Governing for Whom? Representative Governance and Segregation in North Carolina’s Charter Schools

Abstract

Market-based reforms have altered accountability structures in the public sector, raising questions about whether markets effectively hold organizations accountable to the public. Research on market models in education has revealed that these reforms can sometimes have perverse results, such as segregation, that contradict the public interests typically linked to public education. This study offers an empirical examination of one policy-relevant mechanism for understanding public accountability in market-based reforms that employ nonprofit service providers. Using Guo and Musso’s (2007) theory of representative governance in nonprofit management, we examine how representation and participation in the governance of nonprofit charter schools contribute to public accountability. We find that few charter schools in our sample employ mechanisms to increase organizational capacity to represent the public at large. Moreover, we find that lower descriptive representation is linked to substantive outcomes that contradict the public interests articulated in public law.