State University Roles in the Charter School Movement

Abstract

As charter schools proliferate, public universities are increasingly called on to support them in various capacities. The authors consider how universities might best meet the challenges of ensuring that charter schools deliver a high-quality education to their students. The charter school movement has taken the country by storm, leaving in its wake 33 state laws allowing parents, educators, or entrepreneurs to create independent schools that are publicly funded but free from many state and local regulations.1 SINCE AMY Stuart Wells and her colleagues wrote those words in 1998, at least six more states have approved charter school legislation, well over 500 new charter schools have opened, and more than a quarter million additional students have begun attending charter schools. In the fall of 2000, more than 300,000 students attended 2,048 charter schools. By September 2002, there were 2,695 operating charter schools in the U.S., serving just over 684,000 students, with nearly 70 new schools scheduled to open by the fall of 2003.2 Undoubtedly, Wells' metaphorical description of the charter school movement continues to reflect accurately the scope and speed of this national movement. In spite of their numbers and growing popularity, we know very little about charter schools -- about the ways they are organized and managed, their methods of operating, or their impacts on educators, families, and students. Furthermore, the research base that policy makers might access to help them identify particularly promising charter school proposals remains disappointingly thin. As states continue to expand their involvement with charter schools, state universities are in the unique position of choosing from a variety of potential roles they may play and responsibilities they may fill in this process. Our purpose in this article is to begin to examine the options by which public universities -- and particularly their schools and colleges of education -- can most effectively and appropriately contribute to the charter school process in their states. Since the first such school opened in Minnesota in 1992, the charter school movement in the U.S. has grown with astounding speed. This growth results from a number of factors, not the least of which is the more general national interest in the issue of providing parents with greater choice in their children's education. In order to understand the roles that state universities may play in the charter school movement, it is important to consider the context in which charter schools are developing and the broader societal trend toward school choice. The U.S. Department of Education defines charter schools as follows: Charter schools are public schools, but what sets them apart is their charter -- a contract with a state or local agency that provides them with public funds for a specified time period. The charter itself states the terms under which the school can be held accountable for improving student performance and achieving goals set out in the charter. This contract frees charter developers from a number of regulations that otherwise apply to public schools.3 Some observers see charter schools as a sort of middle ground between creating options within the current public school system and adopting the more radical choice proposals that include nonpublic schools. Charter schools are, in effect, public schools that are allowed to operate much like private schools. As such, they are both similar to and distinct from traditional public-public approaches (e.g., magnet schools) and the more dramatic public-private approaches (e.g., vouchers for private school enrollment). It may be this sense of balancing between the extremes that explains the surprising progress of the movement in little more than a decade and the widely diverse political support it has received. Perhaps because it is a compromise between two passionately supported approaches, the charter school movement presents state universities with an unusual and uncomfortable set of expectations. …