2.39* -2.66* -2.44* -2.24* -2.2* -2.21*
(0.22 (0.27) (0.17) (0.23) (0.28) (0.18)
Some college 4.84* 3.91* 4.45* 4.38* 3.86* 4.17*
(0.19) (0.26) (0.15) (0.2) (0.27) (0.16)
College graduate 7.6* 8.54* 7.95* 7.21* 8.39* 7.66*
(0.2) (0.28) (0.16) (0.21) (0.28) (0.17)
Some graduate school 11.39* 13.68* 12.32* 10.77* 12.96* 11.66*
(0.26) (0.33) (0.2) (0.27) (0.34) (0.21)
Free/reduced lunch -4.55* -5.26* -4.86* -4.84* -4.71* -4.78*
(0.19) (0.23) (0.15) (0.2) (0.23) (0.15)
Female 2.95* 2.74* 2.87* 0.32* 0.15 0.24*
(0.11) (0.14) (0.08) (0.11) (0.14 (0.09)
New school this year -3.37* -2.83* -3.15* -3.92* -3.25* -3.64*
(0.14) (0.18) (0.11) (0.15) (0.19) (0.12)
Year 1999 2.79* 3.38* 2.89* 2.63* 3.5* 2.83*
(0.19) (0.32) (0.16) (0.2) (0.33) (0.17)
Year 2000 3.92* 5.69* 4.52* 4.09* 5.61* 4.43*
(0.28) (0.42) (0.23) (0.29) (0.43) (0.24)
Year 2001 3.81* 6.08* 4.64* 3.49* 5.67* 4.09*
(0.3) (0.43) (0.24) (0.31) (0.45) (0.25)
Year 2002 2.4* 5.24* 3.48* 1.78* 3.96* 2.43*
(0.31) (0.45) (0.25) (0.33) (0.46) (0.26)
70
School Features
Students schooled at home -0.05 -0.08* -0.07* -0.1* -0.11* -0.11*
(%) (0.04) (0.02) (0.02) (0.04) (0.03) (0.02)
Instructional days per year 0.14 0.02 0.03 0.11 0.05 0.08
(0.19) (0.08) (0.06) (0.21) (0.09) (0.07
Charter 0.55 -0.98*
(0.31) (0.32)
School-Level Control
Student disciplinary 2.12 -1.14 -0.27 2.51 -1.31 -0.23
policies (1.48) (1.19) (0.94) (1.61) (1.36) (1.04)
Student assessment policies -0.29 0.38 0 -0.16 -0.09 0.04
(1.08) (1.34) 0.83 (1.17) (1.53) (0.92)
Staff salaries and benefits 0.29 -1.02 -0.97 -0.6 -0.86 -1.18*
(0.93) (0.72) (0.54) (1.01) (0.82) (0.6)
Other budgetary expenses -0.64 -0.64 -0.22 -0.79 0.63 0.02
(1.18) (1.18) (0.83) (1.28) (1.35) (0.92)
Curriculum 0.13 0.47 0.66 -0.25 0.04 0.05
(1.41) (1.23) (0.87) (1.53) (1.41) (0.96)
Staff hiring, discipline and -0.43 0.99 1.01 0.09 1 1.16
dismissal (1.23) (1.05) (0.81) (1.34) (1.2) (0.9)
Emphasis on full standard 3.04* 1.26 2.08* 3.2* 1.56 2.08*
credentials (1.47) (1.13) (0.85) (1.6) (1.3) (0.94)
College major in teaching -0.58 -0.11 -0.09 -0.34 0.1 0.3
field (0.87) (0.85) (0.59) (0.95) (0.97) (0.65)
Professional Development
Workshops or conferences -0.14 0.84 0.61 0.32 1.09 0.95
(0.98) (0.92) (0.66) (1.07) (1.06) (0.73)
Courses for college credit -1.39 0.66 -0.03 -2.21* 0.48 -0.47
(0.97) (0.85) (0.62) (1.06) (0.97 (0.69)
Teacher study groups 1.4 0.52 0.79 1.56* 0.34 0.75
(0.72) (0.67) (0.48) (0.78) (0.77) (0.53)
Mentoring or coaching 0.65 -0.26 -0.43 -0.31 -0.53 -0.32
(0.83) (0.66) (0.51) (0.9) (0.75) (0.56)
Curriculum Allocations
English/language arts 0.49 0.55 1.04 0.32 1.19 1.8
(1.45) (1.3) (1) (1.58) (1.49) (1.11)
Mathematics 3.44* 2.69 2.51* 4.09* 3.13 2.53
(1.73) (1.73) (1.19) (1.88) (1.97) (1.33)
Computer skills -1.39 1.52 0.49 -1.44 1.71 0.53
(1.5) (0.99) (0.8) (1.64) (1.13) (0.89)
Social studies -3.27 -1.71 -1.63 -1.99 -1.47 0.91
(1.68) (1.39) (1.08) (1.83) (1.6) (1.2)
Sciences 1.83 -0.25 0.26 1.1 -0.53 -0.24
(1.54) (1.25) (0.97) (1.68) (1.44) (1.07)
Foreign language -1.84* -2* -1.64* -1.66 -1.74* -1.44*
(0.84) (0.66) (0.59) (0.92) (0.76) (0.65)
Fine or performing arts 1.68 -0.08 0.36 1.12 -0.86 -0.21
(1.27) (0.99) (0.77) (1.38) (1.13) (0.86)
71
Principal’s Background
Leadership at current -0.2 0.03 -0.06 -0.16 0.16 0.03
school (0.2) (0.21) (0.15) (0.22) (0.24) (0.17)
Administrative experience 0.28* 0.06 0.14 0.25 0 0.1
(0.13) (0.11) (0.08) (0.14) (0.13) (0.09)
Teaching experience 0.04 0.08 0.05 0.03 -0.02 -0.01
(0.1) (0.09) (0.06) (0.11) (0.1) (0.07)
Constant -1.84 23.37 16.68 4.29 19.43 10.08
(32.84) (16.49) (12.87) (35.82) (18.81) (14.27)
Random Effects
School 6.78 6.44 6.50 7.37 7.42 7.19
(0.59) (0.57) (0.40) (0.64) (0.63) (0.44)
Grade cohort within 3.59 4.33 4.01 4.63 4.87 4.81
school (0.16) (0.20) (0.13) (0.17) (0.20) (0.14)
R-squared 0.12 0.14 0.13 0.09 0.11 0.10
Number of observations 123,510 82,624 206,134 123,510 82,624 206,134
Notes: An asterisk indicates that the corresponding regression coefficient is significantly different from zero
at the 5 percent confidence interval. Standard errors are reported in parentheses. The r-squared statistic
shows the reduction in the variance components for this model relative to an unconditional mean model
that only adjusts for the two random effects (Bryk and Raudenbush, 2002).
Middle School Results
School features have somewhat different effects for traditional public and charter middle
schools. Reading and math scores are inversely related to the percentage of students
receiving home school instruction for charter students, but not for traditional school
students. Charter students have about five more days of instruction per year than do
traditional students, but this difference has no effect on either reading or math scores.
Finally, the results show that, controlling for student and school operations factors, the
reading and test scores are about two and three percentile points lower in charter schools
than in traditional public schools.
Charter middle schools have substantially more autonomy than traditional middle schools,
but these differences have little corresponding effect on classroom test scores. The
evidence does show that charter schools with more control of student assessment practices
have higher test scores in both reading and math.
The handling of teacher quality issues at different schools has little effect on student
achievement. In particular, the emphasis on teachers having full teaching credentials has
no effect on reading or math scores in either traditional or charter middle 23 schools.
Similarly, the professional development opportunities offered by different schools do not
translate into any differences in achievement.
Unlike elementary schools, the amount of time each school spends on various subjects
generally has little effect on test scores for either type of school.
The background of each middle school’s principal also has little effect on test scores.
However, the evidence does show that mathematics scores in traditional middle schools
are positively correlated with the number of years that the principal has been at the school.
72
Table 6: Multilevel Regression Results for Traditional Public and Charter

Middle Schools
Reading Mathematics
(0.23 (0.60) (0.22) (0.23) (0.59) (0.22)
Black -9.46* -8.33* -9.13* -10.46* -9.25* -10.12*
(0.26) (0.45) (0.22) (0.26) (0.45) (0.23
Asian 3.00* 2.75* 2.99* 9.32* 7.39* 9.06*
(0.29) (0.79) (0.27) (0.29) (0.78) (0.28)
Hispanic -3.78* -2.86* -3.53* -3.44* -2.57* -3.25*
(0.20) (0.37) (0.18) (0.21) (0.37) (0.18)
Non-high-school graduate -1.12* -3.17* -1.63* 0.00 -1.88* -0.47
(0.27) (0.53) (0.24) (0.27) (0.52) (0.24)
Some college 4.11* 3.28* 3.89* 4.37* 3.65* 4.19*
(0.20) (0.38) (0.21) (0.21) (0.37) (0.18)
(0.21) (0.38) (0.18) (0.21) (0.38) (0.18)
(0.25) (0.50) (0.23) (0.26) (0.5) (0.23)
(0.21) (0.32) (0.18) (0.22) (0.32) (0.18)
Female 3.06* 3.05* 3.06* 0.48* 0.26 0.43*
(0.12) (0.23) (0.10) (0.12) (0.23) (0.1)
New school this year -1.56* -1.42* -1.67* -1.62* -1.08* -1.48*
(0.15) (0.29) (0.14) (0.17) (0.29) (0.14)
Year 1999 0.54* 1.28 0.64* 0.11 1.18 0.18
(0.21) (0.87) (0.21) (0.22) (0.89) (0.22)
Year 2000 0.35 -9.49* 0.06 -1.72* -9.71* -1.5*
(0.35) (1.29) (0.34) (0.37) (1.31) (0.35)
Year 2001 -0.78* -9.47* -1.01* -4.20* -10.72* -3.65*
(0.38) (1.29) (0.36) (0.42) (1.32) (0.38)
Year 2002 -2.23* -11.34* -2.78* -6.55* -12.91* -5.97*
(0.42) (1.30) (0.39) (0.47) (1.34) (0.42)
School Features
Students schooled at home 0.05 -0.05* -0.03 0.02 -0.07* -0.07*
(%) (0.05) (0.02) (0.02) (0.06) (0.03) (0.02)
Instructional days per year 1.58 -0.02 -0.02 1.91 0 0
(1.19) (0.05) (0.05) (1.34) (0.06) (0.06)
Charter -1.99* -2.76*
(0.54) (0.56)
Student disciplinary policies 0.97 -0.52 -0.32 0.53 -0.87 -0.39

(3.15) (1.74) (1.45) (3.55) (2.00) (1.61)
Student assessment policies 3.32 8.03* 2.38 4.91 8.35* 3.4*
(2.29) (2.58) (1.55) (2.58) (2.94) (1.73)
73
Staff salaries and benefits -1.62 0.57 0.44 -1.69 0.55 0.62
(1.72) (0.89) (0.77) (1.94) (1.02) (0.85)
Other budgetary expenses -2.53 0.62 -0.15 -2.61 0.08 -0.63
(1.95) (1.55) (1.16) (2.20) (1.78) (1.29)
Curriculum 1.6 -4.28 -1.10 0.95 -5.79* -2.63
(2.36) (2.44) (1.43) (2.66) (2.79) (1.59)
Staff hiring, discipline and -0.22 1.88 0.19 -0.76 2.97 0.56
dismissal (1.99) (1.63) (1.21) (2.24) (1.86) (1.35)
Emphasis on full standard 3.18 -0.28 0.44 4.11 0.25 0.99
credentials (2.04) (1.17) (0.99) (2.30) (1.34) (1.1)
College major in teaching -4.69* 0.67 0.13 4.21 1.59 0.67
field (1.91) (1.07) (0.89) (2.16) (1.22) (0.99)
Workshops or conferences 1.29 1.87 1.53 1.14 1.87 1.44
(1.99) (0.98) (0.87) (2.24) (1.12) (0.97)
Courses for college credit -0.36 -1.70 -1.24 -0.20 -1.70 -1.29
(1.51) (0.87) (0.77) (1.70) (0.99) (0.86)
Teacher study groups 2.23* 0.85 1.04 2024 0.23 0.76
(1.10) (0.80) (0.64) (1.24) (0.91) (0.71)
Mentoring or coaching 0.62 0.26 0.09 0.19 0.74 0.32
(1.58) (0.73) (0.67) (1.78) (0.83) (0.75)
English/language arts -4.29 -0.47 -0.78 5.60 0.07 0.93
(2.65) (1.80) (1.45) (2.99) (2.06) (1.62)
Mathematics 2.17 -0.27 0.44 3.14 1.44 2.02
(3.32) (2.28) (1.81) (3.74) (2.62) (2.02)
Computer skills -1.40 0.27 -0.71 -1.21 -0.97 -1.40
(1.64) (1.13) (0.93) (1.86) (1.29) (1.03)
Social studies 6.85 -1.74 0.99 6.14 -2.44 -1.92
(5.79) (2.04) (1.90) (6.50) (2.33) (2.11)
Sciences -2.17 0.16 0.81 0.44 0.94 1.95
(5.98) (1.91) (1.83) (6.72) (2.18) (2.04)
Foreign language 1.96 1.24 1.37 2.40 1.28 1.77*
(1.30) (0.88) (0.73) (1.47) (1.01) (0.81)
Fine or performing arts -2.97 1.43 0.94 -3.25 0.67 0.42
(1.79) (0.92) (0.84) (2.03) (1.05) (0.93)
Leadership at current school 0.38 -0.21 0.22 0.80* 0.09 0.44*
(0.31) (0.25) (0.19) (0.35) (0.28) (0.22)
Administrative experience 0.29 0.25 0.08 0.09 -0.29* -0.18
(0.22) (0.13) (0.11) (0.25) (0.15) (0.12)
Teaching experience 0.05 -0.07 -0.01 -0.20 -0.15 -0.13
(0.20) (0.12) (0.09) (0.23) (0.13) (0.10)
Constant -245.62 37.79* 43.52* -307.92 32.41 18.30*
(210.13 (14.96) (12.41) (237.41 (17.12) (13.85)
Random Effects
School 7.99 6.52 7.31 8.86 7.46 8.06
(1.96) (0.62) (0.52) (1.27) (0.71) (0.59)
Grade cohort within school 2.88 3.83 3.54 5.45 4.99 4.09
(0.20) (0.28) (0.18) (0.31) (0.29) (0.21)
R-squared 0.13 0.09 0.12 0.10 0.08 0.10
74
High School Results
The effect of school features, at the high school level, is somewhat similar to those in
elementary and middle schools. As before, the number of instructional days has no effect
on either reading or math scores. Other things being equal, charter school students have
lower reading scores than students in traditional schools, but their math scores do not
differ from one another significantly.
The percentage of students instructed at home has different effects for the two types of
schools. Twenty-six percent of students in the average charter high school are instructed at
home, compared with only 7 percent of students in traditional public high schools. Test
scores are inversely correlated with the percentage of home school students for the
traditional high schools only. The explanation for this result is unclear. It may be that
home school instruction means somewhat different things in the two types of schools. For
example, home school instruction may be aimed at poorly motivated students with a
history of disciplinary problems in traditional public high schools, while charter high
61
schools might offer alternative curriculum options to better-motivated students. The
evidence is insufficient to distinguish between these alternative explanations.
The evidence shows that differences in school autonomy or control have no effect on
student achievement. The reading scores of charter students are higher if the schools have
greater control of staff salaries and benefits. This lone significant coefficient is an anomaly,
however, and the coefficients for all other indications of school control are not
significantly different from zero.
Teacher quality issues, however, have interesting effects on achievement scores for high
school students. Traditional and charter high schools both place comparable emphasis on
recruiting teachers with full standard credentials. In traditional schools, this emphasis is
associated with higher test scores, but charter students seem to perform better at schools
where there is less emphasis on teacher credentials. The results provide some support for
the hypothesis that “teaching in field” is helpful to both reading and math scores. The
results show that professional development alternatives available for high school teachers
have no effect on their students’ achievement.
The amount of time allocated to various subjects has little or no overall effect on measured
achievement in reading and math. The only significant coefficient indicates that additional
science instruction is positively related to higher math scores in traditional high schools.
The effects of principal’s background on school achievement scores is weak and

inconsistent between traditional and charter high schools. Tenure as principal at the school
61
Anecdotal evidence from principals suggested that many of the traditional public school-affiliated students
who receive instruction at home have health issues that limit their attendance or have disciplinary problems.
75
is tied to higher math scores for traditional high schools only, but has no significant effect
on reading in either traditional or charter schools. Administrative experience actually has a
negative effect on reading and math at traditional high schools. The results consistently
show that prior teaching experience by the principal has no affect on student test scores.
Table 7: Multilevel Regression Results for Traditional Public and Charter High
Schools
Reading Mathematics
(0.16) (0.54) (0.16) (0.17) (0.53) (0.17)
Black -10.74* -9.14* -10.74* -11.82* -7.82* -11.48*
(0.18) (0.43) (0.16) (0.19) (0.42) (0.17)
Asian 30.3* 0.99 2.98* 11.81* 3.95* 11.62*
(0.17) (0.88) (0.16) (0.18) (0.86) (0.17)
Hispanic -5.08* -3.38* -4.92* -5.57* -2.84* -5.31*
(0.12) (0.32) (0.11) (0.13) (0.31) (0.12)
Non-high-school graduate -0.75* -1.95* -0.99* 0.01 -1.19* 0.25
(0.18) (0.42) (0.17) (0.19) (0.41) (0.17)
Some college 5.48* 5.65* 5.44* 4.63* 4.28* 4.51*
(0.15) (0.34) (0.13) (0.16) (0.33) (0.14)
(0.14) (0.35) (0.13) (0.15) (0.34) (0.14)
(0.17) (0.57) (0.17) (0.19) (0.56) (0.17)
(0.15) (0.31) (0.14) (0.16) (0.30) (0.14)
Female 3.01* 2.82* 3.00* -0.97* -0.78* -0.93*
(0.08) (0.22) (0.08) (0.09) (0.22) (0.08)
New school this year -0.69* -1.33* -1.77* -1.04* -0.17 -1.01*
(0.12) (0.29) (0.11) (0.13) (0.28) (0.12)
Year 1999 0.58* -1.05 0.55* 0.05 -4.20* 0.11
(0.16) (0.97) (0.16) (0.17) (0.98) (0.17)
Year 2000 -2.28* -3.19* -1.59* -2.90* -6.72* -2.33*
(0.29) (1.49) (0.29) (0.32) (1.48) (0.30)
Year 2001 -2.01* -3.44* -1.45* -4.20* -9.10* -3.75*
(0.32) (1.51) (0.31) (0.35) (1.51) (0.33)
Year 2002 -4.46* -7.98* -4.38* -8.03* -15.06* -7.99*
(0.35) (1.52) (0.33) (0.39) (1.53) (0.36)
School Features
Students schooled at home -0.15* 0.08 0.02 -0.26* 0.07 0.01
(%) (0.07) (0.05) (0.04) (0.08) (0.06) (0.04)
Instructional days per year -0.75 -0.07 -0.03 -1.18 -0.11 -0.02
(0.53) (0.06) (0.05) (0.66) (0.07) (0.06)
Charter 1.86* 0.9
(0.60) (0.65)
Student disciplinary policies -2.35 1.23 -2.48 -1.96 0.00 -3.04

(2.18) (3.20) (1.71) (2.74) (3.66) (2.04)
Student assessment policies 0.06 -0.92 0.07 -0.29 5.43 1.65
(1.16) (3.07) (1.19) (1.47) (3.49) (1.42)
76
Staff salaries and benefits -0.66 2.77* 1.49 -2.52 1.94 0.77
(1.26) (1.37) (0.95) (1.58) (1.56) (1.13)
Other budgetary expenses 1.32 3.14 -0.11 1.65 -1.37 -1.39
(1.80) (2.79) (1.56) (2.26) (3.17) (1.86)
Curriculum 0.74 -3.15 0.30 0.14 -1.43 -0.86
(1.33) (3.30) (1.21) (1.67) (3.76) (1.44)
Staff hiring, discipline and 2.14 -4.44 -0.88 4.49 -1.69 0.96
dismissal (1.86) (2.61) (1.47) (2.33) (2.97) (0.76)
Emphasis on full standard 4.50* -5.04* -2.91* 4.58 -4.84* -2.44
credentials (2.11) (1.76) (1.28) (2.65) (2.01) (1.54)
College major in teaching 1.65 1.69 3.02* 3.53 3.99 4.75*
field (0.56) (1.82) (1.12) (1.94) (2.07) (1.34)
Workshops or conferences 0.62 -1.45 -1.07 0.36 2.54 -0.24
(1.25) (1.99) (1.06) (1.57) (2.28) (1.27)
Courses for college credit 1.56 -0.95 -0.30 1.44 -2.38 -0.27
(1.38) (1.59) (1.01) (1.73) (1.82) (1.21)
Teacher study groups -1.51 -0.08 -0.08 -2.17 -0.41 -0.56
(1.11) (1.16) (0.75) (1.40) (1.33) (0.90)
Mentoring or coaching -0.04 -1.05 -0.86 0.66 -1.52 -0.52
(1.19) (1.28) (0.86) (1.50) (1.46) (1.02)
English/language arts -1.62 0.82 -0.34 -3.81 -0.08 -0.77
(2.03) (2.74) (1.60) (2.56) (3.13) (1.91)
Mathematics -2.06 4.95 -1.22 -3.33 4.78 -2.02
(2.41) (3.84) (1.92) (3.03) (4.35) (2.30)
Computer skills -1.26 -1.13 0.56 -2.19 -2.94 -1.57
(2.62) (2.02) (1.38) (3.27) (2.30) (1.66)
Social studies 0.24 -2.67 -1.33 -0.31 -1.61 -0.91
(1.85) (3.40) (1.69) (2.34) (3.88) (2.02)
Sciences 4.55 -2.67 2.33 8.93* -2.56 4.25
(3.07) (3.48) (2.33) (3.85) (3.96) (2.78)
Foreign language 2.35 3.19 1.49 1.55 1.83 1.33
(1.56) (2.30) (1.28) (1.97) (2.62) (1.54)
Fine or performing arts -4.17 0.98 -1.18 -3.78 0.73 -0.64
(3.21) (2.06) (1.57) (4.02) (2.35) (1.88)
Leadership at current school 0.51 -0.76 0.26 0.78* -0.84 0.31
(0.29) (0.43) (0.25) (0.37) (0.49) (0.29)
Administrative experience -0.47* -0.06 -0.03 -0.60* 0.08 0.06
(0.20) (0.20) (0.14) (0.25) (0.23) (0.17)
Teaching experience -0.01 0.15 0.02 0.06 -0.14 -0.03
(0.14) (0.22) (0.12) (0.18) (0.25) (0.14)
Constant 160.55 83.87* 63.62* 239.52* 66.05* 56.32*
(90.03) (20.45) (13.92) (112.48 (23.26) (16.64)
Random Effects
School 5.63 7.32 7.28 8.65 8.27 7.01
(0.85) (1.10) (0.66) (0.81) (1.30) (1.09)
Grade cohort within school 3.09 3.68 3.23 4.85 5.34 4.93
(0.17) (0.37) (0.16) (0.22) (0.42) (0.27)
R-squared 0.18 0.11 0.17 0.14 0.09 0.14
77
Conclusions
As the charter movement presses forward, we argue that it is important for researchers to
take a closer look at the operation and structure of charter schools to examine features that
may affect student achievement. In this paper, we have taken an initial step towards this
goal by comparing survey data of operational and structural features of charter schools and
traditional public schools with student achievement data from these same schools.
While the findings do not point to specific and consistent patterns of successful or failing
schools, some interesting results emerge. One of the more interesting results goes to the
heart of the charter movement, which has called for greater school autonomy. Our
analysis suggests that while charter school principals do have greater control over decision-
making than their counterparts in traditional public schools, we found no strong evidence
that this autonomy leads to higher test scores. In addition, while charter schools tend to
provide more instructional hours in noncore subjects, more time does not lead to
improved student achievement. In fact, greater emphasis in foreign languages may result in
to poorer math and reading test scores. On the other hand, many parents may not be as
concerned with math and reading test scores and appreciate the greater emphasis on
noncore subjects found in charter schools. Also, the analysis generally suggests that the
greater the proportion of students instructed at home, the lower the test scores of the
school. Other results vary by grade arrangements or school type. For instance, emphasizing
hiring teachers with full standard credentials has a positive effect in traditional public high
schools, negative effect in charter high schools, and no effect in middle and elementary
charter or traditional public schools.
We believe that as researchers delve deeper into the operation and structural features of
schools, we will begin to understand how to reform schools in smart and strategic ways.
We argue that this study is a first step towards that goal, and we hope that sparks other
additional steps towards understanding the correlates of successful schools.
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Charter Schools Program: Final Report. U.S. Department of Education, 2004-08, 2004.
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Gill, B., L. Hamilton, JR Lockwood, J. Marsh, R. Zimmer, D. Hill, and S. Pribesh. Inspiration, Perspiration,
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Guarino, C, R. Zimmer, C. Krop, and D. Chau. Nonclassroom-Based Charter Schools in California and the
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Hamilton, L., “Assessment as a Learning Tool,” Review of Research in Education, 2003, 27: 25-68.
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Statewide Evaluation and Discussion of Relevant Policy Issues, The Evaluation Center: Western Michigan
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Results.” Phoenix, AZ: Goldwater Institute Center for Market Based Education, 2001.
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80
In 2003-04 there was a sudden and unexpected drop in the number of new charter school openings.
Some speculated that the interest in charters had peaked; others cautioned that a single year doesn’t
constitute a trend. Figures from subsequent years suggest that new charter school openings has settled
in at about 350 per year, down from the peak year, 1999-2000, during which 466 new charter
schools opened.
Document #8: Darcia Harris Bowman, “Charter school openings lowest in six
years,” Education Week, February 18, 2004.
This school year saw the lowest number of new charter schools since 1997, with 309
opening compared with a high of 466 four years ago, figures from the Washington-
based Center for Education Reform show.62
Despite the dip, down from 395 openings in the 2002-03 school year, supporters of
the independent public schools who gathered in the nation’s capital last week for the
release of an annual CER report appeared unconcerned. They pointed out that the
number of charter schools nationwide still grew by 10 percent in spite of opponents’
efforts to curb the movement’s growth.
“It’s just a circumstantial breath—this will not slow down,” said Dan Quisenberry,
the president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies and one of the
speakers at a Feb. 11 press conference held here to unveil the center’s annual
scorecard of state charter school laws.
James Merriman, the president of the State University of New York’s Charter School
Institute, agreed. “Certainly, after states first passed laws authorizing charter schools,
there was a flood of pent-up demand,” he said. “That demand has been satisfied to
some extent, but in my state, [New York City Schools] Chancellor Joel Klein is
looking to have 50 charter schools open next year, and Buffalo city schools is looking
to turn into an all-charter district.”
“I don’t see any evidence of a slowdown,” he added, “but I do see an increase in
quality.”
Strong States
Jeanne Allen, the president of the CER, a research and advocacy organization that
favors school choice, attributed the drop in charter school openings to lobbying in
state legislatures by teachers’ unions, school board associations, and other critics.
In Ohio, for example, a coalition led by the state affiliate of the American Federation
of Teachers has mounted an ongoing campaign opposing charter schools in that state.
62
Center for Education Reform, Charter School Laws Across the States: Ranking and Scorecard
(8th Edition). Available at http://www.edreform.com/_upload/charter_school_laws.pdf
81
Charter Trends63
Net new schools Total schools
2007-08 347 4,225

2006-07 352 4,000
2005-06 305 3,648
2004-05: 347 3,343
2003-04: 309 2,996
2002- 03: 395 2,687
2001- 02: 420 2,267
2000- 01: 395 1,872
1999- 2000: 466 1,406
1998- 99: 396 1,010
1997- 98: 233 777
11-year average 360.5
Source: Center for Education Reform
(http://www.edreform.com)
A flood of new laws allowing charter schools passed in 1996, Ms. Allen said, “and
that led to the large increase in new school openings in 1999-2000. Suddenly people
who didn’t want charters woke up and said, ‘Gosh, we’d better go to the legislature
and stop this.’”
But a spokeswoman for the American Federation of Teachers, in Washington,

suggested that factors beyond opposition may be contributing to the slowdown in
openings. She pointed, for instance, to evidence of mixed student performance and
dissatisfaction with for-profit companies that manage many of the nation’s charter
schools.
“The hopes and optimism evident at the outset of the charter school movement are
still there, but now that we have years of evidence to look at, there’s more caution,”
said Celia H. Lose of the AFT.
The main thrust of the new CER report, “Charter School Laws Across the States
2004,” is that “strong” state charter school legislation—that is, laws that offer
maximum flexibility in exchange for academic performance and don’t arbitrarily limit
the number of such charters allowed—make for successful schools.
This year, the center labeled 26 states as having strong laws, and 15 with weak
charter laws.
63
The table has been updated to include figures from 2004-2008. (Source: Center for Education Reform)
82
Making Gains?
“Of the 26 strong laws, 65 percent of those states saw significant gains in the
evaluations of test and [federal] No Child Left Behind data over two years,”
according to the CER report. “Of the weak laws, only two states demonstrated
positive gains.” The report notes, however, that many of the states with weak laws
have yet to release “reliable data on charter achievement.”
The states with the most charter schools topped the CER’s list of states with strong
laws. Arizona, which has more charter schools than any other state, at 464, ranks first
on that list; Florida, with 277 such schools, is rated eighth; and California, with 430
charter schools, ranks 15th.
Minnesota, which in 1992 became the first state to open a charter school and now
hosts 88, ranks second. The District of Columbia, whose 39 charter schools enroll 15
percent of the city’s public school students, is third.
The report also touches on research by the Brookings Institution, a think tank in
Washington, that shows that a disproportionate number of charter schools are not
making “adequate yearly progress” under the federal No Child Left Behind Act,
compared with traditional public schools.
“This is not a surprise,” the CER says in its report. “A majority of the nation’s 2,996
charter schools serve at-risk and disadvantaged populations or children unsatisfied
with traditional public schools.” Strong laws that give charter school educators the
freedom to meet educational standards as they see fit will make a difference over time
in student achievement, Ms. Allen predicted.
Another measure of charter school performance—indeed the dominant one in this era of the ubiquitous
standardized test—is test scores. During the summer of 2004, a study by the American Federation
of Teachers (no supporters of charter schools they) showed that buried in data published by the
Department of Education was the fact that charter school students were underperforming their opposite
numbers in traditional public schools.
Document #9: Diana Jean Schemo, “Charter schools trail in results, U.S. data reveals,”
New York Times, August 17, 2004.
The first national comparison of test scores among children in charter schools and regular
public schools shows charter school students often doing worse than comparable students
in regular public schools.
The findings, buried in mountains of data the Education Department released without
public announcement, dealt a blow to supporters of the charter school movement,
including the Bush administration.
The data shows fourth graders attending charter schools performing about half a year
83
behind students in other public schools in both reading and math. Put another way, only
25 percent of the fourth graders attending charters were proficient in reading and math,
against 30 percent who were proficient in reading, and 32 percent in math, at traditional
public schools.
Because charter schools are concentrated in cities, often in poor neighborhoods, the
researchers also compared urban charters to traditional schools in cities. They looked at
low-income children in both settings, and broke down the results by race and ethnicity as
well. In virtually all instances, the charter students did worse than their counterparts in
regular public schools.
Charters are expected to grow exponentially under the new federal education law, No
Child Left Behind, which holds out conversion to charter schools as one solution for
chronically failing traditional schools.
“The scores are low, dismayingly low,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., a supporter of charters
and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, who was among those who asked
the administration to do the comparison.
Mr. Finn, an assistant secretary of education in the Reagan administration, said the quality
of charter schools across the country varied widely, and he predicted that the results would
make those overseeing charters demand more in the way of performance.
“A little more tough love is needed for these schools,” Mr. Finn said. “Somebody needs
to be watching over their shoulders.”
Mr. Finn and other backers of charter schools contended, however, that the findings
should be considered as “baseline data,” and could reflect the predominance of children in
these schools who turned to charters after having had severe problems at their
neighborhood schools.
The results, based on the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly
known as the nation’s report card, were unearthed from online data by researchers at the
64
American Federation of Teachers, which provided them to The New York Times. The
organization has historically supported charter schools but has produced research in recent
years raising doubts about the expansion of charter schools.
64
The AFT report is F. Howard Nelson, Bella Rosenberg, and Nancy Van Meter, Charter school achievement
on the 2003 National Assessment of EducationalProgress (Washington, DC: American Federation of Teachers,
August 2004). Available at
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/downloads/teachers/NAEPCharterSchoolReport.pdf. See also Robert Bifulco
and Helen F. Ladd, The impacts of charter schools on student achievement: Evidence from North Carolina (Durham, NC:
Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy Duke University Working Papers Series SAN04-01, August 2004).
Available at http://www.pubpol.duke.edu/people/faculty/ladd/SAN04-01.pdf.
84
Charters are self-governing public schools, often run by private companies, which operate
outside the authority of local school boards, and have greater flexibility than traditional
public schools in areas of policy, hiring and teaching techniques.
Federal officials said they did not intend to hide the performance of charter schools, and
denied any political motivation for failing to publicly disclose that the data were available.
“I guess that was poor publicity on our part,” said Robert Lerner, the federal
commissioner for education statistics. Mr. Lerner said further analysis was needed to put
the data in its proper context.
But others were skeptical, saying the results proved that such schools were not a cure-all.
“There’s just a huge distance between the sunny claims of the charter school advocates
and the reality,” said Bella Rosenberg, an special assistant to the president of the American
Federation of Teachers. “There’s a very strong accountability issue here.”
Of the nation’s 88,000 public schools, 3,000 are charters, educating more than 600,000
students. But their ranks are expected to grow as No Child Left Behind identifies
thousands of schools for possible closing because of poor test scores.
Once hailed as a kind of free-market solution offering parents an escape from moribund
public schools, elements of the charter school movement have prompted growing concern
in recent years. Around the country, more than 80 charter schools were forced to close,
largely because of questionable financial dealings and poor performance, said Luis Huerta,
a professor at Columbia University Teachers College. In California, the state’s largest
charter school operator has just announced the closing of at least 60 campuses, The Los
Angeles Times reported on Monday, stranding 10,000 children just weeks before the start
of the school year.
The math and reading tests were given to a nationally representative sample of about
6,000 fourth graders at 167 charter schools in February 2003. Some 3,200 eighth graders
at charter schools also took the exams, an insufficient number to make national
comparisons.
The results are not out of line with earlier local and state studies of charter school
performance, which generally have shown charters doing no better than traditional public
schools. But they offered the first nationally representative comparison of children
attending both types of schools, and are expected influence public debate.
Amy Stuart Wells, a sociology professor at Columbia University Teachers College, called
the new data “really, really important.”
“It confirms what a lot of people who study charter schools have been worried about,”
she said. “There is a lack of accountability. They’re really uneven in terms of quality.”
Detractors have historically accused charters of skimming the best students, those whose
parents are most committed, from the poorest schools. But supporters of charter schools
said the data confirmed earlier research suggesting that charters take on children who were
85
already performing below average. “We’re doing so much to help kids that are so much
farther behind, and who typically weren’t even continuing in school,” said Jeanne Allen,
president of the Center for Education Reform, in Washington, which represents charter
schools. She said the results reflect only “a point in time,” and said nothing about the
progress of students in charter schools.
That, she said, could be measured only by tracking the performance of charters in future
tests. For the moment, however, the National Assessment Governing Board has no plans
to survey charters again.
One previous study, however, suggests that tracking students over time might present
findings more favorable to the charter movement. Tom Loveless, director of the Brown
Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, who conducted a two-year
study of 569 charter schools in 10 states found that while charter school students typically
score lower on state tests, over time they progress at faster rates than students in traditional
public schools.
The new test scores on charter schools went online last November, along with state-by-
state results from the national assessment. Though other results were announced at a news
conference, with a report highlighting the findings, federal officials never mentioned that
the charter school data were publicly available.
Researchers at the American Federation of Teachers were able to gain access to the scores
from the national assessment’s Web site only indirectly: by gathering results based on how
schools identified themselves in response to a question.
In a significant departure from earlier releases of test scores, Mr. Lerner said the charter
school findings would be formally shown only as part of a larger analysis that would adjust
results for the characteristics of charter schools and their students.
In the 1990’s, the National Assessment Governing Board had rejected requests from states
for such analyses, with Mr. Finn, then a member of the board, contending that
explanatory reports would compromise the credibility of the assessment results by trying to
blame demographic and other outside factors for poor performance.
But Mr. Lerner said he thought such an analysis was necessary to put the charter school
test scores in context. He called the raw comparison of test scores “the beginning of
something important,” and said, “What one has to do is adjust for many different variables
to get a sense of what the effects of charter schools are.”
86
Document #10: “Charter vs. non-charter performance,” Education Week, September 1,

2004
This chart compares scores of regular public school students with those of charter school
students on the 4th and 8th grade reading and math tests of the 2003 National Assessment
of Educational Progress.
Average % % at or % at or
% At
Number Scale Below Above Above
Advanced
Score Basic Basic Proficient
Grade 4 Math
Charter 2,913 228* 33* 67* 25* 2*
Other
173,849 234 24 76 32 4
public
Grade 4 Reading
Charter 2,870 210* 45 55 25* 5*
Other
169,070 217 38 62 30 7
public
Grade 8 Math
Charter 1,604 271 42* 58* 24 6
Other
140,121 276 33 67 27 5
public
Grade 8 Reading
Charter 1,671 259 33 67 29 4
Other
138,888 261 28 72 30 3
public
*Statistically significant difference from other public schools.
SOURCE: American Federation of Teachers analysis of data from the U.S. Department of
Education
Education Secretary Rod Paige took issue with the AFT study.
Document #11: Diana Jean Schemo, “Education Secretary defends charter schools,” New
York Times, August 18, 2004.
The federal secretary of education issued a statement Tuesday saying he stood by charter
schools and challenged the conclusion of recent test data that their performance largely
trailed that of regular public schools.
87
The results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, reported in The New York
Times on Tuesday, were extracted by researchers at the American Federation of Teachers
from reams of data the Education Department released in November without public
announcement. It was the first national comparison of test scores between students in
charter schools and those in regular public schools.
In the statement, Education Secretary Rod Paige took issue with the article.
“The Times made no distinction between students falling behind and students climbing
out of the hole in which they found themselves,” Mr. Paige said.
“It is wrong to think of charter schools as a monolith,” he added. “There are schools for
dropouts, schools for students who’ve been expelled, schools serving the most
economically disadvantaged families. Charters are as diverse as the children they educate.”
Mr. Paige declined to address questions directly.
Charters are self-governing public schools, sometimes run by private companies, which
operate outside the authority of local school boards.
The Bush administration has strongly supported charters, running a special Web site
promoting them and earmarking about $220 million for them this year.
The data showed that fourth graders at charter schools were about a half year behind
students in other public schools in reading and math. Since most children attending
charter schools are from poor areas, researchers looked at low-income students in both
settings and still found those in charters doing significantly worse.
The secretary’s reaction prompted surprise from Darvin Winnick, chairman of the
National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the national test for the federal
government. Mr. Winnick said that while he would interpret the scores with caution, he
did not see much cause for arguing with the outcomes themselves.
“The data is probably what it is,” Mr. Winnick said. “N.A.E.P. is pretty accurate. There
shouldn’t be any question about the results.”
Although supporters of the charter school movement came forward with a number of explanations for
the data, a second report by SRI International in December confirmed the AFT findings.
Document #12: Diana Jean Schemo, “A second report shows charter school students not
performing as well as other students,” New York Times, December 16, 2004.
65
A federal Education Department analysis of test scores from 2003 shows that children in
65
Kara Finnigan (University of Rochester), Nancy Adelman (SRI International), Lee Anderson (SRI
International), Lynyonne Cotton (St. Mary’s College of California), Mary Beth Donnelly (SRI
International) and Tiffany Price (SRI International), Evaluation of the Public Charter Schools Program, Final
88
charter schools generally did not perform as well on exams as those in regular public
schools. The analysis, released Wednesday, largely confirms an earlier report on the same
statistics by the American Federation of Teachers.
The department, analyzing the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress
test for fourth graders, found charter students scoring significantly lower than regular
public school students in math, even when the results are broken down for low-income
children and those in cities.
In reading, the report said, over all there was no statistically significant difference between
students in charters and in regular public schools. However, when students in special
education were excluded, charter students scored significantly lower than those in regular
public schools.
When broken down by race, the results show charter students generally lagging behind
those in regular public schools in reading and math, but the differences were not
statistically significant, the report said.
The report, which included responses to a questionnaire administered with the test, shed
light on the nature of charter schools and their performance. They showed, for example,
that the only charter schools that outperformed regular public schools in reading were
those that had been in operation for less than a year. Otherwise, test scores generally
declined the longer a school had been operating as a charter.
Also, schools that were not chartered by a school district but functioned as independent
districts tended to do worse than those over which districts exercised some oversight.
The data were released at an unusual news conference, at which the deputy education
secretary, Eugene W. Hickok, who is resigning, pronounced the Education Department a
defender of charter schools and described the results as encouraging.
“In case there’s any doubt, we are big supporters of charter schools,” Dr. Hickok said. “So
as I read these studies on charter schools, I read them through that lens.”
He noted that in specific areas, charter students did not do significantly worse than those
in regular schools, and said the results portrayed only a “snapshot in time,” not a measure
of growth. He noted that charters tended to enroll more minority students, and were
disproportionately located in cities.
Given those differences, he said, the scores were “not a bad sign.” He added, “While the
study does point out some differences, it also points out that in many ways charter students
are holding their own.”
After the release of the report, the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees
Report (Washington, D.C.: SRI International, prepared for the Policy and Program Studies Service, U.S.
Department of Education, 2004). Available at
http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/choice/pcsp-final/finalreport.pdf
89
the test, sponsored a discussion with Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education
Reform, which supports charters, and Bella Rosenberg, an author of the teachers’ union
report. That report, released in August and based on the same test scores released
Wednesday, prompted a storm of criticism from charter advocates.
Ms. Allen, citing studies that purport to show stronger results for charters in comparisons
that are statewide, rather than national, said, “Charter school students in the aggregate are
in a dead heat with students in regular schools.”
She also rejected the survey questions that found that charters with district supervision
performed better than those without.
“Autonomy is not accurately measured by asking are you part of a school district or not,”
she said. “It does not take into account the wide variety of ways” in which charters
operate, she said.
Ms. Rosenberg differed. “If our much-maligned regular public schools are failing,” she
said, “then charter schools, the very schools that promised to deliver higher achievement
in return for, and as a result of, freedom from rules and regulations, are failing too, and
often at significantly worse levels.”
In a statement, Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio and chairman of the

House Committee on Education and the Work Force, described the new report as a
refutation of the teachers’ union report, although the results were largely the same. He
highlighted findings showing that in comparing students of the same race, charter students
were not doing significantly worse than students in regular schools.
But Ms. Rosenberg rejected that analysis, borrowing a line from President Bush in calling
it “a standard of success otherwise known as the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
“We don’t tolerate that from regular public schools,” she said, “and we certainly shouldn’t
tolerate it from a movement whose schools flourished because it promised elected
representatives—and more poignantly, poor and minority parents—that charter schools
could and would do better, not the same or worse.”
For the first time, the survey also collected national data comparing the performance of
students in charters managed by nonprofit organizations with those run by commercial
companies, the largest of which is Edison Schools. Those results showed no difference in
performance between the two types of schools.
Adam Tucker, a spokesman for Edison, said that while the quality of companies that
managed charter schools varied widely, he doubted the survey’s findings. He cited a study
by the Brookings Institution, which found that schools run by commercial companies did
somewhat better than other charter schools.
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A year later three scholars at the Economic Policy Institute took a more careful look at what they
called the “charter school dust-up.”
Document #13: Martin Carnoy, Rebecca Jacobsen, Lawrence Mishel, and Richard
Rothstein,66 The Charter School Dust-Up: Examining the Evidence on Enrollment and
Achievement (Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, 2005)
Introduction and summary
In the summer of 2004, a noisy controversy erupted over whether charter schools are
more effective than regular public schools. The dust-up began when the American
Federation of Teachers (AFT), known to support greater restrictions on charter schools,
published test results from the federal government’s National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP). The data showed that average achievement is higher in regular public
schools than in charter schools, both for students overall and for low-income students.
The AFT’s report also noted that for black students, a group that many charter schools are
specifically designed to serve, average achievement is no better in charter schools than in
regular public schools.
The New York Times publicized this finding on its front-page. Immediately, the most
zealous advocates of charter schools responded with a storm of criticism, including a full-
page advertisement that they placed in the Times itself. These advocates did not deny that
average test scores were higher in regular public schools than in charter schools. Rather,
they claimed that the AFT report was methodologically flawed because it did not attempt
to compare subsets of students who were truly similar in background and prior
achievement. In particular, these advocates claimed that students attending charter schools
are more disadvantaged than students attending regular public schools, and especially that
black students in charter schools are more disadvantaged than black students in other
public schools. If this were the case, then charter school students could have been
expected to score lower than regular public school students even if charter schools were
somewhat more effective. These charter school advocates claimed that charter schools are
actually, on average, more effective, not less so, than regular public schools.
The controversy revealed an intense level of disagreement about the wisdom of policies to
encourage charter schools. That the claims are so contradictory indicates how little
consensus there is about:
• whether charter schools really are more effective than public schools;
• whether charter schools really do serve comparatively disadvantaged students;
• what kind of evidence is required to make judgments about the impact of charter
schools on student learning; and
66
Martin Carnoy is a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute and professor of education and
economics at Stanford University. Rebecca Jacobsen is a research assistant of the Economic Policy Institute,
a graduate student in politics and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and formerly a
teacher in New York City and Connecticut public schools. Lawrence Mishel is president of the Economic
Policy Institute and director of its education research and policy program. Richard Rothstein is a research
associate of the Economic Policy Institute and a visiting professor at Teachers College, Columbia University.
91
• what role charter schools can be expected to play in strategies to improve regular
public schools.
Our aim in this book is to synthesize as comprehensively as possible all available evidence
on the average effectiveness of charter schools relative to regular public schools. We
conclude in Chapter 5 that, based on 19 studies, conducted in 11 states and the District of
Columbia, there is no evidence that, on average, charter schools out-perform regular
public schools. In fact, there is evidence that the average impact of charter schools is
negative. This evidence of a negative effect comes particularly from those studies that use
the strongest methodologies to discover causal effects, although the evidence of a negative
effect is somewhat localized to specific states.
In pursuing this aim, it was essential that we first set standards for methodological quality.
Children are not assigned at random to attend charter schools, so some attempt must be
made to identify subsets of children attending charter and regular public schools who are
as similar as possible in their prior characteristics, including academic achievement. Fairly
clear standards for this kind of work have emerged in social science, and we describe these
in Chapter 4. We also ask whether studies adhering more or less well to these standards
produce similar or different results. With few exceptions, the general outlines of the story
are similar: charter schools are no more effective than regular public schools on average
and may, in fact, be less effective.
But do charter schools serve more disadvantaged students than those served by regular
public schools? The answer to this question is somewhat complex. In many states, the
fraction of charter school students who are black is somewhat higher than the fraction of
regular public school students who are black. However, the black students attending
charter schools in these states tend to be disproportionately better off socioeconomically
than black students attending regular public schools.
The best studies of charter school effectiveness simultaneously remove the effects not only
of race and socioeconomic factors but also of prior achievement and even a host of other,
often unobservable differences (such as the educational levels of parents) between children
attending the two types of schools. In these highest-quality studies in particular, the
average effects of attending a charter school are null or negative. In Chapter 4 we
compare, in detail, the kinds of students served by charter and regular public schools
nationally and in studies done in 12 states and the District of Columbia.
Beyond synthesizing current evidence, our inquiry also explores a few of the policy
implications of our findings about relative average charter school performance, and this
requires us to re-evaluate some of the common rationales for supporting charter schools.
One argument is that charter schools liberate educators from bureaucratic regulations and
union contracts that stifle creative educational improvements. We speculate that, while
deregulation helps some educators devise good schools, it also enables others to devise bad
and even corruptly managed schools. For example, while some charter schools can use
freedom from normal certification requirements to hire unusually talented and dedicated
teachers, other charter schools use this freedom to hire teachers who may be less qualified
than teachers in regular public schools. We conclude that the evidence about average
charter school performance is consistent with this wide range in the effects of
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deregulation. That charter schools are not substantially more effective, on average, than
other public schools calls into question the view that bureaucracy and union contracts are
major impediments to school improvement. It seems, based on the evidence, that
deregulation and deunionization do not yield any bonanzas of learning, on average. If
bonanzas are realized in some places, they are apparently offset by catastrophes in others.
A second argument is that charter schools are more accountable than regular public
schools for their outcomes. This theory takes two forms. Some advocates of charter
schools argue that, unlike regular public schools, charter schools will be closed by public
authorities if their academic performance is inadequate. We show that evidence about
actual charter school accountability processes does not support this assertion. Other
advocates of charter schools argue that parental choice (the freedom of parents to choose
better charter schools and to remove their children from low-performing ones) provides
strong accountability. We suggest that to the extent charter schools rely on this
mechanism of accountability, it should not be surprising that their average academic
performance does not surpass that of regular public schools, for two reasons. First, parents
may choose charter schools for other than academic reasons. Second, given how complex
it is to assess academic performance (leading even experts to dispute the effectiveness of
charter schools so vigorously), it is not surprising that parents would not always be able to
discern a charter school that was more academically effective.
A third argument is that charter schools foster experimentation to see if novel educational
approaches can produce good results. We do not deny that this is an important rationale
for charter schools. But we note that, in any field, a spirit of experimentation is likely to
produce many failures before (if ever) identifying successes. Researchers devise strategies
for widespread experimentation to discover effective practices, not to produce average
gains in outcomes—those may come later, when the policies identified as effective are
implemented on a large scale. Charter schools might be successful in generating
innovations that should be imitated, even if average charter school test scores are at or
below those of regular public schools. This implies different criteria for evaluating the
merits of charter schools than the claim—that average charter school test scores surely
must be superior—advanced by those zealous charter school advocates who were most
vociferous in attacking the AFT report.
Finally, a fourth argument is that competition from charter schools improves outcomes in
regular public schools because educators in regular public schools are motivated to be
more effective in order to avoid losing students to charter schools. This argument for
charter schools, even if valid, would not require average charter school performance to be
superior to that of regular public schools. Nonetheless, we find no evidence to support the
claim of a positive competition effect of charter schools, although research in this area is
not yet extensive.
A potentially encouraging result from the charter school dust-up of 2004 is that the policy
community may now be better able to reach consensus on what standards are appropriate
for judging evidence of educational effectiveness, not only of charter schools but of regular
public schools in the nation, in states, and in districts. In particular, we note that many
charter school advocates criticized the AFT report for failing to (or being unable to, given
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data limitations) properly adjust for student background characteristics and prior test scores
when evaluating charter schools. We agree with this critique. But we observe that some
charter school advocates who were most vigorous in putting forward this critique have
themselves been among the most outspoken opponents of making such adjustments when
evaluating regular public schools and when comparing the educational effectiveness of
states, schools, districts, and teachers. The dramatic change in the methodological
standards of this group…, revealed in responses to the AFT report, can increase the
prospects for a more objective and fair review of public policy issues in education than we
have experienced in the past. But this movement toward high methodological standards
will succeed only if policy researchers apply them consistently, instead of adopting tough
methodological standards only when convenient to support ideological positions. In
particular, we urge that the standards set forth in the New York Times advertisement,
placed by zealous charter school advocates in opposition to the AFT report (and
reproduced in Chapter 1), be applied not only to charter school evaluation but to all
school accountability policies at the federal and state levels, including those employed by
the No Child Left Behind legislation.
In this book, we use two terms whose frequent repetition may be irritating to some
readers. We apologize in advance for this irritation, but find it necessary nonetheless to use
the terms. First, we often refer to the group of charter school advocates who have been
most outspoken in their insistence that, regardless of good data, charter school
performance must be superior to that of regular public schools. As one of the principal
spokespersons for this group, Chester E. Finn Jr., described his and his colleagues’ reaction
to the AFT report: “Charter supporters rushed to the barricades after last week’s AFT-
coordinated blast in the New York Times.” For want of a better term, we call this group of
barricade-rushers “charter school zealots.” We intend no disrespect to this group, and use
“zealot” as Webster’s dictionary defines it: “someone who acts for a cause with excessive
zeal (persistent, fervent devotion).” It is necessary to use a term for members of this group
to distinguish them from many other supporters of charter schools whose devotion to
charter schools is not excessive and who did not rush to the barricades following the
release of the AFT’s report. Supporters of charter schools may have many reasons for their
support, and these reasons do not require an a priori belief that average charter school
academic performance must be superior to that of regular public schools. These reasons
might include beliefs that charter schools are a way to keep parents committed to public
education by offering them more choice, a way to work around some or all of the
administrative and union constraints that characterize many regular public schools, a way
to keep some children in school who might otherwise be “lost,” or a way to involve
parents more actively in decisions about their children’s education.
It is not the purpose of this book to evaluate in any depth the merits of these reasons for
supporting charter schools or to propose policies regarding charter schools. We do,
however, observe that any policy that permits parents to choose schools other than their
neighborhood schools can involve costs as well as benefits, and that the difficult trade-offs
involved in school choice have been too little discussed. For example, we note that if
more academically able children exit their regular public schools in favor of charter schools
(or, in the regular public sector, in favor of magnet or exam schools), this makes the task
of neighborhood public schools more difficult because the students who remain will, on
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average, be less academically able and will lose the benefit of interaction with their more
academically able peers. We also note that some evidence indicates that the existence of
charter schools increases racial segregation in public schooling. These are not reasons to
reject charter schooling, but policy deliberations must weigh these against the benefits
claimed by charter school supporters.
There are also zealots who oppose charter schools. In this book, we aim to be fair and
accurate, but we do not attempt to achieve an artificial “balance” by analyzing the zealotry
of charter school opponents as well. Charter school zealots, for example, accuse the AFT
of opposing charter schools at least partly because they threaten the union’s institutional
interests. In examining the accuracy of the data analysis of NAEP charter school scores
presented by the AFT, we do not find a need to examine the interests that may have
motivated the AFT to perform this accurate analysis. Militant and unreflective charter
school opposition, by the AFT or other influential policy makers, was not prominent in
the dustup following the AFT’s report, and it is this controversy, and only this
controversy, whose implications this book examines.
The other term we use repetitively is “on average” to describe data about charter and
regular public schools. Without such a term, many readers may still appreciate that when
data comparisons of charter and regular public schools are made, only averages are being
described—there can be wide variation of achievement within a particular school
(whether it is a charter or a regular public school), and there can be wide variation in the
average achievement of schools that are charter schools and of schools that are regular
public schools. But some readers may benefit from a reminder that a conclusion that
charter school performance lags behind that of regular public school performance is not
inconsistent with an observation that many charter schools may be far superior to typical
regular public schools (and some may be greatly inferior). Or, typical charter schools may
be superior to many regular public schools. Unfortunately, good data on school
performance are so limited that we have almost no understanding of the variance of mean
charter school academic achievement or of the variance of mean regular public school
achievement. NAEP could not report such data, because NAEP reports test scores only of
students, not of individual schools. And the state studies we examine, although they
collect data on school mean performance levels, do not report standard deviations of these
school means of performance, a statistic that would be needed to understand the extent to
which average performance in charter schools is typical for charter schools generally.
Because this is such a critical point, we keep it before the reader by frequently inserting
the words “on average” in our discussion.
The co-authors of this book are not opponents, zealous or otherwise, of charter schools;
among ourselves, we have a variety of ways in which we balance the costs and benefits of
charter schools. The message of this book is not that charter schools have “failed,” but
only that there is no reason to be surprised that their average performance apparently falls
below that of regular public schools. We believe that a more reasoned discussion of
education policy can proceed from this recognition.
• • •
95
The 2007 NAEP results for charter and non-charter schools mirrored those of four years earlier,
though they received considerably less publicity. In part this was the result of greater sophistication in
analyzing the results.
Document #14: Erik W. Robelen, “NAEP Gap Continuing for Charters: Sector’s Scores
Lag in Three Out of Four Main Categories,” Education Week, May 21, 2008.
Nearly four years after a front-page story in The New York Times sparked a fierce debate by
suggesting that charter school students nationally were lagging academically behind their
peers in regular public schools, the national testing program that informed the controversy
has generated far more data for researchers and advocates to scrutinize.
Yet the more recent findings from the National Assessment of Educational Progress have
garnered much less attention and analysis than the 2003 results.
The picture that emerges from the growing data set appears mixed for charter schools.
While many analysts urge caution in using NAEP to judge the 4,300-school charter
sector, the latest data do not bolster the early hopes of charter advocates that the sector as a
whole would significantly outperform regular public schools.
The overall scores of charter students tested in 2007 in the nationally representative
assessment program were lower than for students in regular public schools in 4th grade
reading and mathematics, and in 8th grade math, all by statistically significant margins.
In 4th grade reading, charter students had an average score of 214, compared with 220 for
regular public schools, on a 500-point scale. Looked at another way, 59 percent of charter
students scored at or above the “basic” reading level on the NAEP test, compared with 66
percent in other public schools.
But in 8th grade reading, charter students appeared to essentially close a gap from 2005,
with charter and regular public school students scoring about the same in 2007.
Digging deeper in the data reveals a more complex story, though limited sample sizes for
charter schools make many score differences hard to interpret with confidence. For low-
income black students—a key population served by many urban charters—the 2007
performance gaps between charter and non-charter schools generally appeared smaller than
those between the two sectors’ populations as a whole, and none was large enough to be
deemed statistically significant.
Hispanic charter students, meanwhile, appeared to do about as well as or better than their
peers in regular public schools across grades and subjects. But here, too, limited sample
sizes make the differences too small to state with confidence.
Piece of the Puzzle
Researchers emphasize that because of NAEP’s design, the program has serious limitations
in assessing charter schools, or comparing them with other public schools. Some experts
argue that the tests are altogether ill-suited for the purpose.
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The congressionally mandated NAEP—known as “the nation’s report card”—provides a

snapshot of performance at a single point in time, testing different students each cycle. It
also does not take into account prior achievement.
Even with those and other caveats, some researchers—though not all—suggest the results
are a useful part of the growing research base on charter achievement…
The Charter Sample
The NAEP sample of charter students is designed to be nationally representative, but is

dwarfed by the number of students tested in regular public schools.
Recent samples have ranged from 2,300 to 3,300 charter students for each grade level in
reading, and from 150 to more than 200 schools. By contrast, in 2007, the national public
school sample in 4th grade reading included 183,400 students from 7,310 schools, with
somewhat lower 8th grade figures.
The population that charter schools typically serve is substantially different from that
served by public schools as a whole, complicating comparisons across school types. In
2007, the NAEP charter sample had more than twice as many black students on a
percentage basis and far more students living in cities—groups that generally score below
national averages—than did the pool of NAEP test-takers overall.
And the charter population itself is changing, the test samples suggest. For example, 53
percent of charter students tested in 4th grade math in 2007 were eligible for free or
reduced-price lunches, up from 42 percent in 2003.
With three rounds of reading and math scores for 4th grade charter students, the NAEP
results have not shown clear trends. In reading, charter students’ scores apparently rose in
2005 but dropped slightly in 2007; the changes were not large enough, however, to be
statistically significant. With 4th graders in regular public schools posting reading gains in
2007, the charter students slipped behind them.
In 4th grade math, charter students have shown what appear to be steady gains from 2003
to 2007—again, not statistically significant—but made little headway in closing the gap
with students in regular public schools, who saw a similar growth trend.
Looking at students by race and income status, as measured by eligibility for free or
reduced-price lunches, seems to alter the picture.
In 4th grade math, charter students overall were 5 points behind non-charter students in
both 2005 and 2007 on the 500-point scale, statistically significant differences.
But for low-income black students, the difference between those in charter schools and
those in regular public schools was 1 point in 2005 and 2 points in 2007, neither of which
was statistically significant. Measured another way, 56 percent of low-income black
97
students from charter schools scored at the basic level or above in 2007, compared with 59
percent of such students in regular public schools.
“Certainly, the raw data suggest charter students are behind,” said Sarah Theule Lubienski,
an associate professor of education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, after
reviewing the recent results for 4th grade students in math and reading. But she said that
when controlling for race and low-income status, it appears that “neither one is ahead.”
In a press release last September, the national charter alliance highlighted the gains of 8th
grade charter students in 2007, though those apparent increases were not deemed
statistically significant. The average scale score rose from 255 in 2005 to 260 in 2007 in
reading, and from 268 to 273 in math.
Growth Rates Differ?
The alliance concluded that charter students’ achievement “increased at a notably faster
rate” than that of their peers in regular public schools. It also noted stronger 8th grade
gains in certain categories, such as the reading scores for African-American and low-
income students.
The charter alliance also noted the performance of Hispanic charter students. In 8th grade
math, their average score was 9 points higher than for Hispanics in regular public schools
in 2005, and 8 points higher in 2007. Because of the limited charter sample size, though,
the differences were not deemed statistically significant.
For its part, the AFT has been quiet about the recent NAEP data. Asked about the results,
union spokesman Dan Murphy said: “Basically, what the NAEP data suggests is what we
already know. There are some excellent charter schools and some charter schools that fall
short. … And the same goes for regular public schools.”
• • •
98
And so to the case at hand.
Background information on Washington, D.C. and its public schools
67
Population:
Population (2006) 581,530
Ethnic composition:
White 34.5%
African American 55.4
Hispanic (of any race) 8.2
Asian American 3.4
Native American 0.3
Other 6.3
Median household income (2006) $51,847
History68
The idea of a national capital city seems to have originated at a meeting of the Congress in
June 1783 in the Old City Hall in Philadelphia. The War of Independence had but
recently been concluded; the treasury was empty; the nation had no credit; and it was
heavily in debt to its soldiers for back pay. There was no president, and, though the 13
colonies were free, they remained a gathering of semi-independent sovereignties with
divergent interests. On June 20 a large body of unpaid soldiers invaded Philadelphia to
present their grievances to Congress.
Conception, siting, and design
No actual violence occurred, but a number of congressmen started a movement to

establish a federal city where the lawmakers could conduct the business of government
without fear of intimidation. Several locations were considered over the next six years, but
Northern and Southern disagreements prevented decision until 1790.
Although the decision to locate the capital on the Potomac was largely a political
compromise, selection of the exact site for the city was left to the newly elected president,
George Washington. The chosen district, or territory as it was first called, was 10 miles
67
U.S. Census Bureau, American Fact Finder (http://factfinder.census.gov)
68
Encyclopedia Britannica 2003, “Washington, D.C.”
99
square. Georgetown to the north and Alexandria to the south were both in the original
district, while a third village, Hamburg, lay by the riverfront swamps in a part of
Washington known traditionally as Foggy Bottom.
Important to Washington in his selection was the site’s commercial potential. The river
was navigable to Georgetown, an important tobacco market. The construction of a canal
from there across the Cumberland Gap to the “western frontier” would tap the produce
of the vast country beyond that was being opened to settlement. The president had
established a private canal construction company before the final decision had been
reached, but he immediately relinquished his interests in it.
While in Philadelphia, Washington negotiated with Pierre-Charles L’Enfant to lay out a

plan for the new city. A volunteer in the Revolution whose democratic idealism was
unquestioned, a well-trained engineer, and an artist who had designed the setting for the
president’s inaugural ceremonies in New York City, L’Enfant was highly respected and
admired. Apparently sensing the historic significance of his appointment, he conceived his
plan on a grand scale.
The Capitol’s cornerstone was laid by Washington in September 1793, and construction
was begun on the White House, designed by an Irishman, James Hoban, and on a modest
cluster of nearby office buildings to house governmental departments. In October 1800
the archives, general offices, and officials of the government were moved to Washington
from Philadelphia. President John Adams took up residence in the White House, and the
Congress met for the first time in the newly completed Senate wing of the Capitol.
The young city
Descriptions of life in early Washington reveal many of the shortcomings resulting from
establishment of a capital city by fiat amid what was essentially a wilderness. What was
conceived as a “city of magnificent distances” or, in Washington’s words, “the Emporium
of the West” was referred to by various statesmen and congressmen as “wilderness city,”
“Capital of Miserable Huts,” “A Mud-hole Equal to the Great Serbonian Bog,” and
similar epithets. By the close of Thomas Jefferson’s term of office in 1808, the population
was scarcely 5,000. Until the introduction of the steam engine and the telegraph, a more
or less continuous agitation went on in Congress and in the national press to move the
capital because of its remoteness and inaccessibility.
In 1814 the capital was temporarily abandoned as the result of the invasion by a British
force under Admiral Sir George Cockburn, who ordered the burning of the Capitol, the
White House, and the Navy Arsenal. Although this action was rather inconsequential to
the outcome of the War of 1812, it had the effect of solidifying Washington in the minds
of many Americans as the national capital. Public indignation over destruction of the seat
of government ended all significant movements to relocate the federal city, and
Washington became the national capital in fact as well as in name. By the outbreak of the
Civil War, the intensity of this image was firmly established. The course of that conflict
was deeply affected by the actions of the federal government to defend Washington at all
costs from nearby Confederate forces, who often threatened the city from several sides. If
100
the Civil War was the final stage of the historical process that changed a loose
confederation of states into a united republic, it was also effective in completing the
identity of Washington as the capital of the United States.
Evolution of the modern city
Originally, the city of Washington and the District of Columbia were not coextensive,
either geographically or administratively. The 10-mile-square District was reduced by
about one-third in 1847 by the return of the land south of the Potomac to the state of
Virginia. Alexandria city resumed its former independent existence, while Arlington
county was created from the remainder. Self-governing bodies within the District existed
until 1895, when Georgetown was annexed by Washington.
During and after the Civil War, the District’s population more than doubled within a few
years, suddenly including 40,000 freed slaves, who set a pattern of racial diversity that was
to have a major impact on the city’s life. The following century was filled also with
physical and demographic growth and change within the city, with numerous political
modifications attempting to harmonize the District’s needs with its inherent status in
relation to Congress, and with continuing activities to refine the cultural and monumental
image of the city.
By the latter third of the 19th century, the city had constructed an impressive number of
monuments, but then and later many slums began to intrude on the city’s image.
Transformation of this and other problems was cut short by World Wars I and II but
carried on after their conclusions.
During the 1930s thousands of workers moved to Washington to build the Supreme
Court and office buildings such as those in the Federal Triangle. During World War II the
city’s population exploded, reaching about 950,000. National Airport and the Pentagon
opened in 1941, the latter catering to 40,000 office and military personnel.
An exodus of the middle class, both white and black, from the city began after the war.
Many Washington neighbourhoods were swept away and replaced by huge, impersonal
new federal agency buildings, and public housing complexes were erected in poor areas.
However, communities across the city were partly successful in arresting highway
construction through older neighborhoods. In the 1960s an interest in historic
preservation was reawakened, although race riots sowed fear and neglect in many
neighbourhoods.
A real-estate boom in the 1980s revitalized many deteriorating areas, particularly the
downtown, where urban life was brought full circle. Gentrification has proceeded since
then. In the early 21st century Washington continued to struggle against crime and
poverty, but its troubles were commensurate with those of other major urban centres, and
for many residents the city’s cultural and economic benefits outweighed the negative
aspects of urban life.
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Economy:
Few cities in the United States are so dominated by the nature of their economic base as is
Washington. Only two major economic activities provide virtually all of the income to
the city and its residents. The federal civil service is by far the largest single employer in
the metropolitan area. Tourism, which includes its retail trade and related services, is
second in economic importance. Manufacturing and other commercial activities occupy
only a minor place in the economic structure.
Government and Politics:
The city of Washington, as the site of the nation’s capital, has evolved a governmental
structure that is unique among U.S. cities.
The first government of the city of Washington, established in 1802, comprised a mayor
appointed by the president of the United States and a city council elected by the people.
The city’s charter was amended in 1812 to provide for an elected board of aldermen,
which, along with the council, elected the mayor. In 1820 Congress permitted the
residents to elect both mayor and council. Since Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution
empowers Congress to exercise exclusive legislation over the seat of government,
however, the powers of the mayor and the council were limited, and their administration
of the city was generally ineffectual.
In 1871 Congress created a territorial form of government for the District. The officials,
all appointed by the president, included a governor, a board of public works, and a
legislative assembly comprising an 11-member Council and a 22-member House of
Delegates. In addition, the District was permitted a popularly elected, nonvoting delegate
to the House of Representatives. This arrangement was abandoned after only three years
following a series of financial crises that aroused opposition among both politicians and
taxpayers. Congress resumed direct control of the city, providing administration by three
commissioners appointed by the president. No provision was made for the franchise under
the commissioner form of government, and residents of the District were denied all rights
to vote until 1961. The 23rd Amendment to the Constitution then allowed qualified
voters to vote in presidential elections but failed to permit participation in elections for
local officials, all of whom continued to be appointed.
The issue of home rule for the residents of the District became increasingly prominent in
the 1960s, and it was not unrelated to the general struggle for civil rights that characterized
the nation as a whole. The most serious criticism of the commissioner form of
government was that all legislation affecting it had to be passed by Congress: the House
District of Columbia Committee and the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee were
required to initiate all legislation pertaining to the District. Since the members of these
committees were not permanent residents of Washington and represented constituencies
that had little or no interest in the problems of the city, the responsiveness of Congress
was felt by many to be slow or entirely lacking. Efforts on the part of various local groups
over the years to achieve some degree of home rule were consistently blocked by the
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House committee, although the Senate committee passed five such bills between 1951 and
1963. It was often pointed out that the committees tended to be dominated by Southern
congressmen who resisted efforts to give the franchise and other powers to the District
because of its increasing black majority.
In 1967 Congress reorganized the District’s government, abolishing the three-

commissioner system and creating in its place a single commissioner (who assumed the
title of mayor), an assistant commissioner, and a nine-member city council, all appointed
by the president. The city council was given authority to exercise certain legislative and
regulatory powers once vested in the three commissioners, but such actions were subject
to the veto of the mayor. In 1970 Congress created again the position of a nonvoting
delegate to the House of Representatives, elected by residents of the District.
Movement toward home rule has continued. In 1973, under President Nixon, the limited
Home Rule Act of 1964 was amended, providing for the popular election every four years
of the mayor and city council members. In addition, the city council was expanded to 13
members. The mayor was given broader reorganizational and appointive authority. The
city council was empowered to establish and set tax rates and fees, make changes in the
budget, and organize or abolish any agency of government of the District. Congress, in
turn, reserved the power to veto any actions of the District government that threaten the
“federal interest.” Thus, while the District has a recognizable municipal form of
government, Congress continues to treat it in some respects as a branch of the federal
government. The city’s “district attorney” is the U.S. attorney for the District of
Columbia, appointed by the president. The budget, passed by the city council and
approved by the mayor, is reviewed and enacted by Congress. Moreover, Congress retains
the right to enact legislation on any subject for the District, whether within or outside of
the scope of power delegated to the city council.
Administration of municipal services
As under previous forms of government, municipal functions remain in control of a

combination of local and federal committees. School-board members, formerly appointed
by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, became popularly elected in
1968. Public utilities are under a Public Service Commission appointed by the president.
The zoning of private property is handled by the Zoning Commission, consisting of the
mayor, the chairman of the city council, the Architect of the Capitol, and the director of
the National Park Service. The water supply is under the jurisdiction of an Army
engineer, given the title of District Engineer, but its distribution is controlled by the
mayor. The National Park Service supervises the public parks of the city.
Public security and law enforcement are handled by four separate law-enforcement
agencies, each with its own jurisdictional area. Under the mayor is the Metropolitan
Police Force, which has the responsibility for enforcing the laws and ordinances of the
municipal government. The Capitol Police are responsible for the security of the Capitol
building and its grounds. The White House Security Guard protects the White House and
the president, while the National Park Police are responsible for all public parks and many
recreational facilities.
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The District Council.69
The Council of the District of Columbia is the legislative branch of the District
government. All legislative powers are vested in the Council. In addition, the council
approves the District’s annual budget and financial plan, and sets the revenue required to
fund the budget. It oversees the programs and operations of government agencies, and acts
on or initiates reorganization plans for the Executive Branch. The Council determines
land use, through the adoption of the comprehensive plan, and undertakes redistricting
based on the decennial census. In addition, the Council appoints members to certain
boards and commissions, and must confirm major appointments made by the Mayor.
The Council develops legislative initiatives and budget priorities to promote the public
welfare. It oversees the performance of government agencies and the implementation of
management reforms to improve service delivery. Council committees issue analytical
reports on the effectiveness of government operations and make recommendations for
reform. In addition, the Council monitors agency spending to ensure compliance with the
approved budget and financial plan.
As the local elected representative body, the Council seeks citizen participation
throughout the legislative process. It holds public hearings to provide an opportunity for
public comment on proposed legislation, policy initiatives and government operations.
Also, the Council helps citizens access government information and services.
Organizational Structure
The Council is composed of 13 Members—a representative elected from each of the eight
wards and five members, including the Chairman, elected at-large. The Council conducts
its work through standing committees and special committees established as needed.
Council staff perform legislative research, bill drafting, program and policy analysis, and
constituent services. In addition, the Council is supported by centralized administrative,
legal and budget offices.
To assist in its oversight, the Council appoints the D.C. Auditor who conducts statutorily
required audits of government accounts and operation, and other audits as directed by the
Council.
Council Committees.
Much of the work of the Council is done in standing committees and special committees.
Committees are established at the first meeting of each Council period. The Committees
are as follows: Committee of the Whole, Committee on Government Operations,
Committee on Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, Committee on Health, Committee on
Economic Development, Committee on Human Services, Committee on Education,
Libraries and Recreation, Committee on the Judiciary, Committee on Finance and
Revenue, and Committee on Public Works and the Environment.
69
http://www.dccouncil.washington.dc.us/
104
Exhibit #5: School system statistics70
Student population (2005-06) 59,616
Ethnic composition:
White 4.6%
African American 84.4
Hispanic 9.4
Asian American 1.6
Other 0.5
School budget (2004-05) $ 1,085,658
Per student expenditure $18,521
Sources of school funding:

Federal 15%
Local 85
Teachers 5,005
Teacher to student ratio 1:11.9
70
Information on district finance from U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational
Statistics, Common Core of Data (http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/search.asp) Information on student demographics
from District of Columbia Public Schools (http://www.k12.dc.us/dcps/offices/facts1.html#4).
105
Exhibit #6: Washington, D.C. School Governance
Congress of the
United States
Board of Education
(11 members: President
elected at-large, 4 members
elected by district, 4 members
appointed by the mayor, and 2
Mayor student representatives)
Adrien Fenty (D)
(elected 2006)
Chancellor
Michelle Rhee
(Appointed by Mayor)
2 Deputy Chancellors
4 Chief Officers
Regional Instructional
Superintendents
168 Schools and Special Programs

(including 71 charter schools)
106
Exhibit #7: Student performance
National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) 2005 Reading Exam:
NAEP 2005 Mathematics Exam:
107
Exhibit #8: Timeline of events in Washington, D.C.
1994 Marion Barry elected mayor (having previously served in that office from
(November) 1978-1990 before being convicted on drug charges).
1995 Congress adopts legislation creating a five-member panel (appointed by the

(April) President, approved by Congress) to take over Washington’s city
government. The District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and
Management Assistance Authority is commonly referred to as the “Control
Board.”
1995 The House of Representatives replaces its District of Columbia Committee

(Spring) with a less powerful Appropriations Subcommittee on District Affairs. The
GOP-controlled House also strips the District’s delegate of the power to
cast votes in the “Committee of the Whole.”
Congress authorizes the District of Columbia School Reform Act of 1995,

authorizing charter schools in the district. The act provides for a District of
Columbia Public Charter School Board, which, along with the District
Board of Education, can each authorize up to 20 charters per year.
1996 Control Board seizes control of the District of Columbia school system,
(November) reducing the eleven-member elected school board to advisory status,
appointing a nine-member DC Emergency Transitional Education Board
of Trustees, firing Franklin L. Smith, and hiring Julius W. Becton, Jr., a
retired three-star general, in his place.
1997 Clinton signs Revitalization Act, extending the authority of the Control
(August) Board over city finance and management.
1998 Arlene Ackerman succeeds Becton as superintendent.
1998 Anthony Williams, Chief Financial Officer under the Control Board, is
(November) elected mayor. The Control Board turns over day-to-day operations of the
city to the new mayor, retaining a veto power over major decisions.
2000 Paul Vance succeeds Ackerman as superintendent.
2000 A ballot initiative restores authority to the Board of Education, now made
(June) up of five elected members and four members appointed by the mayor.
2001 The Control Board dissolves itself.

(September)
108
2003 At the Bush administration’s instigation, Congress includes the “D.C.

(July) Parental Choice Incentive Act of 2003” in the 2004 Federal budget. The
measure would give federal grants of up to $7,500 a year to Washington
families earning up to 180 percent of the poverty level or about $27,500 for
a family of three. Families could use that money to pay tuition at religious
or other private schools.
2003 Paul Vance resigns “in frustration” over (among other things) Mayor
(November) Anthony Williams’ support for the federal voucher program. He is
replaced by interim superintendent Elfreda Massie.
2004 Congress approves a $14 million voucher plan for DC providing a $7,500
(January) tuition voucher to permit students to enroll in private schools. It passes
only after having been attached to an omnibus spending bill. Mayor
Williams supports the program only after Congress adds an additional $26
million in general aid to the district.
2004 Clifford B. Janey is named superintendent. The third choice of the

(August) selection committee, Janey spent most of his career in the Boston Public
Schools. More recently, he served as superintendent in Rochester, New
York for seven years.
2007 Adrien Fenty is inaugurated as Mayor. Janey is fired as superintendent.

Michelle Rhee is hired to fill the new position of chancellor.
2008 Rhee disseminates a plan for reconstituting 26 failing schools in the district.
We begin with a description of the introduction of charter schools into the District of Columbia
Schools contained in the senior thesis of Robert Blair, a Brown University student and advisee of
mine..
Document #15: Robert Allen Blair, “‘To Fix a Broken City:’ Home Rule and the
Origins of School Choice in Washington, D.C.,” Unpublished senior thesis, Education
Department, Brown University, April 2006. Chapter 1: “The Charter Schools
Movement in D.C. 1995-96.”
That school choice has become such a defining feature of the educational landscape in
Washington belies its rather inauspicious origins. This chapter examines those origins and
their implications for future debates over educational options in the District. School
choice in D.C. began in earnest in 1995 with the movement to create “enterprise,” semi-
charter and charter schools. I divide that movement into three stages: first, its birth with
Superintendent of Schools Franklin Smith’s “BESST” plan for education reform; second,
its adoption by Rep. Newt Gingrich and the Republican leadership in Congress; and
third, its near-death during the riotous federal appropriations process of 1995. I focus less
on this third stage than on the first two; the lessons embedded in each stage, however, are
109
equally important. This is a happy story with an emphatically unhappy ending. Just as the
first two stages demonstrate how the home rule system can cultivate a climate of respect
between two decidedly incompatible bodies of government, the third confirms how
quickly and disastrously that climate can dissipate when Congress loses touch with its own
capital city.
I. “BESST”
As with most education reforms, to peg the charter schools movement in D.C. to a
particular moment of origin is an awkward and perhaps impossible task. In the District,
however – where hypersensitivity to the young but already sacred right of home rule
renders objectionable any policy that even appears to have originated in Congress – the
question of provenance is an essential one. D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton expressed
that sensitivity with characteristic aplomb when she declared at the outset of the charter
schools debate that “not one red cent of our appropriation should be taken to experiment
71
with anybody’s ideas on what to do with the District…. That is war.” Not surprisingly,
she viewed charter schools as just such an experiment. D.C. residents, she complained,
were being made “guinea pigs” for Republicans eager to exploit their congressional
majority to impose questionable policies on the city. Suspicion towards federal intentions
made Norton’s perspective seem, to many, alarmingly accurate. Perhaps charter schools
were just one more ideologically conservative design on a vulnerable city.
Norton exemplifies one of the more unfortunate byproducts of home rule activism: an
impulse to cry foul whenever Congress considers new or unfamiliar policies for the
District. The irony, here, is that charter schools were neither new nor unfamiliar. How
and from where, then, did the school choice movement in Washington emerge? The
answer is two-fold. It arose, in part, from a national trend. Between 1991, when the first
charter schools were founded in Minnesota, and 1995, nineteen states had adopted charter
schools legislation and, close to home, Maryland and Virginia were considering doing the
same. John Golle, chairman of Education Alternatives, Inc., a private, for-profit
management firm, noted that by 1994, the “walls” of “built-in resistance” to charter
schools from parents, teachers and city and state governments were “starting to come
72
down.” In January of 1995, Education Secretary Richard Riley testified before the
House Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities that “our children and
the education of students of all ages are too important for those of us in Washington to be
stuck in the same old way of doing things…. I believe in public school choice,
encouraging charter schools and supporting experiments in privatization if local school
73
boards feel that is the right way to go.” What had begun as a fad was becoming a
national romance with the notion of school choice.
71
Lisa Nevans, “Norton Says GOP Can’t Impose Its Vision on City,” The Washington Times 21 April
1995, final ed.: A1.
72
Mary Jordan, “Private Operation of Public Schools Gains,” The Washington Post 26 January 1994, final
ed.: A4.
73
George Archibald, “Riley Rides GOP’s Education Coattails,” The Washington Times 13 January 1995,
final ed.: A1.
110
But the movement grew, as well, from anxiety over the condition of public schools in the
city itself: a system that seemed always on the brink of collapse. In 1995, the Post noted
woefully that, in national rankings, “the District is in the top five of any bad category –
homicide, infant mortality, dropout rates.”74 In no area of governance was this sense of
gloom more pervasive than in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). With an
annual education budget of over $500 million, D.C. ranked first among the nation’s 40
largest school districts in per pupil expenditures but last in the metropolitan area on
standardized test scores in every category of academic achievement and 49th out of the 50
states plus the District itself on SAT scores and graduation rates. Teachers in the city were
among the highest paid in the country, and, with the fourth-lowest student to teacher
75
ratio (14.4 to 1) of any state, class sizes among the smallest. The standard argument
advanced by the monoliths of the education establishment – notably the Washington
Teachers’ Union (WTU) – that more funding would resolve these perennial problems was
becoming less and less compelling: “What [the schools] lack,” declared the Post, “isn’t
money.”76
Yet despite what seemed a bounty of funding, the city found itself mired in chronic fiscal
distress, ultimately resulting in the creation of a federal financial Control Board to erase a
$772 million deficit in D.C.’s $3.2 billion budget. Congress granted the five presidentially-
appointed members of the Control Board exhaustive authority over the city’s monetary
affairs, including approval of District borrowing, review of all labor contracts and leases
and control over virtually all civil services in the city, including the public schools, the
police, fire and emergency medical services, public works, housing and community
77
development and procurement. In January of 1995, at the behest of the Control Board,
Mayor Marion Barry requested $32 million in cuts from the DCPS budget – a request the
Board of Education honored, removing 300 teachers and 180 administrators from the
payroll and seven days from the school year. In late February, the City Council voted to
cut union salaries by 12 percent and non-union salaries by 2 percent and to lay off 1,200
workers. Yet, to the surprise of virtually no one, a General Accounting Office report
released that same week announced, “Today the District is insolvent – it does not have
enough cash to pay its bills.”78
From this confluence of national enthusiasm for school choice and local malaise emerged
Superintendent Franklin Smith’s “BESST” plan – Bringing Educational Services to
i
Students. “BESST” would create between 10 and 15 semi-independent schools operated
by Education Alternatives; about 50 “enterprise” schools with the autonomy to control
their own budgets, design their own curricula and contract for private services; and several
ii
“semi-charter” schools: thematic “learning communities” or “schools within schools”
organized under the leadership of a select group of teachers or a Fortune 500 company.79 It
was, admittedly, a cautious plan, but Smith’s was the first piece of District legislation to
74
“Problems That Money Won’t Solve,” editorial, The Washington Post 13 February 1995, final ed.: A20.
75
James F. Hirni, “”Making the Worst Out of D.C. Schools,” The Washington Times 1 November 1995,
final ed.: A17.
76
“Problems That Money Won’t Solve,” A20.
77
Fauntroy, 38-9, 170.
78
George Archibald and Lisa Nevans, “House Envisions New Life for D.C.,” The Washington Times 22
February 1995, final ed.: A1.
79
Jordan, A4.
111
contain an explicit reference to charter schools: a moment of genesis for the school choice
movement in D.C.
Even in a city desperate for reform, the plan proved controversial. Smith unveiled
“BESST” in January of 1994, a year when 11 of the combined 26 members of the City
Council and Board of Education were up for reelection. That was a fateful mistake. The
school board, in particular, greeted Smith’s proposal with a chorus of indignation. Board
member Valencia Mohammed, citing the example of nine “disappointing” schools already
under the command of Education Alternatives in Baltimore, vowed that she would “do
everything to stop” public school privatization. “Smith is not from the District of
Columbia, and he doesn’t understand how we’ve been fighting for statehood,”
Mohammed explained. “Outside contractors have no concern for the way of life of the
80
District.” Board Vice President Wilma Harvey (Ward 1) and members Bernard Gray
(Ward 6) and Angie Corley (Ward 5); the leadership of the WTU; and several members of
the City Council all agreed with that assessment.
Smith dismissed that opposition by assuming a dictatorial posture towards his colleagues:
“We might have to sometimes force something on people…. Let them see the gains and
benefits.”81 Was school choice, then, nothing more than the pet project of an arrogant
superintendent? Perhaps not. Hostility on the Board was far from uniform and seemed to
focus not on charter schools, but on the issue of privatization. Mohammed, for one,
82
clarified that beyond privatization, “there’s parts [sic] in the package that I like.” In
January, meanwhile, the Board had elected Linda Moody – co-founder of the Washington
Parent Group Fund and Parents United for D.C. Public Schools, two of the city’s biggest
parent organizations – to replace R. David Hall as president, who was retiring after six
years at the helm. Moody was unequivocal in her support for Smith’s idea: “The people
opposing this don’t understand it,” she said. “People fear change.”83 A Times survey
conducted in March of 1994 found the school board “evenly split:” four members in
favor, three opposed, three undecided, and one (Gray, who had already voiced his
opposition) who could not be reached.84 It was, incidentally, that same block of four –
Mohammed, Harvey, Gray and Corley – that also abstained or voted against Moody’s
nomination.
Smith, when confronted with an ambivalent Board, was quick to compromise. On March
th
4 , he postponed the privatization proposal. “I did not have the support of my Board to
make this happen,” he announced, qualifying that “this does not eliminate the possibility,
85 rd
it just delays the implementation.” On March 23 , his package – which included
“enterprise” and “semi-charter” schools run by teachers, but not privatization – passed by
a 6 to 5 vote. An impressive 42 of D.C.’s 164 public schools were selected to reorganize
80
Sari Horwitz, “Shaking Up the Schools,” The Washington Post 26 January 1994, final ed.: A1.
81
Maria Koklanaris and Cathryn Donahoe, “Board Split on Privatization” The Washington Times 3 March
1994, final ed.: C6.
82
Koklanaris and Donahoe, C6.
83
Sari Horwitz, “New Schools Chairman Favors Privatization,” The Washington Post 3 February 1994,
final ed.: J1.
84
Koklanaris and Donahoe, C6.
85
Maria Koklanaris and Cathryn Donahoe, “Privatizing of Schools Is on Hold” The Washington Times 4
March 1994, final ed.: A1.
112
under the plan – 38 as “enterprise” schools, and four as “semi-charters.”86 By September,

the number of “semi-charters” had expanded to seven, and the nebulous definitions
contained within Smith’s scheme began to materialize into actual programs. On the third
floor of its home campus, Truesdell Elementary established a “Nongraded School” of 75
students designed to offer “individualized, hands-on learning in multi-age classes.” Eastern
High created a Health and Human Services Academy; H.D. Woodson High, a Business
and Finance Institute; Webb Elementary, an African-Centered Education School. Each
“school-within-a-school” was appropriated the same $7,171 per pupil budget as traditional
D.C. public schools, plus a $5,000 one-time bonus awarded by the school board.87 By the
start of the school year in September of 1994, “BESST” had inaugurated a new era of
educational options in the city.
In the subsequent scuffle over charter schools and vouchers in Congress, “BESST” would
disappear more or less entirely from the city’s collective memory. Even one school choice
activist who requested anonymity told me that “initially, the impetus [behind charter
88
schools] came from Congress.” My analysis is unusual in that it identifies “BESST” as a
small but decisive moment in the school choice debate. Small, because it preceded much
more radical experiments in reform – not just charter schools, but vouchers as well.
Decisive, because it signaled a percolating commitment to educational options in the city
months and, in the case of vouchers, years before those reforms became realities. That
Congress later adopted the mantle of school choice does not erase the significance of that
moment. (Years later, even Norton would fondly cite charter schools as an example of
homegrown innovation. So much for fussing over others’ “ideas on what to do with the
District.”) Congress shares the credit for constructing the elaborate machinery of
educational options that now exists in D.C.; the first cogs,iii however, were set in motion
by the city itself.
II. A “Spiritual Bond” and “Some Very Bitter Pills”
While some detractors viewed Smith’s plan as too drastic a shake-up for an already
unstable system, others saw it as timid, even weak. “This is a school within a school; it’s
not a charter,” complained Judith Jones of the Committee for Public Autonomous
Schools. “It’s a useful first step for the system to have taken, but it’s very limited.”89 For
Jones and others, it was Congress that would provide the impetus for a more dramatic and
immediate regimen of reform. “I welcome [congressional involvement],” said Mary
Jackson, a Ward 7 advisory neighborhood commissioner with four grandchildren in
DCPS. “The folks in this city have sat down too long on their hands. This school system
90
stinks. It’s deplorable.” That involvement would begin with an unlikely crusader:
Georgia Republican and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. In December of 1994,
86
David Leonhardt, “42 City Schools Given More Power to Improve,” The Washington Post 16 June 1994,
final ed.: J3.
87
Ruth Yodaiken, “Non-Graded School Brings Innovation, Optimism,” The Washington Post 15
September 1994, final ed.: J3.
88
Anonymous. Telephone interview. 17 January 2006.
89
Maria Koklanaris, “Teachers Take Shot to Do It Their Way,” The Washington Times 1 December 1994,
final ed.: C5.
90
David A. Vise and Sari Horwitz, “GOP Leaders Seek to Change Face of District,” The Washington Post
12 May 1995, final ed.: A1.
113
Gingrich referred vaguely to the wish of congressional Republicans to transform D.C. into
91
an “urban jewel.” Although he offered no details, his, Gingrich promised, would be a
“transformational, spiritual and volunteeristic approach” to reform.92 What that meant,
exactly, was unclear. For a disproportionately Democratic city wary of congressional
misadventures in other areas of public policy, such ambiguity (“transformational?” –
“volunteeristic?” – “spiritual?”) raised all sorts of ominous possibilities.
Yet from the start, Gingrich seems to have been genuinely committed to soliciting local
input for his proposals. On February 21st, 1995, he invited Barry, City Council Chairman
David Clarke, Norton and Representatives Tom Davis and James Walsh – chairman of
the Government Reform and Oversight Subcommittee on the District and chairman of
the Appropriations Subcommittee on the District, respectively – to a meeting in his office
on Capitol Hill. While Gingrich asked the mayor “to swallow some very bitter pills,”
including another round of budget cuts, Barry, a frequent and often vociferous critic of
Congress, was optimistic. “I think what’s happening here is historic in the sense that the
Speaker of the House, Mr. Davis [and] Mr. Walsh want D.C. to be the very best city it
can be.”93 When Barry and Gingrich met for a second time the following day, the Post
christened them “the oddest couple in American politics.”94 Barry, in what would have
been the most bizarre comment of the whole affair had it not so directly echoed earlier
95
statements by Gingrich himself, described their relationship as a “spiritual bond.”
Was this the same Barry who just five years earlier had decried what he perceived to be a
vicious Republican conspiracy to oust him from office? Barry was first elected mayor in
1978; during his first decade in City Hall, nearly a dozen of his top aides were convicted
of graft and corruption, among them former deputy mayor for economic development
Ibanhoe Donaldson and former deputy mayor for finance Alphonse Hill. Barry suffered
from demons of his own, including an apparently insatiable appetite for drugs and women,
and two consecutive Republican-appointed attorneys general – Joseph Di Genova and Jay
Stephens – made it their mission to prosecute his indiscretions. In 1990, Barry was arrested
and indicted on thirteen counts after a bust on the Vista Hotel in D.C. (He was caught
with a prostitute, yielding what became his most memorable quote as mayor: “Goddamn
bitch set me up.”) To make matters worse, the arrest was filmed, immediately becoming
one of “the most widely watched videos in the nation.” After a sixmonth stint in federal
prison and a comically brief hiatus in the private sector, Barry returned to City Hall in
1995, his relationship with Congress strained by mutual suspicion, egoism and plain old
malice. Michael Fauntroy, like many commentators, identifies Barry’s electoral coup as a
96
key motivation behind the creation of the Control Board. And yet, on education reform,
he and Gingrich had established a “spiritual bond.” As with Smith’s plan, desperation
seemed to inspire in Barry a real excitement for the Speaker’s “quixotic quest:” “Not so
long ago,” noted the Post, “Gingrich would have recoiled in hard-right self-righteousness
91
Mary McGrory, “Gingrich’s Capital Ideas,” The Washington Post 23 February 1995, final ed.: A2.
92
Archibald and Nevans, A1.
93
Archibald and Nevans, A1.
94
McGrory, A2.
95
Lisa Nevans, “D.C. Officials Like Gingrich’s Town-Meeting Move,” The Washington Times 19 June
96
Fauntroy, 87-8.
114
from the rogue mayor, and…Barry would have swaggered about statehood. But…the
town around them is falling apart.” It was, to use Gingrich’s phrase, a “unique moment”
97
for cooperation between two governments once locked in irreconcilable discord.
The relationship was not, or course, entirely harmonious. Barry insisted that he was
uniformly “opposed to vouchers, tax credits, all of that” – several of the key tenets of
Gingrich’s plan.98 Gingrich, meanwhile, like Smith, often used language that seemed
intended to provoke local ire in articulating his vision for reform. Prone to abrasive
military metaphors, he argued that “anything less than the scale of the Normandy invasion
will be destined to failure” – an analogy that Ramona Edelin, president of the National
Urban Coalition, described as “most unfortunate,” retorting that “many in our city feel an
invasion is precisely what is about to occur, and believe me, the French Resistance is
comparable to the resistance that invasion will confront.”99 Openly hostile to what he
perceived to be obstructionism on the Board of Education, Gingrich declared, “I don’t
care about the public school system…. I care about educating children.”100 The leaders of
the six member congressional task force he appointed to recommend reforms were no
better. One of the six, Georgia Republican Rep. Jack Kingston, went so far as to declare
D.C. “the city of the United States of America…. It would be a grave mistake to say it is
[the residents’] city.”101 Understandably, those residents were furious.
With home rule concerns looming large over all political discourse, Washington is home
to a famous brand of territorialism. Gingrich failed to recognize that honoring the
principle of home rule is often a matter of satisfying big, voracious egos. One ego was
Mohammed, who dubbed the task force a “slap in the face” to D.C. residents. “They
have denied us our inalienable, democratic rights to represent ourselves.” Another was
councilmember Hilda Mason, who complained, “They haven't talked to me, and I chair
the committee on education and libraries…. I believe in democracy. This isn’t very
102
democratic.” Another – perhaps the most implacable of them all – was Norton. She
claimed to have learned about Gingrich’s task force from the newspaper. “And that,” she
said, “is . . . morally wrong and totally unacceptable.”103 Stoking her outrage, congressional
Republicans decided not to risk navigating their bill through the D.C. subcommittee in
the House, of which Norton was a member, but rather to attach it in pieces to the city’s
annual federal appropriation. In a fiery letter to Gingrich, Norton wrote, “No matter how
well-meaning, innovative or potentially successful, policies that do not result from mutual
104
action and consent are bitterly resented by District officials.” On a more personal and
arguably vainglorious note, she continued, “I take seriously that members of Congress
97
McGrory, A2.
98
George Archibald, “Mayor Supports Exemption from Federal Income Taxes,” The Washington Times 31
March 1995, final ed.: A1.
99
David A. Vise, “GOP Looking to Sell D.C. on School Plans,” The Washington Post 9 June 1995, final
ed.: D3.
100
McGrory, A2.
101
Howard Schneider and David A. Vise, “Speaker Comes Out of the House to Air His Ideas for the
District,” The Washington Post 2 August 1995, final ed.: D1.
102
Vise and Horwitz, A1.
103
Nevans, “Norton Says GOP Can’t Impose Its Vision on City,” A1.
104
Lisa Nevans, “House Hearing to Air GOP Dreams for City,” The Washington Times 10 May 1995, final
ed.: A1.
115
who don’t represent the District are working on ideas they haven’t bothered even as a
105
matter of courtesy to inform me about…. Would they do this to any other Americans?”
Egos needed aliment, and Gingrich would have to be the one to feed them. The key, as it
turned out, was dialogue. Promising that “Congress will not impose anything on D.C.
where there is not community support,” on May 12th, he held the first of a series of
congressional hearings on a range of issues – public schools, welfare, housing, crime, taxes
– to which a group of local speakers was invited.106 That delegation included Smith;
Harvey; Delabian Rice Thurston, mother of two sons in DCPS and executive director of
Parents United; Carrie Thornhill, manager of the Committee on Public Education, a
group of local civic and business leaders; and Karen Walker-Ellis, a parochial school
parent. In mid-June, in what the Times characterized as a “dramatic shift in attitude
toward city leaders,” Gingrich announced a series of town meetings around the city to be
conducted with Norton at his side.107 “The hearings will be broadly focused so that no one
can accuse us of a preordained agenda to be imposed on D.C.,” Rep. Steve Gunderson,
Wisconsin Republican and head of Gingrich’s task force, wrote to allies in an internal
strategy memo. “No solution can be implemented without public support.”108
As Gingrich assumed a more amicable stance towards the city, enthusiasm for even some
of his more divisive ideas became surprisingly forthcoming. Smith said that he was “not
opposed to vouchers. I believe in choice…. I just don’t want to erode public
109
education.” Barry endorsed “radical surgery” for DCPS – surgery that might include
charter schools and privatization. “I’m…for alternative management of our schools,” Barry
said, so long as it enlisted “private enterprise with a proven track record of community
involvement and being sensitive to running an African-American school system and being
sensitive to our culture and our history.”110 On May 31st, with Barry’s blessing,
councilmembers Kathleen Patterson and William Lightfoot introduced their own bill
granting joint chartering authority to the Board of Education and a new “Commission for
Charter Schools” appointed by the mayor and superintendent.111 Even before Gingrich’s
task force had made any formal recommendations, the City Council was poised to
transition from “schools within schools” to charter schools themselves.
But as with Smith’s plan, the school board balked. Harvey stormed, “There has been no
discussion or collaboration with the Board. Does this now mean that the Council sets
educational policy?”112 Mohammed was even icier. “Take a look at the groups pointing
the fingers…. How could the Council even dream, even put their lips together to say they
have the solution to…the problems of the District’s public schools? Look at the streets, the
105
Vise and Horwitz, A1.
106
Maria Koklanaris, “GOP Backs Off from Voucher Plan for D.C. Schools,” The Washington Times 13
May 1995, final ed.: A10.
107
Nevans, “D.C. Officials Like Gingrich’s Town-Meeting Move,” A1.
108
Vise, “GOP Looking to Sell D.C. on School Plans,” D3.
109
David A. Vise, “District School Chief Backs Voucher Plan,” The Washington Post 13 May 1995, final
ed.: C1.
110
Archibald, “Mayor Supports Exemption from Federal Income Taxes,” A1.
111
Maria Koklanaris, “Council Members Ready to Propose ‘Charter Schools,’” The Washington Times 31
May 1995, final ed.: C6.
112
Koklanaris, “Council Members Ready to Propose ‘Charter Schools,’” C6.
116
housing, the jails, the communities. It has all been under their jurisdiction. And it’s a total
disaster.” Education reform was supposed to be the Board’s prerogative; it seemed now to
have been co-opted by a pair of council members quick to kowtow to a militant
Republican Congress.
Disharmony between the various branches of the District government is an odd fact of
political life for a city characterized by nominal partisan unity. A lopsided Democratic
majority notwithstanding, members of the City Council, the Board of Education and City
Hall routinely usurp one another’s authority, creating a tempestuous environment under
which only a handful of issues reliably foster interagency accord. Gun control, abortion,
commuter taxes – these are the mainstays on which everyone in the city seems to agree;
when Congress attempts to legislate on them, the District, acting as a more or less
cohesive unit, objects. Not so with school choice, which only widened the divide
between the mayor, the City Council and the school board. This proved consequential,
allowing congressional Republicans to tout local support while ignoring – or at least
muting – local resistance. That such resistance came primarily from the Board of
Education only made that strategy easier to execute.
After a series of “high profile controversies” (including the Board’s unilateral decision to
award cost-of-living raises to most of its members, already the highest-paid in the
country), the relevance of the Board itself had become an open question. In June,
Congress passed legislation offering the mayor unprecedented line-item authority over the
city’s education budget; Barry, for his part, proposed eliminating the school board entirely
and making the superintendent a member of his Cabinet. A number of reports by the
Committee on Public Education criticized the Board president for “micro-managing and
113
interfering with decisions that should be left to the superintendent.” Harvey described
the Board as “caged;” Jim Ford, top aide to the City Council’s Committee on Education
and Libraries, compared it to a beleaguered baseball team. “They are batting 1.000,” he
told the Times. “They’ve been clobbered at every opportunity.”114
As the primary and increasingly isolated bastion of local opposition to school choice, the
Board opted to compromise. In June, Harvey (along with Smith, Board member Jay
Silberman and the leadership of Parents United and the D.C. Committee on Public
Education) crafted her own plan endorsing, among other things, privatization, charter
schools and public school vouchers. After a series of “raucous” late-night meetings, during
which “more than 150 opponents jammed the hall, waving signs and hollering and
115
hooting throughout the night,” the compromise flopped. Several days later, the Times
wrote that “reform-minded members of the D.C. Board of Education, weary with the
Board’s failure to act, are trying to disassociate themselves from their colleagues and
turning to the financial Control Board and Congress to push their agendas.”116 Leading the
113
Sari Horwitz, “Wide Discontent With Schools Puts D.C. Board Under Siege,” The Washington Post 12
June 1995, final ed.: B1.
114
Maria Koklanaris, “House, Barry ‘Clobber’ District’s School Board,” The Washington Times 2 April
115
Valerie Strauss, “D.C. Council Approves School Reform but Rebuffs Privatization,” The Washington
Post 21 July 1995, final ed.: D6.
116
Maria Koklanaris, “Reformers on School Board Seek Outside Help,” The Washington Times 25 July
117
pack was Silberman, who insisted that “we need to move forward…. The Congress is
117
acting, the Council is acting, the mayor is acting, and we are sitting.” Even as
anonymous callers left messages on his home answering machine threatening “bodily
harm” to anyone who voted for privatization, Silberman refused to relent. Though it
would take the Board until September to reach a consensus – approving by a 7 to 4 vote a
sheepish privatization plan permitting individual public schools to contract with businesses,
universities and unions for help with service needs – Gingrich’s task force nevertheless
agreed to use Harvey’s proposal as an “outline” for its recommendations.118
When those recommendations were finally released, the Times hailed them as “the
119
product of extensive consultation with city school officials and parents.” Gunderson
sketched five “Guiding Principles” for reform: to “respect the principle of Home Rule
while ensuring improved education for D.C. students;” to “create a world-class system of
life-time learning that is on par with the best in other leading nations;” to “empower
families of limited means with enhanced educational choices;” to “engage local and
national groups in a public/private partnership to improve education in our nation’s
capital;” and to “design and implement an urban education delivery system that can serve
as a model for the nation to follow.”120 In its practical applications, the plan included pay
cuts for the school board; charter schools sponsored by, for instance, the Smithsonian
Institution, the Library of Congress and the National Science Foundation; and vouchers of
up to $3,000 for tuition at private schools anywhere in the metropolitan region.
With this last proposal, Gunderson fired the first shot in the long and agonizing battle over
vouchers in the District. To add vouchers to a bill that already promised radical reform
was, to be sure, a dicey maneuver. Yet Gunderson may have had some cause for
optimism. In 1995, there existed no reliable, objective gauge of public opinion on
vouchers in D.C. The first and only time District residents had voted on anything even
resembling vouchers was in 1981, when a staggering 89% rejected a tax credit referendum
121
to subsidize private school tuition. But that, of course, was 1981 – a full decade and a
half earlier. Tax credits, furthermore, are not the same as vouchers. The former are
available only to taxpayers, ensuring that some poor families will find themselves ineligible
for a program ostensibly designed for their benefit. In the gap between 1981 and 1995 and
between tax credits and vouchers, there seemed ample room for public sentiment to
swing.
Gunderson’s bill targeted aid directly to low-income parents. Families with incomes at or
below the federal poverty level of $15,135 for a family of four would qualify for vouchers
of $3,000; half that amount would be available to those at 185% of the poverty threshold,
122
or about $28,000 for a family of four. The plan would establish a private, nonprofit
117
Strauss, “D.C. Council Approves School Reform but Rebuffs Privatization,” D6.
118
Jeanne Dewey and Lisa Nevans, “Members Hit Plans to Kill or Weaken School Board,” The Washington
Times 20 June 1995, final ed.: C4.
119
Nevans and Dewey, “Smithsonian a D.C. School?” C9.
120
“Back to School,” editorial, The Washington Times 5 September 1995, final ed.: A16.
121
Spencer S. Hsu, “House Approves Vouchers for D.C.,” The Washington Post 6 September 2003, final
ed.: A1.
122
Lisa Nevans, “D.C. School Vouchers Stir Odium, Acclaim,” The Washington Times 10 December 1995,
final ed.: A11.
118
corporation to distribute a total of $5 million in vouchers for fiscal year 1997, $7 million
123
for 1998 and $10 million each for 1999 and 2000. To ensure support from Smith and
Barry, Gunderson demanded that vouchers “hold harmless” DCPS itself, meaning that
public schools that lost students to vouchers would receive the same per-pupil allocation
anyway. Initially, at least, Gunderson’s bill seemed to enjoy a guarded but genial welcome
in the city. Despite its divisive elements, the Post noted with some satisfaction that the
“boldest conservative ideas discussed only a short time ago,”124 including privatization,
were conspicuously absent from the plan, and Harvey deemed all of Gunderson’s
proposals crafted “in the spirit of partnership.”125
The first of the town meetings Gingrich promised was held at Eastern High School the
night of August 2nd, 1995. More than one thousand D.C. residents attended. The Post,
noting that “Gingrich has given the city a level of attention few expected,” described the
meeting alternately as “unprecedented”126 and “extraordinary.”127 Norton’s tone became
almost weirdly hospitable. “Nobody is seeking to make war on the District,” she said.
“They are looking for a way to contribute to [its] revival…. The obligations are
reasonable, and the benefits most will find surprising.”128 Although Gingrich was
introduced at the meeting to “a cacophony of boos,” the Post applauded his “deferential
approach and restraint:” “Once the speaker got rolling, he fielded the tough questions and
129
statements by taking detailed notes, rather than responding.” In an uncharacteristic
moment of humility, Gingrich said of Norton, “In D.C.…she’s the senior partner, and
I’m the junior partner.”130 As the hearing ended, Norton remarked, “The people
controlled that meeting, and that is how it should have been…. You would have to be
deaf, dumb and blind in order not to have heard and understood [their] commitment.”131
Superficially, at least, Gingrich proved a more respectful and accommodating legislator

than anyone in D.C. had expected. The question is: why? Why did Gingrich appeal to the
city for advice and consent? Gunderson argued that “no solution can be implemented
without public support.”132 But other congressional incursions on District sovereignty
suggest otherwise. A noteworthy example was the Control Board: necessary, perhaps, but
almost universally detested in the city itself. Rep. Tom Davis, architect of the Control
Board, waited seven weeks after publicizing his intentions before consulting a single city
official besides Norton. As congressional Republicans wrested authority from the D.C.
government, they blasted the city’s “addiction” to spending and a “dependency on
123
Valerie Strauss, “House Moves to Reshape D.C. Schools,” The Washington Post 3 November 1995, final
ed.: B1.
124
David A. Vise and Howard Schneider, “Bipartisan Partnership Works for Speaker and D.C. Delegate,”
The Washington Post 4 August 1995, final ed.: C3.
125
DeNeen L. Brown, “GOP Offers ‘Principles’ for Reform,” The Washington Post 3 August 1995, final
ed.: A10.
126
Howard Schneider, “Speaker Comes Out of the House to Air His Ideas for the District,” The
Washington Post 2 August 1995, final ed.: D1.
127
Vise and Schneider, “Bipartisan Partnership Works for Speaker and D.C. Delegate,” C3.
128
Schneider, “Speaker Comes Out of the House to Air His Ideas for the District,” D1.
129
130
Schneider, “Speaker Comes Out of the House to Air His Ideas for the District,” D1.
131
132
Vise, “GOP Looking to Sell D.C. on School Plans,” D3.
119
[federal] handouts.”133 It was against this backdrop that Gingrich performed his conciliatory
dance around local officials. The contrast could not have been starker.
Untangling the motivations of a politician as cunning as Gingrich is not an easy

proposition. I speculate, however, that perhaps education demands a more robust
diplomacy than other arenas of governance. Congress, when legislating on the District,
often seems to consider the city’s perspective only as a sort of inconvenient afterthought.
But not in the realm of education. Gunderson’s legislation is just one of many examples of
congressional education bills forged through collaboration between the city and national
government. Education is unique as a matter conventionally left to the discretion of local
communities – perhaps that uniqueness necessitates cooperation across distant and unequal
layers of bureaucracy. If his four years as Speaker of the House were any indication,
Gingrich was not one to pull his political punches; in his relationship with Barry,
something more than mere docility was at work. I will return to this argument in later
chapters; for now, suffice it to note that in 1995, Gingrich’s indulgence towards the
opinions of District parents and policymakers was real and remarkable.
Of course, the appearance of cozy relationships can sometimes disguise a power dynamic
that is anything but. Perhaps support from the city arose not from true excitement about
Gunderson’s bill, but rather from a sort of hopeless fatalism: that Congress would act
however it pleased, public opinion notwithstanding. Providing fodder for that
apprehension, some congressmen conditioned their willingness to negotiate with the city
on deference to the Control Board and its sometimes onerous dictates. Rep. William
Clinger, Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Government Reform and
Oversight Committee, warned that “nobody should doubt the resolve of this committee
to take any steps necessary if District government officials do not cooperate with the
134
financial Control Board.” In June, the Post concluded that Smith and others had
“cautiously endorsed some of Gunderson’s ideas in part because they fear they’ll have no
say in the process if they simply oppose him.”135 The Times added that as the Board
debated its own reform strategies, members had to “worry not only about how opponents
of school choice will view a ‘yes’ vote, but also how Congress will view a ‘no’ vote.” One
Board member, who requested anonymity, told the Times, “I think [voting against choice
136
measures] will be the last nail in our coffin [with Congress].” When the Board rejected
Smith’s privatization scheme for the second time, Ward 3 member Erika Landberg
apologized on behalf of her colleagues for being “such wimps.” “This is paralysis by
137
analysis,” said Shook. “If we don’t change things, Congress will.” When the Board
finally passed its privatization plan in September, member Ann Wilcox, the swing vote,
explained that she sanctioned the bill because “Congress was going to do it anyway…. If
133
Fauntroy, 168-9.
134
David A. Vise and Howard Schneider, “More Reform Ahead for D.C., GOP Says,” The Washington
Post 31 March 1995, final ed.: A1.
135
Horwitz, “Wide Discontent With Schools Puts D.C. Board Under Siege,” B1.
136
Maria Koklanaris, “Schools Decision Won’t Be an Easy One,” The Washington Times 14 July 1995, final
ed.: C4.
137
Valerie Strauss, “D.C. Board Avoids School Privatization,” The Washington Post, 20 July 1995, final ed.:
A1.
120
we’re not open to options, they will just do it over our heads and we will lose even more
138
power.”
Fatalism is a fascinating explanation for moments of solidarity between D.C. and the
federal government; one that calls into question the assumption often championed by
home rule advocates that local policies most accurately reflect local needs and desires.
Fascinating – but not entirely compelling. There is no doubt that Congress acted as a
catalyst for an education reform agenda more rapid and more radical than that endorsed by
the mayor, the City Council or, most conspicuously, the Board. But to suggest that
Congress somehow coerced the District government into acquiescence is to ignore the
fact that many in the city had already voiced their support, albeit hesitantly, for school
choice. That a derivative of charter schools – “schools within schools” – had appeared on
Smith’s agenda a full year before Gingrich even mentioned Washington as a potential site
for reform proves that the city had already discovered its own ways to offer educational
options. Gingrich recognized in those gestures a willingness to experiment with what
many perceived as a Republican ideological project: vouchers, charter schools,
privatization. And while his overtures to the principle of home rule may have been pure
political posturing, Gingrich made a genuine effort to include the city in his deliberations.
A mistake that home rule advocates often make is to view D.C. as a sort of ideologically
cohesive whole, unified around the hallowed principle of localism. Despite the city’s
formidable Democratic majority, as the charter schools debate illustrates, such unity rarely
occurs. Whether Congress would have acted without local approval is debatable but
irrelevant. Gingrich and Gunderson promoted policies already endorsed by what was, at
the very least, a loud, powerful minority in the city itself.
III. “The Old Rules”
As promised, Gingrich attached his plan to D.C.’s annual budget bill, first introduced to
the House in October of 1995. That bill, unlike Gunderson’s recommendations, was
immediately condemned as an affront to home rule. The bill would repeal a locally
popular program granting health benefits to the unmarried partners of D.C. government
employees – a program already left unfunded by congressional stonewalling. It would bar
the city from spending its own tax dollars to fund hospitals and clinics that performed
abortions except in cases of rape or incest – a provision that the Post described as “the
139
most intrusive antiabortion rider to a D.C. measure in memory.” And, perhaps most
ominously, it would cut $256 million from the city’s federal allocation. Barry, who had
once championed such cuts, predicted “a devastating domino effect…necessitating the
layoff of teachers, nurses, firefighters and police officers…. City services will come to a
halt. The District government will be unable to pay its bills or to function as an efficient
entity.” When the budget passed, Norton was catatonic: “This bill has almost nothing in it
for the District except amendments that are insulting and abhorrent.”140
138
DeNeen L. Brown, “D.C. Board Approves Plan to Privatize Some Schools,” The Washington Post 21
September 1995, final ed.: A1.
139
“An Education Vote That Counts,” editorial, The Washington Post 2 November 1995, final ed.: A30.
140
Howard Schneider, “House Approves Plan to Slash D.C. Budget,” The Washington Post 3 November
121
Congress usually makes its annual payment to the city in a single lump sum on October
st
1 , the first day of the fiscal year. Although Gingrich had hoped his package would win
congressional approval by then, October came and went without a compromise. Stalling
passage of the city’s $4.994 billion budget ($660 million of which was to come from the
federal treasury) was a standoff between Gingrich and a posse of some 44 predominantly
Democratic Senators led by Vermont Republican James Jeffords. The sticking points?
Abortion and vouchers. As winter neared, whatever mood of innovation had greeted
vouchers that spring had vanished. Eager to implement a more prudent agenda of reform,
Smith lamented, “Right now, until Congress approves legislation, we still have to operate
under the old rules.”141 Norton complained that “this bill is being held up exclusively on
non-District issues…. Republicans are into their own number on vouchers…. None of
142
this is related to the day-to-day operations of the District. I see no movement.” When
Gingrich refused a compromise to hold a separate procedural vote on vouchers for the
sake of passing the other 11 components of his plan, Jeffords accused the House leadership
of allowing “the whole city [to] go down the drain.”143
A series of “continuing resolutions” – authorizing the city to spend its own revenues up to
a maximum of $4.8 billion, but forbidding it from allocating most of its federal grants –
kept the D.C. government open through the astonishing six months that it took Congress
to reach an agreement on the budget. Deals were brokered, then promptly canceled. “I
have no idea what is up their sleeve,” Jeffords said of House Republicans. “First we have
an agreement, and everybody signs off on it. Then I find out it is scuttled…. It is so
144
frustrating that the city is getting yanked around this way over vouchers.” Norton was
bewildered: “[It’s] worse than limbo. It’s like being thrown into outer space…. It’s a
stalemate without options.”145 Meanwhile, Barry – who was keeping the D.C. government
open on the dubious authority of “a wink and a nod,” a verbal promise of pending funds
from Congress – drafted a plan to furlough a third of the city’s 39,000 employees in the
event that Congress failed to pass a budget. The Times noted that “privately, officials on all
sides said it is clearly illegal for the city to remain open while it has no congressionally
approved budget. But the law has never been tested, and there is little precedent.”146
Even with an amendment leaving approval of vouchers to the discretion of the City
Council – “a venue decidedly inhospitable to the idea” – 41 Senate Democrats and three
Republicans (Senators John Chafee of Rhode Island, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen
Specter of Pennsylvania) filibustered the appropriations bill not once, but four times: on
th th th th
February 27 and 29 and again on March 5 and 12 . After the Senate’s first failure to
invoke cloture, the Post foresaw “a looming crisis of Congress’s own making.” It accused
141
DeNeen L. Brown, “Still Waiting for Reform,” The Washington Post 31 August 1995, final ed.: J1.
142
Lisa Nevans, “School Voucher Stalemate Delays District Budget Bill,” The Washington Times 5
December 1995, final ed.: A1.
143
Lisa Nevans, “Vouchers Feud Threatens City Funding Bill,” The Washington Times 15 December 1995,
final ed.: C7.
144
Howard Schneider, “Congress Leaves District in Lurch on Budget Deal,” The Washington Post 19
December 1995, final ed.: A1.
145
Howard Schneider, “GOP Dispute Over School Vouchers May Force D.C. to Shut Down Again,” The
Washington Post 21 December 1995, final ed.: D1.
146
Lisa Nevans, “Speaker Allows City to Stay Open Despite Impasse,” The Washington Times 22
December 1995, final ed.: C8.
122
Democrats – the city’s traditional allies in Congress – of fishing for campaign

contributions: “The opposition of Senate Democrats must be…for show to draw applause
from the national educational lobby, since it’s unlikely school vouchers will ever see the
147
light of day in this city with these politicians.” To Barry, the question of vouchers was
becoming secondary to a more urgent concern: the city needed money. He wrote directly
to Clinton that “to use 600,000 people in this national debate over school vouchers is
unfair, unjust, wrong and quite frankly, disgusting politics.”148 But Gunderson refused to
bend on what he described as the “package deal” of public school reform: without
vouchers, “the whole thing is lost.”149 Gingrich was practically hysterical: “We are
cheating the children of Washington, D.C., every day…. We put them in buildings that
are terrible, surrounded by a bureaucracy that doesn’t care, with a central office that ought
to be abolished” – comments that Mohammed dubbed “offensive, cowardly and an
150
irresponsible insult to the citizens of the District.”
In the midst of this political bedlam, the Post published what was probably its most
disheartening but astute commentary on the tortuous fight to bring school choice to D.C.:
So much for the era of good feeling between Congress and the city that Mr.
Gingrich’s town hall meeting at Eastern High School was expected to produce.
Remember that August night? Referring to himself and members of Congress, the
schmoozing speaker told the packed auditorium, “Those of us who visit do not
have the knowledge and do not have the right to micromanage the daily lives of
the people of this city.” The audience ate it up. The speaker evidently has decided
those words are worth eating, too. Since the Eastern love fest, Congress has been
treating the District as its nearest and dearest plaything. With all the problems
facing the nation, Congressional Republicans have transformed themselves into a
board of education for the District of Columbia, imposing all sorts of ideas on the
school system – including tuition vouchers – without even a semblance of
concern for what local officials, educators and residents may think, let alone want.
Not to be outdone, Democrats – acting at the behest of national education lobbies
and also without input from city leaders – have decided to fight tuition vouchers
to the District’s death…. Congress and the national lobbies – if they have any
shred of respect left for the citizens of the District – should take their fight
151
elsewhere. This is no way to fix a broken city.
By the time Gingrich “caved in” (to borrow his own phrase) to Democratic opposition
and the budget finally passed – parts of it through an omnibus appropriations bill and parts
through yet another continuing resolution – “the damage to the financially strapped city
[had already] been done.”152 Payments to vendors for essential public services, notably
Medicaid, were delayed and, in some cases, canceled entirely; government workers were
furloughed; wages were cut. In the House, Gingrich’s task force disbanded and Walsh
147
“Hostage to a National Agenda,” editorial, The Washington Post 27 February 1996, final ed.: A18.
148
Lisa Nevans, “Federal Cash Promised,” The Washington Times 1 March 1996, final ed.: C5.
149
Lisa Nevans, “Senator Plots Path to D.C. Budget,” The Washington Times 6 March 1996, final ed.: C7.
150
Lisa Nevans, “D.C. Spending Bill Stalls as Senate Filibuster Holds,” The Washington Times 13 March
151
“A Fine Mess, Mr. Speaker,” editorial, The Washington Post 17 March 1996, final ed.: C6.
152
Lisa Nevans and Brian Blomquist, “The Check Is in the Mail, Much to District’s Relief,” The
Washington Times, 31 March 1996, final ed.: A1.
123
abdicated his seat on the D.C. subcommittee to search for another committee to chair.
Asked if he would introduce a new vouchers bill the coming year, his answer was
153
unequivocal: “No way.”
• • •
What lessons can be gleaned from this first skirmish in the battle over school choice in
D.C.? Charter schools were, in some respects, an anomaly of the home rule era: a concept
envisioned and implemented in its seminal form by the superintendent, then expanded by
Gingrich and his Republican allies, several of whom – notably Gunderson – adopted a
laudably courteous attitude towards the city itself. Gingrich and Barry seemed equally
receptive to each other’s ideas – a reciprocity that benefited them both. Barry gained an
avenue by which to transmit to Congress his wishes and those of his constituents;
Gingrich secured a verifiable claim to local support for his agenda. That Gunderson’s
legislation featured a mixture of provisions favored by both parties was no coincidence.
Throughout this debate, the central question was not whether Washington would adopt
educational options for parents, but what form those options would take. To please
Gingrich, vouchers were in; to appease Barry, privatization was out. Diplomacy generated
a bill that both sides could celebrate as their own.
Sadly, the charter schools movement in D.C. did not end with Gunderson’s bill. The
District did ultimately win a law authorizing the creation of independent, publicly-funded
charter schools – one of the few reforms to survive the budget debacle in Congress. But at
what cost? As months of political gridlock left D.C. without a blueprint for reform –
indeed, without a budget at all – even the Republican leadership began to recognize the
damaging role they had played in the city. “We are part of the problem,” confessed Davis.
“The Republican and Democratic global fight in Congress has left the city as a hapless
pawn…. I think you can point to both sides in this. Nobody has put the city first. They
have all put the larger agenda to the forefront, and the city’s interest has been kind of
incidental…. We have caused problems for the city and don’t come here with clean hands
anymore when we talk about what the city should do.”154 The convergence of local and
national support for school choice produced a “unique moment” of mutual energy for
reform. In the arena of education, D.C. was and is a city with real, urgent needs. That
Congress allowed those needs to be subsumed beneath the farce of the appropriations
process is the shame of this story.
153
Lisa Nevans, “GOP Finds ‘Urban Jewel’ Elusive,” The Washington Times 14 April 1996.
154
David A. Vise, “Hill Leaders Take Themselves to Task for D.C. Woes,” The Washington Post 19 March
1996, final ed.: B1.
124
To continue Blair’s account, we turn to Melissa Schoeplein, another Brown student of mine, whose
research paper focused on what she called the “charter school revolution” in the District of Columbia.
Document #16: Melissa Schoeplein, “Washington D.C.: The Charter School

Revolution In the Wake of a Congressional Takeover,” Unpublished paper for ED164,
“Public Schools and Politics,” Brown University, December, 2001.
On August 5, 1997, President Clinton signed the Revitalization Act, whereby the Control
Board’s authority was extended to control all of the finances and almost have complete
managerial power (the Mayor then only had control over such small agencies as the
libraries and tourism, and the city council only existed in an advisory role).155 “This
deepened many people’s resentment over the board’s dispossession of the local electorate’s
power. The act also brought to attention the unsettling reality that the District’s problems
extended deeper than fiscal issues, and that true revitalization would demand more than a
balanced budget,” noted the Close Up Foundation, a civic education organization.156
In 1997, the Control Board focused on conservative budgeting and spending and
aggressive tax monitoring, and the District ended the fiscal year with a budget surplus of
$185 million and a clean record with the IRS (“a welcomed change from 1996’s audit,
which had revealed forged signatures on contracts, incorrect addresses on tax records, and
157
261 dead people on the city’s payroll!”) By the end of 1997, most city leaders agreed
that the District had made substantial progress towards financial recovery. One city leader
in particular received the most credit for achieving these accomplishments: His name was
Anthony Williams and he had held the Control Board-created position of Chief Financial
Officer since 1995. “Williams’ supporters saw him as an honorable intellectual, with a
record of effective management and a stellar story of achievement in the District
government. In many ways, Williams was the antidote to Marry Barry that they had been
long waiting.”158 Before 1998 would be over, Williams, with his trademark bow tie,
would be the new Mayor of Washington, D.C.
The day after Williams was elected, the Control Board committed to allowing him to
resume day-to-day operations of the same agencies Barry controlled before the 1997
bailout. The Control Board, however, still had power in D.C. and could veto major
decisions and review mayoral appointments of city agencies. With Williams, though, they
had a positive working relationship, and the city moved closer to autonomy at a rapid
pace.159 On September 30, 2001, the Control Board went dormant after six years of
operation because, according to District Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, “the
District balanced four straight budgets and met other important financial goals…two years
160
ahead of the congressional mandate to do so.”
155
Ibid.
156
Ibid.
157
Ibid.
158
“1998 Mayoral Race—Enter Anthony Williams.” The Washington Redbook (Washington, D.C.: The
Close Up Foundation, 2000) 21
159
Ibid., 22
160
http://www.house.gov/norton/20011002.htm
125
Throughout this struggle over fiscal management and government control, it is no surprise
that the District’s schools have been affected. In November 1996, the Control Board had,
“seized operation of the system from the school board…saying the schools were failing
161
and the elected panel had been ineffective.” That same year they hired Julius W.
Becton, Jr., a retired three star general, to lead the failing schools—thereby ousting former
Superintendent Franklin L. Smith who had been criticized for “pervasive
mismanagement.”162 In 1996, the Control Board created The District of Columbia
Emergency Transitional Education Board of Trustees, a nine-member panel charged with
overseeing the day-to-day operations of the school system. With this system, both the
mayor and City Council could adjust the school budget and veto items before going to
the Control Board for approval. However, the Control Board retained the ability to
163
overrule as they saw fit. The District also had a Board of Education at the time, an
eleven member elected body reduced to advisory status by the Control Board during
Becton’s tenure (allowed only to make contract and curriculum recommendations).
Education Week reporter Caroline Hendrie aptly referred to the power structure in
Washington, D.C. as “Byzantine.”164
Arlene Ackerman succeeded Becton in 1998. In Ackerman’s two years in D.C., she
created a system of academic standards, ended promotion of unprepared students to the
next grade, developed a more equitable formula for financing schools, negotiated salary
increases for teachers, and created staff development programs.165 Although Ackerman
succeeded in raising the expectations of the school district, student achievement continued
to improve at a slow rate. According to NAEP, Stanford-9 results released in May of
2000, “showed a majority of students at every grade level falling in the lowest-scoring
categories, ‘basic’ and ‘below basic,’” according to Education Week’s 2000 Quality Counts
report about Washington, D.C.166 Ackerman received criticism also for her administrative
shortcomings—specifically her inability to solve chronic payroll problems. “[Last year] we
recruited 1,100 new teachers and lost 200 because we couldn’t pay them on time,”
remarked Ackerman in a May 2000 interview with Education Week.167 Teachers often
“shrug and simply say, ‘That’s D.C. for you’ when they are not paid correctly or on
time,” noted one DCPS teacher in a personal interview.168 In July 2000, Ackerman
resigned as the district’s superintendent to become the superintendent of schools in San
Francisco. When she left, Ackerman cited the “multiple layers of governmental oversight
of that nation’s capital—including the District of Columbia Council, the city’s school
board, and Congress, which, under the U.S. Constitution has ultimate authority over the
city government—had thwarted her efforts to improve the problem-plagued school
169
system.”
161
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A1388-2000Jul29
162
http://www.edweek.com/ew/vol-16/14D.C..h16
163
Ibid.
164
Ibid.
165
http://www.edweek.org/sreports/qc01/states/qc01policy.cfm?slug=17qcD.C..h20
166
ibid.
167
http://www.edweek.com/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=38D.C..h19&keywords=charterschool
168
Mary Finn, personal interview, 7 December 2001.
169
126
Paul Vance, former superintendent for the Montgomery County schools in nearby
Maryland, replaced Ackerman as Superintendent—the third in the District in four years.
The Control Board appointed Vance to this position, again illustrating how this political
body influences the leadership in Washington, D.C. schools. Vance’s goals include
streamlining the district’s costly special education program (which consumes one-third of
the school system’s budget to serve roughly 10,000 or less than one-seventh of its students)
and fixing and modernizing deteriorating school buildings with the United States Army
170
Corps of Engineers. “Vance is something new to the D.C. schools—a confident leader
who knows education and does not need this job. Vance can and does tell folks to take a
hike,” noted Post report Marc Fisher.171
Working with Vance is the city’s elected Board of Education which regained its oversight
172
of the schools in 2001 following a district-wide ballot-initiative on June 27, 2000. “The
idea for the referendum,” reported Education Week, “came in part from a study released in
September 1999 by the nonprofit D.C. Appleseed Center, which consulted parents,
business leaders, educators, and students on what changes they thought were needed.”173
The Board of Education now officially makes policy on the education-related issues in the
district. Five elected members (including the city-wide elected president) and four at-large
174
members, appointed by Mayor Anthony Williams, serve on the Board. At the time of
the June 2000 ballot initiative, Mayor Williams, tried to push forward a plan for a five-
member school board, all mayorally appointed—a plan opposed by the council members
and the community. Instead, Washington voters decided to approve the “hybrid board of
elected members and appointees.”175 Noted Education Week researcher Kerry White in her
Quality Counts District of Columbia Report Card, “The governance changes come to the
system at a time when student enrollment is on the decline, owing both to the outflow of
families with school-age children to the suburbs and a growing charter school
movement.”176
The Charter School Movement
“In places like D.C. where the only public choices [are]…between bad or worse, the
177
charter system has offered some parents a third option,” noted one teacher in the DCPS.
In the District, following the release of a report that chronicled the failing district public
schools, the U.S. Congress authorized the District of Columbia School Reform Act of
1995. This act authorized public charter schools as an effort to create a new, vibrant force
in education. Charter school supporters envisioned a new breed of public schools to serve
young people in search of an alternative to the failing D.C. public school system. Charter
schools, as one reporter, described it, are a “dream…in essence a privately run public
170
http://www.edweek.com/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=18speced.h20&keyword
171
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A35561-
2001Apr4
172
http://www.edweek.com/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=38D.C..h19&keywords=charterschool
173
Ibid.
174
http://www.k12.D.C..us/DCPS/boe/boe_frame.html
175
176
Ibid.
177
127
school…a way out, an answer, an engine for change.”178 These schools are public schools
that receive funds based on the number of students they enroll. Two senior fellows at the
Hudson Institute noted in a 1998 editorial to the Washington Post, “[Charter schools are]
open to all comers, financed by taxpayers and accountable to public authorities for their
continued existence. But the school bureaucracy doesn’t run them. There’s the (political)
rub.”179
The Reform Act specifies that the charter schools are exempt from any statutes, policies,
rules, and regulations established for DCPS by any District governmental entity. Both the
District of Columbia Public Charter School Board and the District of Columbia Board of
Education can grant up to a combined twenty charters a year to schools in Washington,
D.C.180 Schools created by both boards are entirely independent of the DCPS and the
District of Columbia Government. However, the two chartering boards have adopted
different systems for monitoring and evaluating charter schools. A study conducted by
D.C. Appleseed Center, a nonprofit advocacy group that focuses on local Washington,
D.C. issues, …[recommended] in their 2001 report that “the boards align their standards
for approving and overseeing the charters more closely,” and suggested that “policymakers
should examine whether the city is best served by maintaining two separate boards.”181
Charter schools do function differently than the [other] DCPS [schools]. Charter teachers
are not unionized and teacher pay and benefits are dictated by market forces. Charter
schools may be created in three ways: as startups, by conversion from private schools, and
by conversion from DCPS schools. Each charter school is organized as a non-profit
corporation with its own board of directors, at least two members of which must be
parents of students enrolled in the school. The school corporation is given exclusive
control over expenditures, administration, personnel, and instructional methods. Charters
are granted for 15 years, with unlimited renewals. They must report annually to their
chartering boards on academic progress and produce an annual audited financial statement.
Charters may be closed down after five years for failure to achieve their academic goals or
182
any time there is financial mismanagement. For charter schools, their charter will be
renewed if they only succeed in achieving what they set out to do. If they fail, the charters
will be revoked. “This degree of accountability is absent from conventional public schools,
of course, as is the risk of a school perishing because it does not satisfy its customers.
Nobody, after all, is obliged to attend a charter school,” noted Distinguished Visiting
183
Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution Chester Finn
Since the passing of the charter legislation, 38 charter schools have been created in
Washington, D.C. They serve 10,000 students—15% of children in public school in the
178
2001Apr4
179
http://www.edexcellence.net/library/afraid.html
180
http://www.D.C.publiccharter.com/geninformation.htm
181
http://www.appleseeds.net/post.html
182
http://www.focus-D.C.charter.org/
183
http://www.edexcellence.net/library/account.html
128
district.184 These growing numbers indicate that “[t]he District’s romance with charter
schools [has become] a serious relationship.”185 Charter schools in urban area such as
Washington, D.C. serve young people in need of educational opportunities. Many of the
conventional schools do not meet their needs, don’t provide safe learning environments,
and offer unchallenging curriculum. In the D.C. charter schools, 79% of the students are
low-income, 8% are special education, and 3% are Limited English Proficiency.186 Of the
thirty-eight charter schools in the District, many are targeted at “at risk” youth (including
youth in the court system). Many boast individual attention, some focus on the arts and
technology (School for Arts in Learning), some work on college-prep (Meridian), and
others on outdoor education (Sasha Bruce). Some schools use the nation’s capital as a
classroom and offer a public policy or law and civic education centered schools (Cesar
Chavez Public Charter High School for Public Policy and Thurgood Marshall Academy),
and some offer “supportive services for young immigrant students” with ESL classes
(Carlos Rosario). Still others promote specific trades, such as Marriott Hospitality High or
Booker T. Washington School for skilled careers in construction and the building trade.187
Support for the charter school movement in Washington, D.C. also comes from politically
active community groups—some of which have become professionalized and work on
activism efforts full time. For example, Friends of Choice in Urban Schools (FOCUS)
describes itself as activists originally involved in DCPS who “came to the conclusion that
188
public charter schools are the city’s best hope for timely, meaningful school reform.” In
1996, FOCUS became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and has, with its community-based board of
trustees, strived to provide “key support to the burgeoning charter school movement…,
recruiting and training charter school developers; leading the D.C. Public Charter School
Coalition in its efforts to improve and protect charter legislation; and informing parents
and the public about the city’s new, exciting public schools of choice.”189
Another active citizens group is the D.C. Appleseed Center, “an independent non-profit
advocacy organization dedicated to making the District of Columbia and the Washington
Metropolitan area a better place to live and work, primarily through projects seeking to
reform and strengthen the financial health of the District and the performance of
190
governmental institutions that affect the District.” For example, in April of 2001, they
released a report entitled “Charter Schools in the District of Columbia: Improving
Systems for Accountability, Autonomy, and Competition.”191 Although D.C. Appleseed
says that they are “neither an advocate for nor an opponent of charter schools, but
rather…an advocate of a quality public education system,” their involvement and policy
publications add to the dialogue about the charter school movement and the funding
issues in the District. Some of their ideas, such as holding a referendum in June 2000 to
184
2001Apr4. [The current numbers (2007) are 71 charter schools enrolling 19,924 students, or 33.4% of the
students in the district.]
185
http://www.edexcellence.net/library/garvey.html
186
http://www.dcpubliccharter.com/report01.htm
187
http://www.focus-D.C.charter.org/charter%20list.htm
188
189
Ibid.
190
http://www.appleseeds.net/D.C./
191
Ibid. (See below Document #8)
129
create a new School Board, have directly influenced political decisions in the city,
illustrating their impact. (It should be noted that D.C. Appleseed belongs to a larger
national foundation, the Appleseed Foundation, which focuses on law-based grassroots
192
activism).
Funding Issues
The Reform Act and related funding legislation established a Uniform Per Pupil Funding
Formula for the District of Columbia, under which all students—DCPS and charters⎯are
funded at the same dollar amount. In addition, these laws establish a per-pupil facilities
allowance for the public charter schools that is tied to DCPS’s capital funding.”193 This
formula was slated to take effect for Fiscal Year 1997 (FY97). However, creating a
permanent funding formula for the District proved to be difficult, and so they opted
instead to adopt a temporary funding formula. The district used this temporary funding
formula in both FY97 and FY98, which averaged $5,361 per pupil (compared to $9,650
in DCPS).194
In September 1996, the District opened its first two charter schools. When Congress
received the District’s budget in May of 1997, only $1.2 million was allotted for charter
schools. This money could pay for 135 students, but more than 300 students intended to
enroll. A year later, the District chartering authorities would receive 37 public charter
school applications, indicating the movement’s success. In fall of 1997, one more charter
school opened (totaling three in the district), and the schools opened uncertain if they
would receive the money supposedly allocated per school.195
That same fall, an informal network of public charter school leaders and friends formed
the D.C. Public Charter School Coalition. The Coalition’s “initial mission was to help
public charter schools gain access to vacant D.C. school buildings. When close to twenty
new public charter schools were approved in 1998, the Coalition broadened its scope to
become a forum for planning, capacity building, mutual support, and political action.”196
In September of 1997, the D.C. Public Charter School Coalition succeeded in lobbying
for the FY98 public charter school appropriation to be raised to $3.76 million and asked
the District to address public charter school facilities costs and establish a revolving loan for
first year charter schools. Despite the passing of the legislation, on October 15th the
payment to charter schools was delayed because of under funding. One of the charter
197
schools, Options, was forced to take out a loan to pay for its operating costs.
In February of 1998 the Education Committee of the District Council recommended a

bold formula-based facilities allowance and an increased per pupil formula. This
recommendation passed in May, however the facilities allowance fell $423 short of what
the formula recommended per pupil. Also in May, the D.C. Public Charter School
192
http://www.appleseeds.net/mission.html
193
194
http://www.focus-D.C.charter.org/chronology.htm and http://nces.ed.gov/naep3/
states/profile.asp?state=D.C.
195
196
Ibid.
197
Ibid.
130
Coalition accurately predicted that for FY99 $30 million would be needed, however the
budget sent to Capitol Hill for approval in June only allocated for $12.2 million to be
198
spent, a shortfall of approximately $18 million.
In the fall of 1998, sixteen new charter schools opened, uncertain if they would receive
their per-pupil allotment because of the budget problems. Complications arose when
Congress approved the bill. Starting in August of that year, the House D.C.
Appropriations Committee allocated federal funds to supplement the inadequate local
public charter school money, however, the Senate D.C. Appropriations Committee did
not. In October, this complication affected most new schools in that they did not receive
their first scheduled payment from the district because the Appropriations Act passed only
provided funding at previous levels—not the new, larger level. “Cash flow problems put
199
several public charter schools in serious jeopardy,” noted the Coalition In the end, on
th
November 19 , the D.C. Appropriations Act passed as part of the federal budget. Federal
funds did end up supplementing the shortfall and supplied $15.6 million.
The next year, advocacy groups, such the Coalition, predicted that an additional $30
million would be needed to fund charters. However, Mayor Williams’s budget only
allowed for an increase of $17.8 million. In April, the District Council only supported an
additional $2 million—enough to fund only 300 of the expected increase of 3,500
students. That June, though, the District Council decided to set aside 5% of the DCPS
budget to be earmarked towards charter schools. This move yielded the desired $30
million. The New Charter Schools Loan Fund (a creation by the District), however,
missed its June 1st deadline for new schools dependent on the funds. The schools had to
wait until September to see the money. That fall, nine new schools open.
In October 1999, the President vetoed the D.C. Appropriations Act and the budget was
funded through continuing resolutions. On November 29th the President finally signed the
D.C. budget as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act. However, in November
1999 the Control Board ordered an enrollment and residency audit and the CFO
announced further payments would be withheld until the completion of the audit. Once
completed in December, the audit then had to be interpreted. Meanwhile, since payments
were being withheld, charter schools publicly announced that they might miss their end of
the year payroll and others predicted that they would fall short in January. Emergency
funds were then created to alleviate this problem, but as of Jan 3, 2000 no charter school
had received its full October payment.
While charter school administrators and interest groups fought for the funds needed to run
the schools, the DCPS system was exempt from the per-pupil funding formula, which had
been established to guarantee equity in the city’s funding of public school students (charter
or DCPS). “Although [the funding formula] was put in place in 1996, it was not until
fiscal year 2001 that public charter school students were fully funded in accordance with
the law… And for the first time, in fiscal year 2002 DCPS will receive no operating funds
beyond those that are generated by the Formula,” remarked FOCUS, obviously pleased
198
Ibid.
199
Ibid.
131
charter school students will finally receive the financial respect they were originally
promised.
The funding problems directly affect the children in the charter school system. In a
January 24, 2000 letter Robert Cane, then Acting Director of the D.C. Charter School
Coalition outlined how the funding problems would negatively affect the schools. “The
cashflow crisis directly affects children,” he noted. Specifically, textbook and supplies
cannot be purchased, temporary support staff instead of permanent can only be hired, no
money exists to hire security guards to ensure safety, charter school leaders are forced to
work in a stressful environment that increases the likelihood of burnout, and lack of
money increases the chances of defaulting on a loan payment from a banking institution
200
that already agreed to help out in lieu of the unreliable city finding.
Charter Successes
Despite these chronic funding problems, one theme resonates in the battle for funding:
money is needed because the charter school movement in Washington, D.C. has taken
off. Perhaps the concept of competition has put some pressure on DCPS “You would
have thought by now, after two, three years, that the public schools would be asking,
‘Why are kids leaving? What should we be doing? But I don’t see it. Instead, they fight
with us, and more students leave them,” noted former D.C. public schools administrator
Irasema Salcido, founder and principal of the Cesar Chavez High School for Public
201
Policy
However, Superintendent Vance has started to tackle these questions. Unlike his
predecessor, Ackerman, who used an “antagonistic approach” to charter schools, fighting
them “at every turn—over access to facilities, over payments, over bureaucratic matters
large and small,” he has tried something new. Vance has worked with charters
cooperatively and resolved, “to do battle with them instead at a completely different
202
level—in the classroom,” noted researcher Fisher. “Superintendent Paul Vance is
moving energetically to reshape the regular schools—reassigning principals and teachers
and discharging unqualified staff,” commented the Washington Post.203 This method of
working with schools led to the DCPS Duke Ellington School for the Arts withdrawing a
plan to seek charter status after DCPS promised to grant the school benefits charters
receive such as more authority over hiring and managing finances.204 Mike Peabody, the
executive director of FOCUS said that the Duke Ellington deal with DCPS is “exactly
how the school system should respond.”
200
http://www.focus-D.C.charter.org/letters/012400Rivlin.htm
201
2001Apr4
202
Ibid.
203
Washington Post Editorial B06 8/12/2001 Sunday Final Edition
204
http://www.edweek.com/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=25D.C..h18&keywords=D
132
Charter Failures
The charter school movement in D.C. has not happened without some bumps in the
road, however. The first failure for the D.C. Charter Schools came with the Afro-centric
Marcus Garvey Charter School in 1996. Researcher Finn believes that the D.C. Board of
Education hastily approved the Garvey charter and failed to establish careful review
procedures including checking the people involved in starting the school. “Indeed,” noted
Finn in 1996, the Board seems to have approached this solemn obligation [chartering]
with about as much care as it brought to its stewardship of the regular school system—
precisely why the Control Board recently stripped it of its powers save in a few areas that,
205
ironically, include the District’s charter school program.”
Not all charter schools succeed, and the procedures are in place to step in when this
happens, as with the Garvey School. In August of 2001, therefore, the D.C. Board of
Education voted to begin the process of shutting down three charter schools in
Washington, D.C. “Monitors sent out by the school board found Richard Milburn Public
Charter Alternative High School’s two campuses lacking in textbooks and industrial
supplies, and with student absentee rates ranging as high as nearly 100 percent on the date
of one visit.”206 The World Public Charter School and Vistas Preparatory Public Charter
School were also cited because of lack of educational curriculum and materials, poor
classroom management, and financial problems.
Charter schools do have their critics. “I hope [charters] are an experiment and they will
succeed and go away,” commented one charter schoolteacher in the district. “To take out
a handful of our kids and give them something doesn’t improve the lives of most of our
kids. Charters have no training, no certification. They may be dedicated to teaching black
kids, but that’s not enough.”207 This teacher went on to comment that the students who
attend charter schools usually have very involved parents pushing them to seek out
education alternatives. She wonders about the students who don’t have involved parents.
A DCPS teacher worries, “about the balkanization of education as a result of the charter
movement. When we have schools for specific purposes like supporting the hospitality
industry (Marriott run school) we run the risk of pigeonholing students at a very young
208
age and potentially limiting their choices later in life.”
However, public schools in the United States were founded on the idea that in order for a
democracy to work people need to know how to read, write, and be active citizens.
Charter schools may not be achieving higher standards (yet), “But,” noted reporter Marc
Fisher in his analysis, “teachers—about half of whom are refugees from DCPS—and
students seem more satisfied at the charters. They boast not about test scores—nothing to
boast about there—but about small classes and dedicated teachers, about schools where
each child is known and encouraged.”209
205
http://www.edexcellence.net/library/account.html
206
Washingotn Post Editorial B06 8/12/2001 Sunday Final Edition
207
2001Apr4
208
209
2001Apr4
133
Perhaps the radical congressional takeover of the District of Columbia governance in 1995
paved the way for other radical changes, and in the case of education of the District’s
77,194 students, this change came in the form of the charter school movement.
Unfortunately, as the city struggled to regain its financial confidence, the charter schools
languished in the wake of this financial uncertainty, often living month to month on bank
loans and funding promises from Congress and federal agencies. With the support of
community advocacy groups such as FOCUS and Appleseed, however, the charter
schools’ mission remained on the radar of the DC Public Charter School Board, the
Mayor, and the District’s School Board, and eventually the schools received their deserved
funding. The charter schools also seem to be pushing DCPS, under the leadership of Paul
Vance, in the direction of assessing their own educational weaknesses.
Even though the District regained fiscal control in September of 2001 when the Control
Board officially dissolved, until the U.S. Constitution is changed, the possibility of
congressional influence in the District exists more than in any other urban school district
in the nation. In the six years of the Control Board’s existence, Congress showed how
they could, if so desired, control every arm in the District’s governance, including the
schools. Because of Congress’ unique role, schools in D.C. can “become the battleground
for Congress’ annual tug-of-war over partisan education agendas” whereby congressmen
from across the nation’s fifty states can, in the words of Senate Minority Leader Tom
Daschle, D-SD, take the “opportunity to debate the differences in our respective
210
approaches to public education.” Meanwhile, in the shadow of the White House and
the Capitol Dome, the District’s students continue to strive to learn in the city where, as
the official license plate motto states (borrowing the words of the colonists fighting the
American Revolution), there still is “Taxation Without Representation.”
The DC Appleseed Center, a public affairs not-for-profit, took on the project of evaluating the new
DC charter schools. Following is the second (and last) of their reports.
Document #17: DC Appleseed Center, Charter schools in the District of Columbia: Improving
systems for accountability, autonomy, and competition (Washington, DC: DC Appleseed
Center, 2001)
INTRODUCTION AND EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Since they were first authorized in 1996, charter schools in the District of Columbia have
quickly become a substantial part of the D.C. public education system. In the current
school year, nearly 10,000 children are enrolled in charter schools in the District, which
are budgeted to receive $105 million⎯representing over 12% of all public school students
and a comparable percentage of the public education budget.211 In relative terms, the
210
http://www.edweek.com/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=02D.C..h18&keywords=D
211
D.C. Public Schools (“DCPS”) and public charter school enrollment figures are from Thompson, Cobb,
Bazillo & Associates, P.C., Audit of the Official Membership of the District of Columbia Public Schools and Public
Charter Schools as of October 5, 2000 (Draft dated January 15, 2001). FY2001 appropriations include all local
funds appropriated for DCPS and public charter school operating costs (excluding DCPS capital outlays and
134
District has experienced one of the fastest shifts in the country from the centralized system
that usually governs traditional public schools, to the decentralized approach that is the
hallmark of charter school education.
The development over the past five years of a new system for public education
governance has been complicated by the virtually simultaneous enactment of two separate
statutory schemes for charter schools—one enacted by the D.C. Council and the other by
Congress—both of which still exist. In addition, the federally-enacted statutory scheme
(which takes precedence in such matters) calls for the creation of two separate charter
school authorities. With the increasing importance of charter school education in the
District, it is appropriate to examine how this structure functions.
We do not in this report address the fundamental issue of whether charter schools should
exist. Given the short period in which charter schools have been operating in the District,
we think that revisiting that issue now would be premature. Nor do we address the
substance of what must—or may—be taught in charter schools, or applicable academic or
curricular standards. Moreover, as several studies have made clear, it is too soon to answer
the most important question related to charter schools—have they improved public
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education for public school children in the District of Columbia? However, after four
years of charter school operations, there is now a clear need to review the processes
relating to overseeing and financing charter schools in the District of Columbia, and on
elements in the operation of charter schools themselves. We have found it useful to focus
on three underlying goals of the District’s charter school laws and systems: accountability,
autonomy, and competition.
Accountability. Charter schools are public schools. They receive government funding,
are not allowed to charge tuition, must enroll students regardless of their ability to pass
tests, and operate with the permission of and under a set of guidelines established by the
213
government. The two charter school laws require the District government to hold
charter schools accountable for meeting the terms of their charters—including an agreed
upon curriculum and goals for student academic achievement—and for complying with
other provisions of the law related to, for example, financing and special education.
Because charter schools operate with less oversight than traditional public schools and
without the support services provided by the school district, the charter school laws also
the charter school facilities allowance) in District of Columbia Appropriations Act, 2001, effective
November 22, 2000 [Publ. Law 106-522, 114 Stat. 2449 et seq.]. In FY2001, DCPS appropriations include
only a small amount ($200,000) of Teachers’ Retirement Fund contributions due to an overpayment in
FY2000. In FY2001, DCPS will also receive $12 million in Reserve Funds carried over from FY2000.
212
See, e.g., Jeffrey R. Henig, Thomas Holyoke, Natalie Lacireno-Paquet, and Michele Moser, Growing
Pains: An Evaluation of Charter Schools in the District of Columbia, 1999-2000, February 2001 and Jeffrey R.
Henig, Michele Moser, Thomas Holyoke, and Natalie Lacireno-Paquet, Making a Choice, Making a
Difference? An Evaluation of Charter Schools in the District of Columbia, November 1999. Rigorous performance
reviews of D.C. charter schools will begin to take place next year, when the chartering authorities conduct
the five-year evaluations of the performance of the first set of charter schools authorized.
213
Charter schools are distinguished from private schools (including those, in some other school districts, that
receive government funding – i.e. vouchers) in that charter schools are (1) not allowed to charge tuition; (2)
must open enrollment to all students; and (3) operate with the express permission of the government.
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require each charter school to have a board of trustees that will provide governance,
214
oversight, and support to the school.
Autonomy. A primary difference between charter schools and traditional public schools
is that charter schools have much more autonomy. Indeed, a key impetus for the legislation
enabling charter schools to operate in the District was the belief that allowing such schools
to establish curricula, set academic and non-academic goals, hire personnel, and manage
their operations independent from the school district would foster high quality, innovative
public educational programs. Apart from the extent of regulatory requirements, charter
school autonomy is also greatly affected by charter schools’ receipt of public dollars. As
independent entities forbidden from charging tuition, charter schools depend on the per
pupil funding that the District government provides to all public schools (charter and
traditional) depending on the number and characteristics (e.g., special needs, limited
English proficiency) of students enrolled. For charter schools to operate autonomously, the
government must disburse public funds in a fair and reliable manner.
Competition. Charter schools serve as a source of competition for traditional public

schools. Under the District’s per pupil funding formula, whenever a parent chooses to
enroll a child in a charter school instead of a traditional public school, the dollars that the
traditional system would have expended for that child follow that child to the charter
school. By creating a publicly-funded school alternative, charter school legislation
anticipates that traditional public schools will no longer be the only educational choice for
children whose parents are unable to afford or unwilling to pay for private or parochial
school alternatives. The ability of both traditional public schools and charter schools to
thrive under this competitive model will be driven to a significant extent, it is thought, by
each school’s ability to attract students in the educational marketplace.215 An effective
system of competition requires that (1) neither charter nor traditional public schools be
inequitably hindered, a concept which requires that each type of school receive equivalent
funding, and (2) parents have access to an adequate amount of information to make
reasoned decisions regarding the many public schools (charter and traditional) where they
can choose to send their children.
The research for this report was conducted over the past two years, and included (1)
individual interviews and group meetings with charter school operators; (2) meetings with
individuals from nonprofit, business, and government organizations with experience
operating or working with charter schools; (3) extensive review and analysis of the laws
governing charter schools; (4) examination of documents provided by the Public Charter
School Board (the “PCSB”), the D.C. Board of Education (the “School Board”), and the
214
Of course, the regulatory system for charter schools should not, given the very purpose and definition of
such schools, duplicate the bureaucracy that administers public schools. This issue is not further addressed in
this report because it does not appear, based on DC Appleseed’s research, that the regulatory structure in
place is unduly restrictive.
215
Although it would be premature to anticipate possible outcomes of this competition, DC Appleseed notes
that the competition among these two types of public schools does not presently appear to be a zero-sum
game. Both approaches to public education – the centralized traditional public school model and the charter
school model – appear viable in a competitive environment, and able to benefit from competition. Of
course, individual schools, as distinct from the two models of public education, may not all survive.
136
District’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer (the “CFO”); and (5) statutes and data
216
collected from other jurisdictions.
Chapter I of this report addresses problems caused by the existence of two separate charter
school statutes; Chapter II deals with the fact that two separate entities—the Public
Charter School Board and the Board of Education—are empowered to authorize and
oversee charter schools; Chapter III recommends new procedures for the oversight of
charter schools by their own governing bodies—boards of trustees; Chapter IV examines
the critical issue of how—given the new public education options available due to the
presence of many charter schools—the public can obtain access to adequate, comparable,
and accurate information about public schools (both traditional and charter); and Chapter
V suggests changes (some already underway) in the procedures for financing charter
schools. A brief summary of the report’s conclusions follows.
Chapter I: Dual Laws
Perhaps the most obvious structural flaw in charter school governance is the existence of
two separate statutory schemes governing the creation and regulation of charter schools in
the District of Columbia, one enacted by Congress (the “federal statute”) and the other by
the D.C. Council (the “District statute”). The presence of dual laws—and the difficulty in
reconciling them—has caused needless uncertainty (and controversy) regarding charter
school governance, particularly in the area of public school financing. The District ought
to have a single charter school law to make government implementation clearer and to
facilitate understanding by affected citizens.
A recent Congressional amendment to the federal statute does not adequately cure the
uncertainty, leaving in place a legal structure that requires those who are affected by or
responsible for implementing the law to analyze two separate, and often conflicting, legal
schemes. DC Appleseed proposes that the D.C. Council take action to resolve this issue.
Specifically, as the legislature most directly responsible for the welfare of District residents,
the D.C. Council should take a leadership role by repealing its charter school statute.
DC Appleseed endorses the principle of Home Rule, a corollary of which is the right of
the District to enact its own laws. With respect to charter schools, however, Congress has
stepped in and prescribed laws for the District, leaving the Council with, at most,
interstitial lawmaking authority. In that context, a repeal of the District statute would not
remove control over the substantive law of charter schools from the D.C. Council—
Congress has already done so.
216
A more detailed summary of the report’s methodology is attached as Appendix A. iii 7 Among the
significant issues not addressed in this report are challenges charter schools face in gaining access to adequate
school buildings and the conversion of traditional public schools to charter status. Policy issues regarding the
challenges of addressing the capital and facilities needs of DCPS and charter schools are of considerable
concern to the educational community. DC Appleseed did not focus on those issues both because of the
ongoing effort by DCPS to develop a master facilities plan for the public schools and the fact that, during
the period in which this report was researched and written, there were ongoing negotiations and substantial
changes in the rules and procedures for providing charter schools with access to D.C. government property.
The sunset of the Control Board and revisions made by the D.C. Council to the rules governing
conversions have minimized the need to revise further the conversion procedures at this time.
137
Chapter II: Dual Authorities and Oversight Standards
Chartering authorities are the governmental entities with primary responsibility for
holding charter schools accountable for educating children and spending public dollars.
They authorize the creation of charter schools, monitor charter school performance, and
sanction (and, if necessary, revoke the licenses of) schools that violate the terms of their
charters. Through the exercise of these responsibilities, chartering authorities have the
power to affect the well-being of thousands of children in the District of Columbia.
Under the federal statutory scheme, the District has established two separate, parallel
chartering authorities, each with the power to license, monitor, and take disciplinary
action against charter schools. Congress created one chartering authority, the PCSB, for
the express purpose of approving and overseeing charter schools. Both the federal and the
District statutes empowered the other chartering authority, the existing D.C. Board of
Education (the “School Board”), to authorize and supervise charter schools because the
School Board had a longstanding role in governing public education in the District and its
members were at that time directly elected by District residents. Moreover, local school
boards commonly serve as chartering authorities elsewhere in the country.
This dual authority structure—similar to that established in one-third of the states that
have authorized charter schools—is designed to accommodate competing concerns. The
first concern is that involving local school boards in charter school governance is both
consistent with democratic principles and likely to facilitate the importation of educational
innovations used by charter schools into traditional public schools. The second concern is
that giving local school boards sole discretion over the establishment and oversight of
charter schools may thwart charter school development, because, it is thought, local school
boards will disfavor charter schools.
While this is perhaps not a regulatory structure that DC Appleseed would have
recommended at the outset, DC Appleseed believes that it would be unwise to change the
District’s charter school governance structure at this time. Specifically, the highly-regarded
performance of the PCSB together with the fact that the School Board has recently been
reconstituted lend hope that the current structure can work effectively. By most accounts,
however, the prior School Board previously did not do a good job of fulfilling its charter
school responsibilities and was not provided adequate resources to do so.
Accordingly, DC Appleseed recommends that the District maintain the current structure
for a finite period of time (such as through the end of the 2001-2002 school year), during
which both the newly reconstituted School Board and the D.C. Council should assess
whether the current structure should be changed. Alterations to charter school governance
should be made if suggested by those assessments. In addition, the two authorities should
more closely align the standards they use to approve and review charter schools to prevent
charter schools founders from selectively applying to one authority based on a lower set of
standards.
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Chapter III: Charter School Boards of Trustees: Composition, Timing, and

Conflicts
Well-functioning boards of trustees at the school level are key to the success of a charter
school and to the continued political acceptance of charter school autonomy. The strong
visionary and creative forces that the founders of a charter school bring when designing a
new school are, alone, often inadequate to see a school through the difficult tasks of
establishing, sustaining, and assessing a well-functioning institution of learning. A strong,
independent board of trustees can help staff create a workable financial plan, raise funds,
secure a practical and safe facility, attract students, and address on-going policy,
management, and operational needs. In addition, a multi-member board can act as a check
against abuses of public trust. A charter school’s board of trustees, as the governing body of
a nonprofit corporation, is ultimately legally responsible for actions taken (or not taken) by
the school.
A well-functioning board also requires the elimination in fact and of appearance of

conflicts of interest on the part of board members, the presence of which can harm both
school performance and the credibility of the charter school movement. In the District,
many charter schools’ boards of trustees include members with an outside, related
interest—including representatives of management companies or nonprofit organizations
and school employees. DC Appleseed’s research indicates that many charter schools have
inadequate rules governing trustees’ actions when a conflict of interest arises, including
both disclosure of possible conflicts and recusal in the event that conflicts are perceived.
To provide leadership for charter schools, boards of trustees must be created early in the
process of creating a charter school, must be given time between a school’s approval and
opening to address critical issues, and must have well-developed conflict of interest rules to
govern trustees’ conduct. DC Appleseed recommends the following:
• Each chartering authority should require greater specificity in charter school

applications regarding the individuals who will serve on the charter school’s
interim board of trustees. Each charter school application should set forth each
interim trustee’s qualifications, skills, experience, and organizational affiliations.
• Each chartering authority should establish annual application and approval

schedules that ensure that at least 12 months transpire between approval of a
charter school application and the opening of a charter school.
• The law governing charter schools in the District should require that charter
school boards of trustees adopt comprehensive policies and procedures relating to
conflicts of interest, including disclosure and recusal requirements.
• If, at the time a chartering authority approves a charter school application, a

charter school’s board contains less than a majority of trustees who have an interest
in a sponsoring organization or are employees of the school itself, the charter
school’s board should not be allowed later to appoint such a majority without
applying to its chartering authority for a revised charter.
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Chapter IV: Information for Parents and the General Public About Schools
The provision of adequate, timely, and uniform information about consumer options is a
necessary element of any effective system of competition. A central goal of establishing
charter schools is to provide parents with the opportunity to choose a school that may be
“better” for their children than traditional public school counterparts. Accordingly, it is
imperative that parents be provided with understandable and comparable data about public
school performance, educational programs, and learning environment needed to make
informed choices.
Currently, the District fails to provide adequate and comparable information about the
public schools (charter and traditional) in which children can be enrolled. Specifically, the
information currently available (1) is not detailed enough to permit reasonable judgments,
(2) is, generally, not available through means readily accessible to parents with different
skills and resources (i.e., during a school fair, in written form, by mail, at a central
location, and over the Internet); and (3) is not consistent enough to enable, or provided in
a format that facilitates, comparisons between the different types of public schools (PCSB-
chartered, School Board chartered, and traditional public schools).
DC Appleseed recommends that the District’s newly created State Education Office (the
“SEO”) be vested with legal authority for collecting and disseminating data on public
schools and that it take several steps to assure the provision of better and more accessible
public information, such as:
• Define specifically the information that will be made publicly available to parents
regarding all public schools—both traditional and charter. The information should
reflect what educators believe correlates to high-quality education and what
parents value personally in the public education context, such as: student
achievement and other outcome indicators, enrollment/demographic data,
learning environment data, curriculum information, and information about the
neighborhood within which the school is located.
• Define information content and submission procedures in a way that does not
create an undue burden on schools. With limited staff, public schools (charter and
traditional) cannot easily respond to expansive and multiple information requests.
• Information about all public schools should be made broadly available through a
concerted public information campaign designed to ensure that District of
Columbia residents know where to obtain the school information that they need.
Chapter V: Financing Charter Schools
Under a decentralized model, charter schools are not only free from central government
control but are also unconnected to many central government systems. In light of their
substantial autonomy, the financing of charter schools is particularly important. Without
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an equitable and reliable stream of payments, charter schools will be unable to secure the
services they need or plan effectively for the short and long term.
While District law provides equitable funding to charter schools through a per pupil
funding formula for all public schools, the flow of funding to charter schools has not
always been reliable. Over the last five years, the manner of disbursing and the timing of
payments to charter schools has been problematic, creating confusion and fostering
uncertainty among charter schools.
Considerable efforts have been made over the past year by the D.C. Council, Congress,
and several District government entities involved in charter school financing to alleviate
the problems related to charter school financing. While these efforts represent steps in the
right direction, DC Appleseed recommends that the following additional changes be
made:
• The D.C. Council should enact into permanent law several amendments to the
charter school funding laws previously adopted by the D.C. Council as emergency
or temporary measures (which are valid for less than a year). Most importantly, the
D.C. Council should make permanent amendments that enable earlier and more
frequent payments to charter schools (including a quarterly payment on the July
15th before the school year begins based on projected enrollment).
• Enable the chartering authorities to reject enrollment estimates that are clearly
inaccurate. Because the first quarterly payment is made before the school year
begins, it is based on each school’s estimated enrollment. The chartering
authorities should be granted express legal authority to reject such estimates if
clearly inaccurate.
• The CFO should better describe the enrollment information that the charter
schools must report in order to receive disbursements, and should provide to the
charter schools more documentation with each disbursement explaining how the
amount was derived.
• Improve the audit process by providing a method for the charter schools to
respond to the auditor’s draft findings. Under the current system, schools are not
given an opportunity to provide supplemental information or appeal the auditors’
preliminary findings.
* * *
DC Appleseed believes that this report, while not addressing every systemic issue affecting
217
charter schools, can promote improved public education governance. We prepare this
217
Among the significant issues not addressed in this report are challenges charter schools face in gaining
access to adequate school building and the conversion of traditional public schools to charter status. Policy
issues regarding the challenges of addressing the capital and facilities needs of DCPS and charter schools are
of considerable concern to the educational community. DC Appleseed did not focus on those issues both
because of the ongoing effort by DCPS to develop a master facilities plan for the public schools and the fact
141
report as neither an advocate for nor an opponent of charter schools, but rather as an
advocate of a quality public education system. In light of the increasingly significant role
that charter schools play in public education in the District, increased attention is
appropriate to ensure that these schools provide quality educational opportunities. The
changes recommended in this report should further that goal.
Two years after the Appleseed evaluation, Mark Schneider and Jack Buckley conducted research
comparing parent satisfaction with DC charter schools and non-charter schools. If parent satisfaction
is an appropriate measure, the DC charters were more successful than non-charter schools in meeting
parent expectations for their children’s schools.
Document #18: Mark Schneider (SUNY Stony Brook) and Jack Buckley (Boston
College), “Making the Grade: Comparing DC Charter Schools to Other DC Public
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Schools,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 25:2 (Summer 2003)
Abstract: Across the United States, charter schools have become one of the most
frequently used means of increasing choice among educational alternatives. In this article
we use data from a recent telephone survey of Washington D.C. parents to evaluate the
success of the District’s large and growing charter school program. We find that parents
with children in charter schools rate their teachers, principals, facilities and schools higher
than their traditional public counterparts. This finding is robust even when controlling for
self-selection into charter schools. Based on these empirical results, we argue that the
greater satisfaction with charter schools reflected in these differences in grades is not simply
the result of the act of choosing.
In this article we study parental evaluation of traditional public schools and charter schools
in Washington, DC, a city with a large and growing charter school population. Using
survey data, we find that parents with children in charter schools rate their teachers,
principals, facilities, and schools higher than their traditional public school counterparts.
Using a variety of techniques, we show that this finding is robust even when controlling
for self-selection into charter schools.
The importance of parent satisfaction with charter schools is of considerable importance to

current debates about educational reform. Across the United States, charter schools have
become one of the most frequently used tools in the nation’s quest to improve education
by increasing choice among educational alternatives. As discussed in more detail later,
according to its advocates, choice will lead to many benefits that flow from a market-like
approach to education. In turn, higher “parent/ consumer” satisfaction with schools of
that, during the period in which this report was researched and written, there were ongoing negotiations
and substantial changes in the rules and procedures for providing charter schools with access to D.C.
government property. The sunset of the Control Board and revisions made by the D.C. Council to the
rules governing conversions have minimized the need to review further the conversion procedures at this
time.
218
The work reported in this article was begun with support from the Smith Richardson Foundation and has
continuing support from the National Science Foundation. Thanks to Dann Millimet for suggestions
regarding the propensity score model.
142
choice is one of the cornerstones upon which arguments for the expansion of choice is
built.
Appearing first in the early 1990s and gathering momentum throughout the decade,
charter schools have played an increasingly prominent role in the public education system.
As of January 2003, there were almost 2,700 charter schools operating in 36 states (and the
District of Columbia) educating over 684,000 students (Center for Educational Reform,
219
2003).
One apparent reason for the growth in enrollments is that parents and students think
charter schools are better than the traditional public schools in which they were previously
enrolled. Finn et al. (1997) found that a large majority of parents felt that charter schools
in which their children were enrolled were better than the traditional public schools they
left, with respect to class size, school size, teacher attentiveness, and the quality of
instruction and curriculum. In contrast, less than 5 % of parents found their new charter
schools inferior. Finn et al. also found high levels of student satisfaction across the entire
gamut of school attributes, including teachers, technology, class size, and curriculum.
Teachers also seem to like charter schools, with high levels of satisfaction found among
charter teachers (Koppich, Holmes, & Plecki, 1998).
There are several possible foundations for this greater satisfaction with charter schools.
Perhaps the strongest is that of “allocative efficiency”—education is a complex,
multifaceted “good,” and choice allows parents to select schools that deliver the kind of
220
education they want for their children (Schneider, Teske, & Marschall 2000). This link
between choice and higher parent satisfaction dates at least as far back as Milton
Friedman’s original argument in favor of vouchers in the 1950s (Friedman, 1955).
In his pioneering work, Friedman made a strong case for consumer sovereignty, arguing
that higher levels of satisfaction with schools will flow from maximizing the freedom of
parents to choose schools. From this perspective, choice leads to higher parental evaluation
of choice schools because it increases the ability of parents to match their preferences for
specific values, needs or pedagogical approaches with the school. As Goldring and Shapira
(1993) put it:
“The family sovereignty position suggests choice leads to greater satisfaction in that it
accommodates individual family preferences, mainly in the areas of curricula, teaching
philosophy, and religion. Parents will be satisfied in exercising their fundamental right of
individual choice and freedom of belief about the best education for their children.”(p.
397. Also, for example, Coons & Sugarman 1978; Raywid, 1989).
219
There are many types of school reforms being implemented in the United States today, many of them
focused on expanding choice. Among the most popular are charter schools, which are publicly funded
schools of choice that typically have fewer restrictions and regulations governing their behavior. In return
for this greater freedom, they are supposed to be held more responsible for their performance. For a
discussion of the myriad types of choice reforms, see Schneider, Teske and Marschall (2000). More focused
on the differences between charter schools and vouchers,t he otherf ormo f choice that is widely discussed
today, see, for example, Gill et al. (2001); Hill, Lake and Celio (2002); or Peterson and Campbell (2001).
220
Many of the factors discussed here are associated with choice in general, and have not been developed
specifically for charter schools as a form of choice but clearly apply to the charter school option as well.
143
In addition to increasing this match between preferences and schools, choice may change
the schools themselves making better “products” available for parents to choose among.
Indeed, fundamental to the push for choice is the idea that choice unleashes competitive
pressure on the schools that makes them improve and charter schools are often seen as a
central tool to leverage 204 such change (see, e.g., Teske, Schneider, Buckley, & Clark.
2000; Gill et al., 2001).
While the debates still rage about the effect of choice on academic outcomes, there are
other outcomes from choice that are less contested and which can increase parental
evaluations. For example, many charter schools are designed to change the relationship
between administrators, teachers, parents and students, to create what Coleman( 1988)
refers to as “functioning communities.” In these communities, the tighter links from the
school to parents, families, and students is associated with better educational experiences
and all parties, including teachers, are more satisfied (Driscoll, 1993). This link underlies
the basic findings developed in the research on “effective schools,” which shows that good
interpersonal relations between members of the school community and shared beliefs and
values combine to promote good teaching and a positive learning environment (see
especially Byrk & Schneider, 2002).
Indeed, many charter schools have a culture (and sometimes even a written contract) that
provides parents opportunities to influence school management and to become more
involved with the processes of school governance and functioning (see, for example,
Peterson & Campbell 2001; Finn et al., 1997). To the extent that this does occur, parental
evaluations of their children’s’ schools may improve (Chubb & Moe, 1990; Raywid,
1989; Goldring & Shapira, 1993). It is also important to consider that choice seeks not
only to empower parents but also to change the role of students, making them more
central in the design of education programs and in the functioning of the schools. In short,
one goal of choice is to increase the attention paid by schools to student needs (Hill et al.,
1997). In turn, choice seems to improve student-teacher relations. For example, in her
study of the effects of choice, Driscoll (1993) found that choice students were more likely
to report “they got along well with teachers, that the quality of teaching was high, and
that teachers praised them and listened to them.” (p. 158). Finn et al. (1997) found that
large numbers of charter school students liked the “good teachers” in their schools, who,
according to these students, teach until they learn the material and who don’t let students
fall behind. To the extent that this behavioral change strengthens the ties between students
and teachers and increases the level of student satisfaction with the schools, parental
satisfaction with the schools should in turn increase.
Finally, choice may put pressure on administrators, teachers and staff to be more
“consumer friendly.” As Hassel (1999) observes: “charter schools cannot take their
‘customers’ for granted. Their very survival depends on the degree to which families
believe the schools are responding to family preferences and working hard to provide the
education they demand.” (p. 6; also see Teske et al., 2000). Thus rather than being
isolated from the demands of parents, the competitive pressures on charter schools should
increase their responsiveness to parent demands and responsiveness should lead to higher
evaluations.
144
What Is the Foundation for Greater Satisfaction?
While these are all strong reasons to believe that choice should lead to actual
improvements in schools that will in turn lead to higher evaluation of schools by parents,
there are two related possibilities that provide an alternative explanation.
First, the act of choice alone may increase satisfaction. For example, Erickson (1986)
argues that parents “who actively choose the schools which their children attend, from
among a variety of options, seem far more satisfied with their schools than are parents who
simply do the ‘normal’ thing, with little thought.” (p. 105; also see Goldring & Shapira,
1993). For Erickson, the causal mechanism underlying this relationship between choice
and satisfaction is related to the investment of energy and time that parents put into
choice. Given this investment, even if there are no visible reasons for choice to increase
satisfaction, many parents may seek to justify their choice and their investment of
resources by selectively gathering and interpreting information about performance and by
indicating increased satisfaction with their child’s school—viewing the school through
“rose colored glasses.” (Erickson, 1982).
Indeed, almost every study of schools of choice, regardless of type of choice and regardless
of evidence of improved performance (or lack thereof), has found higher levels of parent
satisfaction( see, for example, Bridge & Blackman, 1978; Moe, 2001; Peterson, 1998;
Witte, Bailey, & Thorn 1992 on vouchers; Bierlin, 1997 on charter schools, and
Schneider, Teske, & Marschall, 2000 on public school choice). Moe also finds that parents
who moved to “buy” good schools were more satisfied and argues,” residential choice—
the choice of specific neighborhoods or specific schools promotes greater satisfaction.”
(Moe, 2001, p. 84).
While this is an important argument, using a novel model first introduced as a correction
for differential item response in health surveys, Buckley (2002) finds empirical evidence
that, in fact, parents who have opted for charter schools in Washington, DC tend to be
tougher critics of school qia;out than their traditional public school counterparts. Rather
than wearing “rose colored glasses,” charter school parents may in fact be looking at their
schools with dark colored ones. Given that studies consistently find an increase in
satisfaction among choosers, Buckley’s evidence suggests that the quality choosers perceive
in their children’s schools would have to be even greater to overcome their tendency to be
more critical than other parents.
A second explanation for higher evaluations is that most choice plans are what Elmore
(1991) calls “option-demand” choice. In contrast to a system of “universal choice” where
all parents must choose, option demand choice consists of a two-stage process. First,
parents must “choose to choose”—that is, they must be dissatisfied enough with their
existing schools or be sufficiently attracted to an alternative to their neighborhood school
that they decide to exercise choice. Once they decide to choose, the parent then has to
select among the alternatives to find a school in which to enroll their child.
145
Given this two-stage process, the possibility of bias due to self-selection must be taken into
account when studying any outcomes of choice. That is, it is likely that the individuals
who choose to choose are not representative of the entire population of parents( see, for
example, Schneider, Teske, & Marschall, 2000) and the characteristics that are motivating
them to choose may affect their subsequent behavior and attitudes toward the schools. To
the extent this is true, simple comparisons of choosers and non-choosers are not accurate
and the higher evaluations of choice schools found among parents may be a function of
the factors that led them to choose in the first place. We address this source of bias in the
work that follows.
Are Differences in School Evaluations a Function of Self-Selection?
We asked a sample of parents in Washington, DC to assign letter grades ranging from A to

F for three different aspects of their child’s school: their child’s teacher, principal, and
221
school facilities. We also asked them to assign an overall grade to their child’s school.
In this article, our task is to assess the extent to which the higher evaluations of DC
charter schools we report are robust to the fact that charter schools are option-demand
systems of choice and therefore parents who choose to choose may be systematically
different than parents who have left their children in the traditional public schools. In the
next section, we test the robustness of differences in evaluations by developing three
increasingly complex models.
Model 1: The naïve model
In this simple model, we compare the mean grades assigned to each of the four aspects of
the schools we measured by charter school parents and parents with children in the
traditional public schools. We call this the naive model since it does not control for any
factors that may affect observed differences.
Model 2: A standard multivariate regression model
In this model, we take into account the fact that parental evaluation of schools may be
driven by both a host of individual level factors that have been shown to affect parent
attitudes toward schools, such as parent education levels and race, and by school-related
factors, such as the size of the school and the child’s grade level. In this model, we also
account for the fact that letter grades are not a continuous variable but rather an ordered
ranking: that is, while we know the A is better than B and B is better than C, we do not
know if the “distance” between A and B is the same as the distance between B and C.
Model 3: Controlling for the effects of self-selection
As noted, one of the most important problems plaguing comparison of choosers and
nonchoosers in an option-demand system of choice is the degree to which observed
differences in “outcomes” (in this case, school evaluations) are a function of the fact that
certain types of parents may be more likely to become choosers. Given this fundamental
problem, we are most concerned with the extent to which the patterns we observe are
221
See Appendix A for a description of the sample and response rates.
146
robust to controls for differences between parents who have chosen charter schools versus
the rest of the population. This problem is increasingly well-known to social scientists, and
a host of models have been developed to control for it. In this article, we use a propensity
score matching procedure that we detail later.
A caveat about using grades
Before proceeding with the analysis, we note that there is a well-known pattern when
using grades as measures of parent evaluations of schools—parents almost inevitably give
high grades to their children’s schools. For example, Phi Delta Kappa regularly asks a
sample of parents to grade their children’s schools. In 2001, 51% of parents gave their own
children’s schools either an A or a B—11% gave the grade of A, while 40% gave a B.
Note that the grades parents give to their own children’s school are higher than the grades
they assign to the nation’s schools as a whole (where only 23% gave grades of A or B).
However, we believe that this pattern is not important for our analysis, since we are
interested in comparing parents in the charter schools and the traditional public schools in
the same city and ultimately we do control for conditions that could affect parents in the
two sectors differently.
How Do Parents Grade Their Schools?

222
In Table 1, we report the mean scores for charter school parents and traditional DC
public school parents on each of the four aspects of schools (teachers, principals, facilities
and overall) with which we are concerned, and we report the significance of any observed
differences displayed for each of the three models we employed (the naive model, the
multivariate ordered probit model, and the propensity score matching model). We display
all these data in one table for ease of comparison across models, although we will discuss
the results by model and then compare across models.223
In the naïve comparison of means, our data confirm the pattern documented in other
studies: charter school parents in DC, like parents in other choice programs, evaluate their
child’s schools more highly than do parents in traditional public schools. The differences
across all four measures uniformly favor charter schools, ranging from about a gain of
about one fifth of a grade for charter school principals to about twice that for facilities. In
each of the measures, the differences between parents are significant at the .01 level.
222
The survey data are appropriately weighted for probability of inclusion and post-stratified on charter
enrollment due to intentional over sampling of this subpopulation. All the models estimated below use the
same weights
223
Exact question wording and the marginal responses are provided in Appendix B.
147
TABLE 1:
DC Charter School Parents Assign Higher Grades to Their Child’s School Than Do Parents
Whose Child is in a Traditional DC Public School
Dependent variable Model Charter Non-charter Difference in grade

Mean grade Mean grade
School grade 1. Naïve difference of means 3.31 3.01 .30**
2. Ordered probit (.06) (.04) (.07)
3.61 2.82 .40**
3. Propensity score matching (0.5) (.04) (.01)
3.30 2.82 .48**
(.12)
Teacher grade 1. Naïve difference of means 3.36 3.09 .26**

2. Ordered probit (.04) (.06) (.07)
3.65 3.37 .28**
3. Propensity score matching (.04) (.05) (.01)
3.35 2.97 .38**
(.12)
Facilities grade 1. Naïve difference of means 3.16 2.78 .38**
2. Ordered probit (.05) (.06) (.01)
3.46 3.09 .38**
3.15 2.71 .34**
(.12)
Principal grade 1. Naïve difference of means 3.42 3.19 .22**
2. Ordered probit (.04) (.06) (.07)
3.67 3.41 .27**
3.41 3.06 .34**
(.13)
Note. N=743 (402 charter, 341 non-charter)
Standard errors in parentheses
*p<.05, **p<.01 (two-tailed).
However, parent evaluations of schools are driven by many factors that could be affecting
this simple test. For example, parental satisfaction with schools tends to decrease with
education and is also affected by mobility and racial identification (Moe, 2001). In Model
2, we therefore look at the extent to which the difference noted so far hold up to the
introduction of such controls. And, as noted earlier, we take into account the nature of
dependent variable and use the ordered probit rather than the ordinary least squares
estimator. Specifically, we use the method of maximum likelihood to estimate separate
224
ordered probit models (Zavoina & McElvey, 1975). The covariates for which we
estimate coefficients are:
• charter school, coded 1 if the respondent’s child is in a DC charter school;
224
The ordered probit (or logit) model is a well-known extension of the simple dichotomous probit (logit)
econometric model of choice. For all of these models we report not only coefficient values but also the
estimated cutpoints (the way in which the data indicate that the logistic function should be partitioned
conditional on the data). Note that instead of fixing a cutpoint to identify our models, we instead choose to
fix the constant term at zero, thus allowing identification and the estimation of all cutpoints. For details, see
Greene (2000).
148
• a set of three dichotomous variables for self-reported race( Hispanic, White, other,
with African American the excluded and modal category);
• residential mobility (measured by two variables: the number of years the

respondent has lived in DC and the number of years the person has lived in her
current neighborhood);
• respondent’s years of schooling, and the squared value of this measure;
• whether or not the respondent was married;
• whether or not the respondent was employed;
• the frequency of church attendance, and
•
225
the grade the respondent assigned to the DC public schools in general.
The results of the three ordered probit analyses of school, teacher and facility grades are
presented in Table 2.
As Table 2 illustrates, the coefficient of the charter school covariate is significant for all
analyses—parents with children in charter schools rate their schools, their teachers, their
principals and their school’s facilities higher, even when controlling for a host of other
factors. However it is difficult to tell by simple inspection of a table of ordered probit
results exactly how much a given covariate matters or, in our case, the estimated
difference in means of evaluations for charter and non-charter parents.
To create these estimates, we use the method of stochastic simulation (King, Tomz, &
Wittenberg, 2000; Tomz, Wittenberg, & King, 2000) to estimate predicted probabilities
and use these to construct mean scores for charter school parents and traditional DC
public school parents that we displayed in Table 1. We find that once we introduce
controls, the differences between charter school 208 parents and DCPS parents on three of
the four measures become somewhat larger than in the naive model.
225
We include this measure as a control for general dissatisfaction with the schools, something that obviously
could confound satisfaction with one’s specific school. Since there is a possibility of endogeneity here (time
as a charter parent, for example, may change one’s overall rating of the system), we use an additional
measure of the length of time that the child has been in the school to divide the respondents into several
categories, then perform a Kruskal-Wallis (Kruskal & Wallis, 1952) nonparametric test on the equality of
distribution across these categories for both traditional and charter parents. Results suggest that the overall
DC schools grade can be considered an exogenous variable.
149
TABLE 2 Charter School Parents Assign Higher Grades Controlling for Other Factors: Results of
Ordered Probit Models
Variable School Grade Teacher Grade Facilities Grade Principal Grade

Charter school .59*** .52*** .54*** .45***
(.09) (.10) (.10) (.10)
White .03 .16 .40* .31
(.22) (.22) (.22) (.24)
Hispanic .38 -.24 .24 .05
(.26) (.25) (.22) (.19)
Other race .01 -.18 .15 .25
(.22) (.23) (.23) (.26)
Years in DC .02 .004 .018 .02*
(.01) (.01) (.012) (.01)
Years in neighborhood -.003 -.007 -.02** -.004
(.01) (.009) (.01) (.008)
Years of education -.16* -.05 -.07 -.11
(.10) (.10) (.10) (.08)
Education, squared .01* .001 .005 .004
(.004) (.004) (. 003) (.003)
Married .09 -.05 -.08 .002
(.11) (.12) (.12) (.12)
Church attendance .02 .01 -.02 -.03
(.03) (.03) (.03) (.03)
Employed .11 .01 -.07 -.01
(.15) (.15) (.14) (.15)
DC Schools grade .41*** .39*** .33*** .32***
(.06) (.06) (.06) (.07)
Cutpoint 1 -1.06 -1.59 -1.15 -1.65
Cutpoint 2 -1.04 -1.24 -0.53 -1.30
Cutpoint 3 -0.26 -0.50 0.38 -0.60
Cutpoint 4 .84 .61 1.23 .32
Log-likelihood -879.3 -853.8 -983.0 -840.0
Note: N=743 (402 charter, 341 non-charter)
Robust standard errors in parentheses
*p<.10, **p<.05, IIIp<.01(two-tailed
In Model 3, we test for the degree to which higher evaluations are robust to self-selection
effects. As we note above, results from quasi-experimental studies of the effects of public
policy (or other “treatments”) are potentially biased when the factors predicting self-
selection into the program (here, charter schools) are correlated with the outcome
measures (Maddala, 1983). One solution to this problem is the estimate of some form of
parametric “treatment effects” model, usually by means of a consistent two-step or full-
information maximum likelihood model (for a summary see Greene, 2000; Maddala,
1983). Here we instead use a semi-parametric estimator, propensity score matching, originally
introduced by Rosenbaum and Rubin (1983, 1985) in a biometric context and recently
applied in econometrics (e.g., Dehejia & Wahba 1998; Heckman, Ichimura, &Todd,
1997; List, Millimet, Fredriksson, & McHone, in press).
The logic underlying this method is to construct, from quasi-experimental data, a matched
set of treatment and control observations as if a true random-assignment experiment had
150
been conducted. By computing the propensities of the respondents to choose to undergo

the treatment and then matching individuals with identical scores in the treatment and
control groups, a new data set is constructed in which the treatment outcome is
exogenous to self-selection. The difference of means for the two groups can then be
estimated using several possible techniques. Propensity score matching has several
advantages over more familiar treatment effects models, such as relaxation of restrictive
parametric assumptions. Moreover, as Dehejia and Wahba (1998) argue, matching
provides estimates of the treatment effects more similar to randomized field trials than can
226
be obtained using other corrections for self-selection.
We follow Rosenbaum and Rubin (1983; 1985) and first estimate a probit model to
calculate predicted probabilities of a respondent having a child in a charter school, and
227
then use these values as the estimated propensity score for matching. Figure 1, below,
presents the distributions of the propensity scores, by charter and traditional enrollment, of
the observations we analyze.
Visual inspection of that figure shows a similar distribution, indicating that the matching
procedure is successful (Dehejia & Wahba, 1998); we also test that the treatment and
controls are balanced by examining the first and second moments of the respective
226
We should note that we did estimate other methods for controlling self-selection, and the results we
present are robust to alternative methods and to alternatives election equations.
227
We present the results of our probit model in Appendix C. While every “pretreatment” variable in the
equation is related to the propensity to choose, consistent with the demands of the propensity matching
procedure, our concern with this probit model is not testing theory but rather to obtain as good a fit as
possible. Also note that, due to the limited size of the control population, we sample with replacement,
conditional on propensity score.
151
distributions of their propensity scores (Becker & Ichino, 2002). After matching on
propensity score, we then compare the difference of mean evaluations of this matched set
of charter and non-charter parents with a t-test and report our results in Table 1.228 As
evident in Table 1, the differences between parents in the two sectors tend to be even
larger than in the other models and, again, are statistically significant.
The propensity score matching technique simulates experimental methods using the type
data more commonly collected by social science researchers. In the next section, we
present a final comparison that approaches the “gold standard” of controlled experiments
from a direction other than the statistical approach of propensity score matching.
Comparing Charter School Parents with Parents Who Sought but Were Denied
Access
In a well-known series of studies of the effects of voucher programs, Peterson and his
colleagues (see, e.g., Greene 2000; Howell & Peterson 2000) randomly assign parents who
have applied for vouchers to a “treatment condition” in which parents are given vouchers
and to a “control condition” in which parents who sought vouchers are denied them.
Since all the parents in these experiments have sought vouchers and their assignment to
the treatment and experimental group is randomized, ideally the factors that contaminate
so much social science evaluation work, including differences in motivation to seek the
“treatment,” cancel out.229
Peterson’s ability to even attempt random assignment was the result of a unique set of
conditions, including the fact that the voucher programs he studied were privately
financed. Most education reforms do not present researchers this type of opportunity, and
given that charter schools are publicly financed and popular among parents and policy
makers alike, a carefully constructed randomized field trial is unlikely. However, given
that the demand for charter schools in Washington, DC exceeds supply and that charter
schools facing excess demand conduct lotteries, there is a population whose motivation to
choose charter schools is at the same level of charter school parents (that is, both sets of
parents have chosen to choose), but who through the luck of the draw were denied access
to charter schools. In our random sample of parents whose child was in the traditional DC
public schools approximately 13% of the parents said that they had tried to enroll their
child in a charter school but failed. While not as elegant as a fully controlled experiment,
we believe that the comparison of charter school parents (who received the “treatment”)
and these other parents who sought the treatment but were denied access presents yet
another way of controlling for the motivation to choose.
In Table 3, we compare the mean grades assigned by these two groups of parents. Table
entries are the predicted values of charter parents versus parents denied access controlling
228
Since the propensity scores are estimated quantities, we correct the standard errors via bootstrapping the
entire estimation 1,000 times for each analysis.
229
There have been well-known and very intense debates about how well this design has been implemented
and about he effects of vouchers, but the value of randomized field trials remains unquestioned
152
for race, education, and the other variables we have employed throughout our analysis.230
We see once again that charter school parents uniformly grade all dimension of their
schools higher than the control group.
TABLE 3 Charter School Parents Grade Their Schools Higher Than Parents Who Tried to Enroll
Their Child in Charter Schools but Were Denied Access
Dependent variable Charter Parents Parents Denied Access Difference in grade

Mean grade Mean grade
School grade 3.20 2.59 .61
.11 .21 .03
Teacher grade 3.37 2.86 .51
.12 .18 .03
Facilities grade 3.12 2.48 .64
.13 .19 .03
Principal grade 3.43 3.06 .37
.19 .21 .04
Note. Number of observations = 450 (402 charter, 48 denied access parents). Entries in the “mean grade”
cells are predicted values using stochastic simulation of a model regressing grade assigned on the status of the
parent (enrolled in charter school, tried to enroll but denied access), race, residential mobility, employments
tatus,m aritals tatus,c hurcha ttendancea nde ducationala ttainment, ando veralle valuationo f DC public
schools. All controlling covariates are set to their mean or modal (for categorical variables) values for
prediction.S tandarde rrorsi n parentheses. pvalues for the differencesi n means are < .01.
While we acknowledge that this comparison, while removing some biases due to self-
selection, may introduce new problems if some of the parents denied access are
disgruntled with their experience and this affects their judgments. Nevertheless, we
believe that the comparison is a useful one—natural experiments such as this are extremely
fortuitous and offer another method of triangulating on whether or not true differences in
attitudes exist between these groups of parents. Our results lend further support to the
argument that the higher evaluations offered by charter school parents are not simply a
function of the motivation to choose or of demographic characteristics.
The Foundation for Higher Evaluations Is Stronger Than the Act of Choice
Alone
In this research we asked parents in Washington, DC to evaluate their children’s schools

using familiar letter grades. We then compared these grades across parents whose children
are enrolled in the DC charter schools with those among parents whose children remained
in the traditional DC public schools. We found that, across each aspect of schools we
measured, parents in the DC charter schools evaluated their child’s school more highly
than did parents in the traditional DC public schools. We employed a series of models of
varying statistical complexity to assess the extent to which these findings are robust.
230
If we believed that the lottery process was perfectly random, these types of controls would be unnecessary.
However, despite their greater control over the assignment process, Peterson and his colleagues often
control for these kinds of demographic factors. In fact, the magnitude, direction, and significance of these
differences are virtually unchanged using the “raw” numbers.
153
We found strong evidence that parents in the DC charter schools evaluate each and every
dimension of their schools we measured significantly higher than other parents. These
differences withstand tests for the likelihood that parents who choose charter schools may
be systematically different than parents whose children stay enrolled in traditional public
schools and that those differences might account for the higher evaluation of charter
schools.
We believe that our data show that the act of choice alone is not behind the higher
satisfaction and higher evaluations we found for charter schools. Obviously we do not
know if our results will generalize perfectly to choice populations beyond Washington
DC but many of our methods can be easily applied to existing and new studies of parental
evaluation of schools of choice. To the extent that other research confirms that there is a
foundation for the higher evaluations parents give to schools of choice independent of
who is choosing and beyond the act of choosing itself, the finding that choice increases
satisfaction, a finding that is central to the debate about school choice, will be moved to
far firmer ground.
Appendix A: Sample Design and Response Information
Telephone interviews were conducted among parents with at least one child in a
Washington, DC charter or public school. Interviews were conducted between September
12 and December 11, 2001. All interviews were conducted by the Center for Survey
Research at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. As a quality control
measure, up to 15 callbacks were made per number and an attempt was made to convert
all initial refusals. Almost 52% of all interviews were validated on a subsequent call after
the interview had been completed.
Sample Design
Parents were drawn from two distinct samples—an RDD sample of parents with children
in charter and public schools and a sample of parents from a list of charter school parents
provided by DC charter schools.
RDD sample
A list-assisted method of random-digit-dialing (RDD) was used to obtain phone numbers

in the main state sample. Numbers were purchased from Genesys. Under the list-assisted
sampling method, random samples of telephone numbers are selected from blocks of 100
telephone numbers that are known to contain at least one listed residential telephone
number. These blocks with at least one residential telephone number are referred to as “1-
plus” working blocks. According to Survey Sampling Inc. roughly 40% of telephone
numbers in 1-plus working blocks are residences, although percentages are as high as 54%
when the blocks are screened for nonworking and business numbers.
Charter school
154
A sample of charter school parents was drawn from a list of parents in 30 DC charter
schools. Not all numbers provided by the schools were valid and numbers that lacked the
appropriate number of digits were eliminated prior to sampling. This left a total of 7,389
valid phone numbers for charter school parents. Response Rates RDD sample A total of
24,000 numbers were drawn from 1plus blocks for the main state sample. Of those,
Genesys screened out 5,214 or 21.73% as numbers that it detected as nonworking or listed
in directories of known business numbers. This left 18,786 numbers that were actually
dialed by the Center for Survey Research. Just over 46% of all these numbers (N = 8,734)
were coded as non-households. This includes all numbers coded as disconnected, a
business, government office, fax, changed number or cell phone. It also includes 1,550
numbers estimated as non-households. These 1,550 numbers are drawn from all numbers
that were called 15 times and at which there was ever only a busy signal or no answer (but
no answering machine). Based on research by Westat, we estimate that 75% of these
numbers are non-households. This number is based on national estimates. There were
2,067 numbers in this category and 1,550 were estimated to be nonworking numbers.
This left 9,956 possible households in the sample of phone numbers. Of the remaining
households, 6,523 (a total of 941 parents plus 5,582 non-parents or non-DC parents) were
successfully screened for the presence or absence of children in DC public or charter
schools. This resulted in a screening rate of 62.81% for parenting status obtained by
dividing the number of DC parent plus nonparent households by the total number of
households in the sample. The total number of parenting households in DC is estimated at
922 or 14.13 % of all screened households. This number omits 264 (245 nonparents and
19 not in DC) households that were coded in at least one contact attempt as parents in
DC but were later recoded as nonparents. The status of these numbers is ambiguous and
could reflect the actions of respondents to avoid an interview. If all of these numbers are
included (probably an overestimate) the incidence of parents in the sample increases to
18.18%.
Of those households identified as obtaining a parent of a child in a DC school (N = 922),

interviews were completed in 504 resulting in a cooperation rate of 54.66%. This results
in an overall response rate in the sample of 34.33%. This response rate is calculated by
combining the screening rate for parenting households (62.81%) with the cooperation rate
among households identified as parents of children in DC schools (54.66%).
Charter school sample
Charter school parents were drawn from a list of names provided by 30 charter schools in
the DC areas. The sample was self-weighting which means that unequal numbers of
parents were drawn from each school. The number of parents selected from a school was
directly proportional to the size of the school in relation to all charter school parents in
DC. Thus more parents were chosen from large school and fewer from small schools. This
ensures that the final sample represents parents in charter schools across the DC area. The
sampling fraction was 29.63% or just under a third; parents were drawn in successive
random waves from the lists. There were 7,389 parents listed (after bad numbers were
culled from the lists) and 2,189 numbers were included in the sample.
155
Of the total 2,189 numbers, just over 23% of all numbers (N= 522) were coded as non-
households. This includes all numbers coded as disconnected, a business, government
office, fax, changed number or cell phone. It also includes six numbers estimated as non-
households. These six numbers are drawn from all numbers that were called 15 times and
at which there was only a busy signal or no answer (but no answering machine). There
were 24 numbers in this category and 18 (75%) were estimated to be nonworking
numbers.
This leaves 1,667 possible households in the sample of phone numbers. Of the remaining
households, 1,321 (a total of 811 parents plus 441 nonparents and 69 non-DC parents)
were successfully screened for the presence or absence of children in DC public or charter
schools. Given the messy status of the sample, we assumed that numbers were not
associated with parents of students in charter schools until an interviewer verified this.
This resulted in a screening rate of 79.24% for parenting status, obtained by dividing the
number of DC parent plus non-parent households by the total number of households in
the sample.
Of those households identified as containing a parent of a child in a DC school (N = 811),

interviews were completed in 510 resulting in a cooperation rate of 62.89%. This results
in an overall response rate in the main sample of 49.83%. This response rate is calculated
by combining the screening rate for parenting households (79.24%) with the cooperation
rate among households identified as parents of children in DC schools (49.83%). Appendix
B: Survey Questions and Responses Here we present the question wording for the grade
questions, as well as the raw (unweighted or otherwise adjusted) response percentages for
the three comparison groups discussed earlier. As noted, the number of observations is 402
charter, 341 non-charter, and 48 denied access. The four school grades were asked
sequentially in the same battery of questions introduced with: “First, we are interested in
finding out what you think about [respondent’s child’s name]’s school?” “Children get
grades all the time in school. But how would you grade [respondent’s child’ s name]’s
school?”
TABLE B1
School Grade (%)
Charter Non-charter Denied Access

A 48 39 33
B 39 36 33
C 9 17 15
D 3 5 8
F 1 4 10
156
“How would you grade [respondent’s child’s name]’s teachers?”
TABLE B2
Teacher Grade (%)

A 52 43 35
B 33 36 33
C 12 14 21
D 2 5 4
F 2 3 6
“What about the school building itself. What grade would you give it?”
TABLE B3
Facilities Grade (%)

A 49 33 23
B 28 29 27
C 16 24 31
D 5 9 15
F 3 4 4
“How would you grade the principal?”
TABLE B4
Principal Grade (%)

A
B
C
D
F
157
Appendix C: Results of Probit Model Used for Propensity Score Matching
Variable Coefficient
(SE)
White -2.22
(.53)
Hispanic -0.32
(.36)
Other race -0.44
(.36)
Years lived in DC .01
(.02)
Years lived in neighborhood -.003
(.01)
Married .04
(.18)
Years of education 1.27
(.39)
Years of education squared -.04
(.01)
Employed .10
(.19)
Church attendance -.06
(.04)
DC school grade -.35
(.07)
Constant -10.38
(.08)
Log-likelihood -235.04
Probability > chi-square >.01
Percent correctly predicted 93.2%
Note: Number of Observations = 743
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● ● ●
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Epilogue:
On January 2, 2007 37-year-old Adrien Fenty became the youngest person to have served as mayor
of Washington, D.C., and among the youngest mayors in the country. Soon after his inauguration
he made known his intention to seek mayoral control over the DC Public Schools and, in preparation
for doing so, spent time with Richard Daley in Chicago and Michael Bloomberg in New York City.
Although Fenty’s proposed reorganization of Washington school governance has yet to receive the
blessing of Congress, he is moving forward rapidly to revamp the system. Alex Hemmer describes the
process for us.
Document #19: Alex Hemmer, “The Pride of His City? Adrian Fenty and Mayoral
Leadership in the Washington, D.C. Public Schools,” Unpublished paper for PLSC260,
“Public Schools, Politics and Policy,” Yale University, December 2007.
1. Jonathan
Jonathan Lewis is nineteen years old. In 2000, he was an average twelve-year-old: a

mentor to his friends with a B average, he won first place at his sixth-grade science fair.
He sang with the D.C. Boys Choir and played Little League. Today, Jonathan mostly
hangs with friends. He shops, watches music videos and plays video games. He started
with “Super Mario Bros.” and graduated to “Grand Theft Auto.” Now he’ll play
“Madden NFL” four hours a day. He doesn’t get high, but he smokes Newports, and his
vodka of choice is Belvedere.
In May, for the second time in two years, Jonathan sat out his high-school
commencement exercises. On the day that his mayor officially took over Washington,
D.C.’s ailing public schools, Jonathan’s friends—members of the Calvin Coolidge Senior
High School Class of 2007—crossed the stage that yawned between them and their
respective futures. Some miles away, sitting at home, Jonathan played “Madden” while his
mother filled out an application for summer school.
Over the course of several months in early 2007, Washington Post reporter Lonnae O’Neal
Parker followed Jonathan around Coolidge, transposing his story into the pages of the
newspaper, a living example of the ways in which D.C. schools fail D.C. children, and
231
vice versa. Jonathan told Parker he could see his future clearly: graduation, college,
business. But what Jonathan’s story suggests, and what decades of statistics can only begin
to describe, is that the social contract between students and schools has been broken in all
kinds of ways in the District of Columbia. Today, a system that has been struggling for
over forty years is in the first throes of a much-needed overhaul. It is too late for Jonathan
Lewis, largely; his story has been told. But there are 60,000 more, though that number
drops each year.
Coolidge is in many ways a microcosm of D.C.’s failing schools: In 2006, it was neither
the District’s best high school nor its worst, but it is full of hope and frustration all the
same. Built in 1940 in Northwest Washington, Coolidge gained a solid academic
reputation and became a school of choice for the black middle class after desegregation. I.
231
Lonnae O’Neal Parker, “Will Jonathan Graduate?” Washington Post, November 10, 2007.
161
Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s lawyer graduated from Coolidge, as did one federal and two
Superior Court judges. The citywide graduation rate is about 60 percent, but roughly
three-quarters of Coolidge seniors have graduated each of the past three years. Generations
of alumni cheer at Coolidge sporting events and donate time and money.
But by 2005, the school had entered a decline. With the proliferation of charter schools,
enrollment had slipped to the 600s after at one point topping 1,000. Although Coolidge is
in a solidly middle-class area, more than half of its students come from out-of-boundary,
drawn by athletics or fleeing bad schools in their neighborhoods. More than half of the
students receive free or reduced-cost lunches. And there were physical problems: leaking
roofs, asbestos, no central air or heat. Most clocks were broken.
A new principal, a Coolidge graduate himself, hired eight new teachers that year—four
D.C. Teaching Fellows and four Teach For America corps members. This fall, Coolidge
232
had uniforms, six new AP classes, a parent-teacher resource center and a new track.
Such progress—raising standards, developing resources, and renovating facilities—is at the
heart of a push towards fixing the District’s schools once and for all, a push spearheaded by
D.C.’s new mayor, the brash, populist Adrian Fenty, 37 years old. In the mold of
Chicago’s Richard Daley and New York’s Michael Bloomberg, Fenty has staked his
political reputation on the postulate that the District’s ailing public schools can be fixed
through a combination of grit and management. Fenty’s story is one of a political success,
if an uneven one; over the course of 2006 and 2007, he navigated the racially charged
waters of the District of Columbia to build the consensus needed to personally shoulder
the responsibility for its schools.
But Fenty’s fledgling reform raises questions about the relationship of those politics to the
policies he and his controversial new schools chancellor must design and build, all the
while maintaining the forward motion needed to keep a tentative political coalition alive.
Surrounding this balancing act are broader questions of the viability of mayoral control as
a tool for reforming schools, questions that likely cannot be answered with the rough draft
of Fenty’s history. In a school system worn down by waves of change, Fenty’s process has
been a passionate, reflective one, marked by its successes and its failures. To investigate it is
to examine both politics and policy through the lens of Jonathan Lewis, emblematic of the
students who pass through the District’s schools each year and sometimes never emerge.
2. Four Decades of Failed Reform
Adrian Fenty took over the Washington, D.C., school system in June 2007, a short five
months after he was sworn in as the District’s youngest-ever mayor. The New Republic’s
Peter Beinart would call him a ‘new Progressive’: popular, with an ideology of
pragmatism and the core conviction that “cities can dramatically alleviate seemingly
233
endemic urban afflictions without a massive redistribution of wealth.” Beinart’s article
about the ‘pride of the cities’ traces its roots to the late 1990s and cities with more stable
232
Lonnae O’Neal Parker, “For Jonathan Lewis, It’s Fourth and Goal,” Washington Post, November 12,
2007.
233
Peter Beinart. “The pride of the cities.” The New Republic.
162
political traditions; Fenty’s rhetoric is populist rather than technocratic, bearing the marks
of a history in which the District of Columbia’s residents have felt more oppressed than
empowered, and his approach seems designed to keep him on a shorter leash than his
peers’. Such, perhaps, are the scars of Washington, D.C.’s tumultuous history.
Reforming the District’s schools, though, is a task that would daunt even the most adroit
of Beinart’s new Progressives, men (thus far) for whom pragmatism is ideology. Earlier this
year, a team of Washington Post researchers sifted through NEAP data to develop
conclusions about the District’s public schools as specifically compared to their urban
234
equals. The results are stunning: Washington, D.C. public school students score at the
bottom among 11 major city school systems, even when poor children are compared only
with the poor children of those areas. The District spends $12,979 per pupil each year,
ranking it third-highest among the 100 largest districts in the nation; more shockingly,
anecdotal and quantitative accounts suggests that most of that money never reaches the
classroom. In 2006, just over half of teenage students attended schools that meet the
District’s definition of “persistently dangerous” because of the number of violent crimes.
Fenty’s ascent is a remarkable one, as are the challenges he faces in turning around a public
school system plagued by problems—abysmal test scores, dysfunctional management
systems, decaying buildings—that have been identified and targeted, but never corrected,
by one would-be reformer after another. The District’s grim educational history is full of
political stagnation and opposition, but also of good-hearted attempts at reform that simply
went nowhere.
th
Once, in the early part of the 20 century, the District of Columbia was regarded as
having a model urban school system. In the aftermath of Brown v. Board, though, large-
scale white flight destabilized the system, and the de facto re-segregation of D.C. schools
that quickly occurred caused it to unravel.235 The emerging consensus among the city’s
largely African-American population, disenfranchised for decades by the federal
government and now offered a paltry bone of a Supreme Court decision, was that the
schools had been better off segregated, when black leaders had made decisions for black
schoolchildren. In June 1967, a federal judge finally ordered the District’s white-
dominated, federally appointed school board to halt practices that discriminated against
African American children. “I think this means a bright future for the poor black boys and
girls in the school system,” a jubilant Julius Hobson, the civil rights leader who initiated
236
the lawsuit that led to the ruling, said at the time. He soon joined the District’s first
elected school board.
But the bright future that Hobson envisioned was not to be, for reasons that demonstrate
the District’s heartbreaking history of racial and political rifts. In 1968, D.C. residents were
allowed for the first time in the twentieth century to elect representatives to a local
governing body, the school board. It took six years for Washingtonians to earn the right
to elect their own mayor and city council, and in that time—particularly for D.C.
234
Dan Keating and V. Dion Haynes. “Can D.C. Schools Be Fixed?” The Washington Post, June 10, 2007.
235
Steven J. Diner. Crisis of Confidence: The Reputation of Washington’s Public Schools in the Twentieth Century.
Washington, D.C.: University of the District of Columbia.
236
Burt Solomon. The Washington Century (New York: William Morrow, 2004), 165.
163
African-Americans—the board became the only conceivable instrument of democratic

237
control, and the only determinant of political clout, patronage, and social status. As
corruption trickled into the system, rifts began to emerge—between the board and the
council, the board and the federal government, and most noticeably between the D.C.
intelligentsia and the lower- and middle-class residents.238
In the 1980s, national reports on urban schools spurred a reform movement. A group of
64 District business and community leaders released a comprehensive study in 1989 of
deteriorating conditions in the schools. 239 The D.C. Committee on Public Education, or
COPE, made sweeping recommendations, from auctioning off underused properties to
lengthening the school day. More significantly, the group of community leaders criticized
the District’s decade-old curriculum, one of the first in the nation to detail and test what
children should know at each grade level, as outmoded. It was abandoned—but not
replaced. For the next fifteen years, the District lacked a comprehensive plan for how to
teach and test core subjects such as reading and math, and the schools only deteriorated.
Attempts at reforms proliferated, but few seemed to have any impact. In the 1990s, a
lawsuit intended to pressure District politicians to pay for fixing fire code violations instead
led to the shutdown of schools and contributed to the departures of two
240
superintendents. Lawsuits meant to push the schools to better serve special education
students wound up forcing the system to spend about $120 million a year to pay private
tuition for 2,400 students out of a system of 55,000, plus $75 million for special education
transportation. That left less money to fix the inadequate special education programs that
241
sparked the lawsuits in the first place.
In 2000, D.C. voters narrowly approved a referendum radically altering the structure and
mode of selection of the city’s school board, giving then-mayor Anthony Williams a
stronger formal role in school governance. As in several other large cities that had moved
in that direction—and as his successor, Adrian Fenty, would echo six years later—
Williams’ rationale for restructuring was framed in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, and
accountability. But the vote was anything but unanimous, exhibiting a sharp racial
cleavage that Columbia political scientist Jeffrey Henig quantified by comparing the “yes”
vote to the racial composition of 150 city precincts. The two variables displayed a
correlation of 0.95: the more heavily African-American the precinct, the more likely its
residents were to vote “no” on the referendum granting Williams a modicum of control
over the board.242
The reconstituted school board met with mixed success: Over its six-year lifespan (it was
essentially obviated by Fenty’s 2007 reform bill) the board witnessed the arrival and
departure of three superintendents. The consulting firm McKinsey and Co. was called in
237
Jeffrey R. Henig. “Washington, D.C.: Race, Issue Definition, and School Board Restructuring,”in
Mayors In The Middle: Politics, Race, and Mayoral Control of Urban Schools, ed. Jeffrey R. Henig and Wilbur C.
Rich (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 199.
238
Ibid.
239
April Witt, “Worn Down by Waves of Change,” The Washington Post, June 11, 2007.
240
Ibid.
241
Ibid.
242
Henig, 194.
164
twice to develop comprehensive management reform plans; the first was never
implemented. Henig suggests that the starkly divided results of the 2000 referendum
explain a certain degree of stagnation associated with the restructured board; as Rudolph
W. Giuliani would attest, too, hybrid boards have a peculiar habit of serving too many
243
masters to be accountable to any. Interestingly, though, Henig also postulates that the
results themselves are explained by the differing ways in which Washington’s Caucasian
and African-American communities viewed the city’s history as explained by its
messengers of change:
The key, instead, appears to lie in the credibility and trustworthiness of the
message and messengers as differently judged by different sectors of the
audience. And, while the race of the listeners was a powerful determinant of
response, the race of the messengers ultimately was less critical than the extent
to which their narrative aligned with familiar and compelling beliefs and the personal
244
legitimacy they could claim by virtue of their own past records.
Henig’s primary target is Fenty’s direct predecessor as mayor, the bow-tie-clad Anthony
Williams, who had labored in obscurity as the city’s treasurer under previous mayors. For
many of D.C.’s louder African-American voices, Williams, who was not a Washington
native, felt inauthentic; Henig argues that he was unable to tell the District’s story in a way
that would allow him to build the political consensus needed to reshape the schools. That
task would have to fall to a more credible, connected source: Adrian Fenty.
3. Fenty
Fenty was 34 years old when he announced his bid for the mayoralty, the youngest
candidate for that position in thirty years of D.C. home rule. By the time he ran for
mayor, he had served the District’s fourth ward as its elected representative for just over
four years, developing a reputation as a highly responsive ward politician and a charismatic
figure, as comfortable in the poor, black neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River as in
the white, wealthy ones west of Rock Creek Park. Fenty cast himself as an engaged and
energetic politician dedicated to a “vision of a better, more inclusive city,” who would
245
prioritize the urban poor—and fix their public schools.
As the mayoral race progressed, it quickly became clear that education had soared to the
top of the city’s political agenda. In a survey put out by Fenty’s office, almost 60 percent
of those polled said education was the city's biggest problem, followed by housing at a
distant second.246 Fenty and his chief rival, city council chair and establishment candidate
Linda Cropp, rose to the challenge, developing plans that each called for some version of a
mayoral takeover. Cropp’s was ameliorative in intent, in some ways similar to the New
Jersey state government’s approach to its own failing schools: She proposed to ask the
council and Congress for authority to take over public schools whose test scores dropped
below federal standards five years in a row. Fenty’s was perhaps more remarkable not for
its content but for the degree to which it sought to emulate his would-be peers: “If you
243
Henig, 210.
244
Henig, 209, emphasis mine.
245
Lori Montgomery, “It’s Official: Fenty Is Running For Mayor,” The Washington Post, June 2, 2005.
246
Lori Montgomery, “Education Becoming Top Issue For D.C.,” The Washington Post, May 26, 2006.
165
do it, you do it the Bloomberg model,” Fenty told the Post, “where you establish [a]
247
department of education and run the system.”
This tendency to seek out best practices, to actively and publicly develop policies based on
successful equivalents in other cities, would prove to be one of Fenty’s hallmarks as a
leader. Beinart, in his New Republic piece ten years prior, cites it as a characteristic of what
he describes as a ‘new Progressive’ mayor:
They speak to each other regularly, they cite each other without prompting,
they copy each other’s initiatives. In almost every case, they represent a radical
break with their predecessors in office, and that break is largely about
managing city government efficiently in the public interest rather than using it
248
as a mechanism for arbitrating competing group interests.
And Fenty was doing so in an increasingly public way: Even as a candidate, he grew
accustomed to informing the Post of upcoming trips to other cities, inviting reporter Lori
Montgomery to Baltimore on the first stop of an erstwhile listening tour. “I believe all the
key issues remaining in the D.C. government can be solved with aggressive follow-
through,” Fenty told Montgomery, standing in front of machinery that Baltimore Mayor
Martin O’Malley used to track the progress of individual agencies.249 Beinart would
certainly have nodded his assent.
Fenty’s leadership benefited at least in part from his opponents’ progressivism. At a debate
over education in August 2006, he came off as more moderate than his eventual record
would suggest. Fenty suggested that, if elected, he would appoint a deputy mayor for
education, and eventually seek to close or restructure underperforming schools—hallmarks
of the mayoral takeover, but significantly less radical steps than those proposed by two of
his rivals. Cropp went further, promising that she would not seek a second term as mayor
if a schools turnaround failed; council member Vincent B. Orange, Sr., announced that he
would seek a full takeover of the school system. Fenty came off as progressive, but not
radical; meanwhile, the terms of the debate began to shift towards immediate change.
Washington is an overwhelmingly Democratic city; when Fenty won a decisive victory

over Cropp in the September party primary, it was widely and correctly assumed that he
would coast to the mayor’s office in November. Fenty’s victory was largely attributed to
three factors: the door-to-door campaigning he had dedicated himself to for 15 months,
the widespread perception that he would bring principles of accountability and
pragmatism to City Hall, and what had become, by that time, an almost single-minded
250
focus on reforming the District’s ailing public schools.
On the heels of his primary victory, Fenty began to signal that he was contemplating a
more sweeping transformation of the school system than he had previously discussed. D.C.
voters, he told the Post, “want to see the next mayor do more than ‘tinkering around the
247
Ibid.
248
Beinart, 16.
249
Lori Montgomery, “For Guidance, Fenty Turns To A Neighbor,” The Washington Post, August 3, 2006.
250
David Nakamura, “Fenty Overpowers Cropp In Contest for Mayor,” The Washington Post, September 13,
2006.
166
edges.’”251 Doing so would spark an inevitable but unspoken conflict with the current
superintendent, Clifford R. Janey, hired only two years prior and lauded for his efforts to
develop the District’s first set of learning and accountability standards since those
discredited in the 1980s. But Janey was also criticized for a collegial style that bordered on
indecisive, and a predilection for developing rather than implementing his ideas. Fenty,
hardly known for his even temper, had criticized Janey in the past for moving too
slowly.252
It was becoming increasingly clear that the 58,000-student system was in a state of crisis.
In 2005, only 19 percent of city schools—28 of 146, and five of 40 charter schools—had
met the modest reading and math standards of the No Child Left Behind Act. Worse, the
system was leaking: A combination of strong private and suburban schools and a
burgeoning system of charters had reduced the student population—and with it, the
federal funding—from 80,000 in the late 1990s to 58,000 at the time of Fenty’s election,
with many of the defections representing the city’s most promising students. And Fenty
was growing increasingly certain—buttressed in large part by the advice of New York’s
Joel Klein, who would eventually pen a Post op-ed supporting him—that mayoral control
was the beginning of the solution. In an ironic twist for the education board that had once
seemed the city’s only source of political clout, voters approached the booth in November
253
uncertain if their elected school board representatives would ever cast votes at all.
On the eve of Fenty’s November election, Post editorial board chair Fred Hiatt, writing
for himself, explored the heated topic of Fenty’s proposed takeover in a pair of columns.
Raising a chain of connected issues—speed, structure, ambition—Hiatt concluded by
focusing on the potential relationship between the decisive Fenty and the methodical
Janey: “Is there a marriage waiting to happen, in which the mayor infuses his sense of
urgency into the superintendent's measured reform plans? That may depend on the answer
to the biggest question of all: Once Fenty gets hold of the schools, what does he intend to
do with them?”254 One week later, Hiatt directed Fenty’s attention to Boston, where
Thomas Menino’s takeover attempt—operating on the principles of stable leadership,
mayoral commitment, and a smooth working relationship between mayor and schools
chief—had succeeded politically but had met with only modest achievements in the
classroom: “Only 16 percent of Boston's fourth-graders test proficient or better in reading,
255
and only 22 percent do so in math.”
In true form, Fenty responded by visiting Menino in Boston, signaling simultaneously a

willingness to engage with his critics (though Hiatt’s tone was hardly negative) and an
eagerness to address the policy ramifications of his takeover. It was a typical move:
Politically shrewd and managerially sound, Fenty was engaging all sides with the hope of
building consensus and developing best practices. Crucial to his attempts at bridge-
251
David Nakamura and Lori Montgomery, “Fenty Poised to Reach for D.C. School Reins,” The
Washington Post, September 17, 2006.
252
Ibid.
253
V. Dion Haynes, “D.C. Foes Fighting For Shaky Ground,” The Washington Post, October 8, 2006.
254
Fred Hiatt, “In Tackling Schools, Fenty Will Be Tested,” The Washington Post, October 23, 2006.
255
Fred Hiatt, “A Case Study For Washington’s New Mayor,” The Washington Post, November 6, 2006. It is
worth noting, as Hiatt does, that these numbers were a 10-percent improvement on Boston’s old scores, and
a 5-to-10-percent improvement on Washington’s current scores.
167
building was a rhetoric of local service: By planning a schools takeover, Fenty maintained,
he was responding the widely expressed will of his constituents. And in promising a role
in governance to the city council, giving members line-item control of the budget, he was
promising to share a key element of responsibility with his political rivals. In a way that his
predecessor had never been, Fenty was embodying what Michael Kirst describes as
sensitivity to “how local context and civic culture determine whatever outcomes
256
ensue.” In Henig’s terms, he was simply a better storyteller—and, as racially charged as
such an observation may be, he felt like a more genuine representative of an African-
American community with a troubled past.
Over the objections of newly elected school-board president Robert Bobb, Fenty’s
approach won the allegiance of a majority on the city council, and the approval of Hiatt
and the Post editorial board. Critics remained: Bobb, elected on a more conservative
change mandate, advocated a slower approach to school reform and a more prominent
role for the board he led.257 Post columnist Colbert I. King, who would remain a thorn in
Fenty’s side, worried that Fenty’s team was focused overly much on governance, and not
at all on the classroom.258 Each, in some ways, encapsulates a persistent political-science
debate over the validity of mayoral takeovers: Bobb’s over the insulation of education
policy from the rough-and-tumble of mainstream electoral politics, and King’s over the
reliance on governance changes as a panacea. It is hard to answer such criticisms with data,
though each will be touched on again below; it is notable, though, that each played a role
in eventually shaping Fenty’s approach. When the council was asked to vote on Fenty’s
bill in April 2007, they incorporated provisions leading to greater authority for the board.
And King’s persistent criticisms, alongside the best efforts of the Post’s reporting team,
consistently pushed Fenty to translate politics into policy.
Still, Fenty has been accused by many of moving too fast on his way towards reform. His
unconventional nominee for schools chancellor, TFA alum and headhunter Michelle
Rhee, was eventually accepted by the council as embodying the principles of reform that
Fenty had stood for; her selection process, though, was lambasted as secretive and
259
divisive. Equally as troubling to many were signs of overkill in Fenty’s emulative
approach to policy-making; in May, only a month before officially taking control of the
schools, the Post discovered that Fenty’s deputy mayor for education had lifted sections of
his takeover proposal verbatim from a similar document drafted by reformers in Charlotte,
260
N.C. To evaluate proposals from other policymakers in search of the best seemed to
many the model of 21st-century governance; to copy them word-for-word seemed,
understandably, somewhat sloppy.
In many ways, Fenty’s schools team, by now identified strongly with the energetic Rhee,
has succeeded in melding politics and policy as they set about addressing the challenges of
256
Michael Kirst, “Mayoral Influence, New Regimes, and Public School Governance,” paper presented to
the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, May 2002.
257
Robert Bobb, “Let Voters Decide on D.C. Schools,” The Washington Post, April 3, 2007.
258
Colbert I. King, “What Never Seems to Change for D.C. Schools,” The Washington Post, February 1,
2007.
259
David Nakamura and Nikita Stewart, “More Criticism Over Fenty’s Secrecy,” The Washington Post, June
13, 2007.
260
David Nakamura, “District Copied Schools Strategy,” The Washington Post, May 9, 2007.
168
the District’s school system. At the end of July 2007, a month before school started, Rhee
announced that half of D.C. public schools would not have all their required textbooks
and half of the school buildings would not have any air conditioning on the first day of
school—“conditions,” the Post remarked, “as traditional in the city as back-to-school
261
shopping for a new box of crayons.” The city’s leaders were quick to paint the problem
as an inherited one, and their disposition as both displeased and ready to rumble: “The
chancellor and I are completely disgusted by what we find,” Fenty announced, and
planned a visit to the warehouse where textbooks sat, languishing. True to form, he
invited a Post reporter with him; the next day, the paper’s editorial board weighed in,
noting that it was the first time since 1989 that a D.C. mayor and a head of the school
system had visited the warehouse.262
Yet as the lines between politics and policy have blurred in recent months, some have
begun to question the mayor’s priorities, and whether it is possible to serve both masters.
A second Post reporter—a non-beat reporter—returned to the warehouse to discuss the
crisis more thoroughly with the facilities manager, who expressed his doubts that the
system was facing a widespread shortage. That conclusion was echoed by the D.C. parents
association, and by some principals, who reported “the smoothest delivery in years.”263
Few accused Rhee, who had measured textbook shortages using a somewhat crude
survey, of intentionally reporting fuzzy numbers, but the incident drew more to note that,
as Post columnist Marc Fisher wrote, “the hardest part in school reform is the soft stuff.”264
And in recent weeks, Fenty and Rhee have been accused of the opposite sin: tackling
ambitious reforms without first building the necessary political consensus. In a moment
reminiscent of the New York schools panel’s ill-fated revolt against Michael Bloomberg,
city council members on November 29 yelped in protest at the abruptness with which
Fenty and Rhee announced that they would consider closing 24 schools by summer
2009.265 In many ways, this unfolding drama recaptures the tension and the magic
associated with mayoral takeovers themselves—the sudden moves, the realignment of
power bases, the horrified sense of fait accompli. And it may truly be a miscalculation on
Fenty’s part: Unlike in New York, it is not entirely clear if the mayor’s office does have
the authority to make such sweeping decisions, and doing so may cost Fenty the consensus
he has so carefully built.
In late August, though, Post columnist Fisher recalled, in a brilliant, anecdotal sense, the
reason Fenty had received his mandate:
As I wandered outside an elementary school one evening last week about 8 p.m., a worker
who was trying to get new windows installed scurried past me.
“Working late,” I said.
261
Nikita Stewart, “Clouds Gather Over D.C. Schools,” The Washington Post, July 31, 2007.
262
“Many Textbooks Left Behind,” The Washington Post, August 8, 2007.
263
Debbie Cenziper and Dan Keating, “Not on the Same Page Over Textbook Needs,” The Washington
Post, August 24, 2007.
264
Marc Fisher, “Three Reasons to Cheer for Rhee's Fast Start,” The Washington Post, August 28, 2007.
265
Theola Labbé, “Short Notice on Plan to Close Schools Angers Council,” The Washington Post, November
29, 2007.
169
266
“Clock's ticking, man,” he said. “Whole new world now.”
4. The Pride of His City?
The New Republic’s Peter Beinart describes the ‘new Progressive’ mayors, a category to
which Adrian Fenty certainly belongs, as follows:
They have an ideology: that cities can dramatically alleviate seemingly

endemic urban afflictions without a massive redistribution of wealth, that the
way to achieve this is by using competition to make city services radically
more efficient, and that cities must tolerate diverse identities without
267
celebrating them to the detriment of a shared sense of public interest.
But Beinart goes on to describe the historical circumstances that led to the rise of these
men in ways that deeply resonate in the history of Washington, D.C.: It was the civil
rights generation mayors, he writes, who paved the way for the reformers. By calling for
federal initiatives for urban economic development, incorporating African-Americans into
local government, and uniting those two ends in one, they indirectly contributed to their
own demise. “In both psychological and material ways,” he writes, “the dream of a
second national war on poverty probably kept mayors from demanding more of their own
city agencies.”268 When the coalitions that elected those mayors fell apart, the voters’
appetites for pragmatic reforms were whetted. Out went Marion Barry, in came Adrian
Fenty—and in a more authentic way than Anthony Williams had ever provided.
But Beinart’s commentary is more descriptive than prescriptive, and does little to answer
those critics of mayoral takeovers who deride them as little more than an institutional
Band-Aid attempting to cover up far deeper problems. Is Adrian Fenty, as Beinart would
suggest, the pride of his city, or merely symptomatic of the latest craze in governance
reform? There is little data available to support either contention, little science to back up
Fisher’s sense of progress or King’s of regress. In 2002, Michael Kirst performed a multi-
city study on the impact of mayoral control, classifying each urban takeover by its level of
mayoral influence and the impact that governance changes had on schools. The
conclusions he was able to draw were marginal at best: “It is not possible to link many
269
changes in school policy and practice to changes in governance,” Kirst writes. He cites
Mayor Joe Serna of Sacramento as a low-influence mayor—one who merely supported a
slate of school-board candidates—whose decisions were widely viewed as having a
positive impact on Sacramento education. On the other hand, Oakland’s Jerry Brown
introduced a hybrid education board and has seen only meager results. Still, Kirst notes
that other researchers have reached more positive, if tentative, conclusions about the
impact of mayoral takeover.
Regardless, offering a mayor the mantle of leadership cannot be seen as a panacea.

Institutional reforms can only facilitate policy decisions, not make them, and the question
266
Fisher, op. cit.
267
Beinart, 16.
268
Beinart, 20.
269
Kirst, 8.
170
that remains in Washington, D.C., is whether Adrian Fenty’s will achieve a meaningful
impact on the everyday lives of students and teachers. In announcing his candidacy for the
mayoralty, Fenty pledged to usher in “a new era where we no longer judge ourselves on
the dark times of the past, but against what we want our future to look like.” To do so, he
will have to demonstrate to the children of the District of Columbia that they have a
future indeed. The recent record has been mixed, if promising: In Chicago, Richard
th
Daley has had a significant impact on schools and students scoring below the 15
percentile on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. In New York, Michael Bloomberg has won
plaudits—and criticism—for eliminating the corruption that once plagued the school
system. Having studied these cities, having met with these mayors, Adrian Fenty
understands the delicate balance of politics and policy that plagues any attempt to forge
change in a system long let down by its leaders.
As Jonathan Lewis knows, though, time is ticking.
REFERENCES
In drafting this paper, I consulted over 100 Washington Post and Education Week articles from the period of June
2005 to December 2007. Those articles are too numerous to be listed here by name; those with direct facts and statistics
have been cited above.
Beinart, Peter. “The Pride of the Cities.” The New Republic, June 30, 1997.
Cibulka, James. “Old Wine, New Bottles.” Education Next 1, no. 4 (2001).
Diner, Steven J. Crisis of Confidence: The Reputation of Washington’s Public Schools in the Twentieth Century.
Washington, D.C.: University of the District of Columbia, 1982.
Henig, Jeffrey R. “Washington, D.C.: Race, Issue Definition, and School Board Restructuring.” In Mayors
In The Middle: Politics, Race, and Mayoral Control of Urban Schools, edited by Jeffrey R. Henig and
Wilbur C. Rich (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 191-218.
Henig, Jeffrey R. and Wilbur C. Rich. “Governance Structure as a Tool, Not a Solution.” In Mayors In The
Middle: Politics, Race, and Mayoral Control of Urban Schools, edited by Jeffrey R. Henig and Wilbur
C. Rich (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 249-266.
Hess, Frederick M. Spinning Wheels: The Politics of Urban School Reform. Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution Press, 1999.
Kirst, Michael and Katrina Bulkley. “‘New, Improved’ Mayors Take Over City Schools.” Phi Delta Kappan
82 (2000), 538-546.
Kirst, Michael. “Mayoral Influence, New Regimes, and Public School Governance.” Paper presented to the
Consortium for Policy Research in Education, May 2002.
Meier, Kenneth J. “Structure, Politics, and Policy: The Logic of Mayoral Control.” In Mayors In The Middle:
Politics, Race, and Mayoral Control of Urban Schools, edited by Jeffrey R. Henig and Wilbur C. Rich
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 221-231.
Solomon, Burt. The Washington Century: Three Families and the Shaping of the Nation’s Capital. New York:
William Morrow, 2004.
171
A Washington Post article last spring noted that “demand for the District of Columbia's charter
schools is at a high—enrollment has risen an average of 13% annually since 2001. If the trend
continues, more students will attend charter schools than traditional public schools by 2014,
according to one study…Charter schools account for a quarter of the District's public school
enrollment, an expansion financed in part by an annual allocation from the city that has reached
$260 million, or 32% of the city's spending on schools. The District is one of the few places in the
country where charter schools receive money for facilities on top of per-pupil funding for operating
270
expenses.”
In May, “[Chancellor Michelle] Rhee detailed plans…for overhauling 26 academically troubled

schools, saying she will replace principals and teachers, hire private education-management firms
and install instructional programs to boost student achievement…Seventeen of the 26 schools are
slated to get new principals or teachers, the option that gives Rhee the greatest amount of
control…Five schools will be run by an outside management firm, and seven will work with an
alternative plan. Rhee opted against converting the schools into charters or turning them over to the
271
state education office, saying she wanted to maintain control of them.”
• • •
Suggested Study Group Questions:
a. What is the problem(s) for which charter schools are proposed as a solution?
b. Public opinion polling suggests that charter schools are regarded much more favorably
than school vouchers. What might account for that difference?
c. Among the arguments favoring school choice are the following:
(1) “Market I,” (Milton Friedman272) which argues that bad schools will only
improve when parents are able to abandon them for better schools; market
competition is the only effective driver for school improvement.
273
(2) “Market II,” (John Chubb and Terry Moe ) which argues that private schools
are more effective than public schools because there is less bureaucracy involved in
their administration. Students should be allowed access to these superior schools,
but the market needs to be constrained by insuring equal funding for participants
and non-participants in a choice program, extra funding for those with special
needs, and government monitoring to insure quality and non-discrimination.
270
Washington Post, April 27, 2008
271
V. Dion Haynes and Bill Turque, “Chancellor Outlines Plan for Overhaul; Most Facilities Face Staffing
Changes, Washington Post, May 16, 2008.
272
Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1979)
273
John E. Chubb and Terry M. Moe, Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools (Washington, DC: The
Brookings Institution, 1990)
172
(3) The “voucher left,” (John Coons and Stephen Sugarman274) which argues that
vouchers are a means of insuring funding equity and equal access.
275
(4) School choice as a “rescue operation” (Arthur Levine ) --a “quick fix” for
those who are least well served by public schools.
In what respects do these arguments apply to charter schools?
4. What was the problem(s) for which charter schools were proposed as a solution
in the District of Columbia? To what degree have charter schools in the District of
Columbia solved the problem for which they were proposed as a solution?
5. The casebook contains several reports evaluating charter schools and (in some
instances) comparing them to non-charter schools. Were you to go about
evaluating the relative success of charter schools, what would be your research
design?
Appendix #1: DC Charter Legislation

Authorizing Legislation for D.C. public charters schools passed by Congress on
04/26/96: D.C. School Reform Act of 1995, as amended (P.L.104-134, 104-194, 105-
100; D.C. Code §31-2853.11-.25 & §31-2853.41-.43) is available on the Web at
http://www.dcpubliccharter.com/communityint/legislation/legislation.htm
Appendix #2: Last year’s clarifying questions
1. Have any studies been done to analyze test scores from specific types of charter schools,
such as excluding vocation schools? Not to my knowledge.
2. Do charter school budgets vary significantly from typical public school budgets, such as
in their allocations for teacher salaries, administrative costs, textbooks, etc.? Following are
two budgets for school year 2007-08, one from Montclair Public Schools, the other from the Francis
W. Parker Essential Charter School in Harvard, MA:
274
John E. Coons and Stephen D. Sugarman, Education by Choice: The Case for Family Control (Berkeley:
University of California, 1978).
275
Arthur Levine, “Why I am Reluctantly Backing School Vouchers,” Chapter 22 in
Robert Wassmer (ed.) Readings in Urban Economics: Issues and Public Policy (New York: Blackwell, 2000)
173
Montclair Parker
Instruction 61.2% 82.7%276
Administration 9.1
Total 69.3 82.7
277
Support 17.6 5.0
Plant 9.7 9.7
Extra-curriculars 1.8 2.6
3. Are there any explicit instances of public schools modeling curriculum and pedagogy
after those at a charter school? The Achievement First model seems likely… Kafka and
Sherman cite two instances of the latter: “There are two ways in which this “exemplar effect” may
have occurred in New Haven. Amistad used to run professional development classes for teachers in
other New Haven schools. A number of public schools in the district also seemed to have adopted
another of the tenets of the Achievement First approach: measuring student performance every six
weeks with Interim Assessment tests.”278 There is an excellent overview279 of the transfer of best
practices from charter schools to conventional public schools that covers Connecticut charters extensively
and includes references to studies in other states as well. The Massachusetts Department of Education
has a Charter School Dissemination Grant Program designed to disseminate best practices from
charter schools to conventional public schools. A description of projects funded with these grants is
available on the MDOE Web site.280
4. Where do “competitive authorizers” exist? Have they been compared to traditional

charter authorizers in terms of their charter-granting activity? We saw one example of
“competitive authorizers” in DC with the DC Public School Chartering Board and the DCPS
Chartering Board—one operated by Congress, the other by the district. Those board have been
merged by Fenty, though final approval of the move is pending. What Frederick Hess is talking
about in Document #6 (Casebook p. 50) is competition between organizations initiating charter
schools. He argues that institutions such as universities have their reputations on the line with the
success or failure of their charter schools and are thus more likely to hold their schools more directly
accountable than are agencies such as school districts or state chartering authorizers. “Competitive
authorizers” exist wherever there are “strong” charter laws.
5. Are there any instances of interdistrict charter schools—that is, ones that draw students
from outside whatever district the charter school is located? Many state charter schools enroll
students from multiple districts. The Francis W. Parker Essential Charter School in Massachusetts
276
The Parker budget does not differentiate its salary and wages figure as between instruction and
administration. In part this is because virtually every administrator in the school also teaches.
277
In the Parker budget, this includes such items as contract services, legal and accounting services, printing,
copy and postage, student transportation and supplies. The Montclair budget does not provide detail for this
category
278
Kafka and Sherman, “Charter Schools in Connecticut and New Haven” (Research paper for PLSC240,
March, 2008).
279
Judith Lohmann, “Charter Schools and Public Schools,” (Connecticut General Assembly, OLR Research
Report 2005-R-0096, 2005) Available at http://www.cga.ct.gov/2005/rpt/2005-R-0096.htm
280
http://www.doe.mass.edu/charter/dissemination/default.asp?section=3
174
281
(see question #3 above) is an example. Interdistrict charters in Connecticut include the Side-by-
Side Community School in South Norwalk,282the Interdistrict School for Arts and Communication in
283 284
New London, and the Jumoke Academy in Hartford.
6. How many charter schools in D.C. have been closed? How many have been closed for
academic reasons? Thirteen as of last year. The Center for Education Reform does not specify the
reasons for school closings and I am unable to locate that information elsewhere.
281
The school’s Web site is found at www.parker.org
282
www.sidebysideschool.org
283
http://issacschool.org/
284
http://jumokeacademy.org
175

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Case III: Charter Schools in Washington, D.C.

John Bryan Starr

Document #1: Education Commission of the States, “Education Issues: 4

Exhibit #1: Public Opinion Polling Data on Charter Schools 7

Document #2: Karla Scoon Reid, “Minority Parents Quietly Embrace 11

Exhibit #2: Charter school enrollment of selected populations 19

Exhibit #3: “Strong” and “Weak” Charter Laws 35

Document #4: Bruno V. Manno, “Yellow Flag,” Education Next (Winter 37

Document #5: Frederick M. Hess, “The Political Challenge of Charter 44

Document #6: Caroline Hendrie, “Charter Authorizers Eye Rules on 53

Document #8: Darcia Harris Bowman, “Charter school openings 81

Document #10: “Charter vs. non-charter performance,” Education Week, 87

Document #11: Diana Jean Schemo, “Education Secretary defends charter 87

Document #13: Martin Carnoy, Rebecca Jacobsen, Lawrence Mishel, and 91

Background information on Washington, D.C. and its public 99

Exhibit #6: Washington, D.C. School Governance 106

Exhibit #7: Student performance 107

Exhibit #8: Timeline of events in Washington, D.C. 108

Document #16: Melissa Schoeplein, “Washington D.C.: The Charter 125

Document #17: DC Appleseed Center, Charter schools in the District of 134

Suggested Study Group Questions 172

Appendix #1: DC Charter Legislation 173

Appendix #2: Last year’s clarifying questions 173

2 Cf. The ECS State Policies for Charter Schools Database

(http://www.ecs.org/html/educationIssues/CharterSchools/CHDB_intro.asp) . This database contains

Frequently Asked Questions:

Do students who attend charter schools achieve higher test scores?

Do charter schools provide increased accountability for student performance?

• If managed properly, charter schools serve as laboratories for education

• Because charter schools operate as a business, as well as a learning institution, they

• Accountability for student performance is difficult to measure and enforce in the

• The emergence of education management organizations as proprietors of charter

Exhibit #1: Public Opinion Polling Data on Charter Schools

National Totals No Children In Public School

Percentage saying they know “very little” or “nothing”:

Percentage saying they need to learn more:

Teachers and principals will concentrate on teaching instead 54

Charter schools will be more likely to experience 28

More schools will be started by motivated people who will 51

Can be started by groups of teachers or parents 59 28

They would not make much difference 27

It depends/I don’t know 24

3. Greater Washington Community Research, Inc., Charter schools in the District of

District of Columbia Charter Schools Polling Data

1. Have heard about charters 80

2. Can name a charter school 15

a. Partly private, partly public 54

b. Can exclude applicants 55

c. Set own standards 54

e. Choose students other than by lottery 90

4. Positive aspects of charters:

a. Smaller class size 64

d. Able to meet individual student needs 55

5. Effect on public schools:

c. Neither threaten nor strengthen 36

African-Americans are more likely to know somebody with kids in a

Information and socioeconomic status co-vary, but misconceptions are

What do those numbers mean?

Charter School Push

The Washington-based National Council of La Raza, which advocates on behalf of

Meanwhile, a generation gap seems to be emerging among African-Americans when it

Older African-Americans are more pro-government and suspicious of the conservatives