The Politics of Charter Schools

Abstract

Charter schools, and other market-based reforms such as school vouchers and the student tutoring provision of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, are steeped in politics largely because they challenge the legitimacy of traditional power and funding arrangements in public education. The charter school reform is a significant public-private hybrid on the education landscape. Two advocacy coalitions engaged in charter school politics advance opposing perspectives on market-based education policy. This article begins with a framework for examining privatization in education and charter school politics. Following this, several key subjects of charter school politics are examined: financing and state caps on the number of charter schools permitted, parental choice, teachers unions and education management companies, and research on charter schools. Despite heated battles over student achievement data, the future of charter school politics is likely to be shaped more by the respective values and mobilization power of the two advocacy coalitions than by data on student performance.