Charter Management Organizations Research Articles

Scaling Toward Utopia or Dystopia: Challenges to Preserving Organizational Values Through Growth

In their nascent stages, charter schools formed under competing ideologies. In academic circles, charter schools were envisioned as pedagogical laboratories that would allow for educator- and community-driven school improvement. In other circles, charter schools emerged as a free-market reform driven by accountability, choice, and growth. Amid the neoliberal accountability era, the latter ideology has emerged as a stronger driving force across the educational landscape, particularly amid the proliferation of Charter Management Organizations (CMOs). Based on real events, a charter school founder struggles to hold onto organizational values while scaling from a small charter school to a large CMO.

Autonomy in the spaces: teacher autonomy, scripted lessons, and the changing role of teachers

ABSTRACT The work of teachers has historically been highly controlled, but one area teachers have been granted considerable autonomy is in instruction and planning. Teacher autonomy is a complex concept with important implications for both the quality of instruction and teacher persistence in the field. The rise of charter management organizations (CMOs) and the increasing use of scripted lesson plans (SLPs) have introduced new institutional arrangements with unknown impacts on teachers’ perceptions of autonomy. This mixed method study surveyed 155 teachers across all grade levels from CMOs, independent charter, and district schools, on their perceptions of autonomy related to lesson planning. The survey responses showed that high school teachers and those who wrote their own lessons perceived the greatest autonomy, while elementary teachers and those who received SLPs perceived the lowest. Our qualitative interviews with 17 teachers complicated these findings by demonstrating how similar organizational structures could result in very different experiences of autonomy. Relationships of trust supported stronger feelings of autonomy; without trust, planning could feel restrictive or isolating. Still, teachers found spaces of autonomy within the organizational restrictions on their work. Their reflections suggest feelings of autonomy balance the increasingly limited role of teachers’ work in lesson design.

#BlackatCMO: Challenging charter schools through youth Instagram counterstories

As protests flared in 2020, Black students took to Instagram to voice their experiences at ‘no-excuses’ Charter Management Organizations (CMOs). Such schools have presented a discourse of high achievement and social justice. Yet, in the span of a few weeks, hundreds of posts on Instagram offered rarely heard counter-narratives of the experience of being a student of Color at such schools. This paper analyzes how social media posts combine online discourse and youth culture to provide insight into the racialized experience of schooling. We show how these posts created distinct visual signatures, co-opted the well-crafted narratives of CMOs, and took advantage of features like comments and hashtags to foster solidarity and authenticity. We argue this social movement challenges the legitimacy of CMOs and their authority to teach children of Color.

Charter management organizations—Replication and expansion of high‐quality charter schools (ED)

Charter management organizations—Replication and expansion of high‐quality charter schools (ED)

Leave Like a Champion: Teacher Embeddedness and Turnover at an Urban “No-Excuses” Charter Management Organization

Teacher turnover remains considerably higher at Charter Management Organizations (CMOs), despite initially high perceptions of fit at the time of hire. Grounded in an emerging branch-off of job embeddedness theory—teacher embeddedness—this multi-site case study of one urban CMO used interviews of departed teachers and principals and focus groups of new and veteran teachers to determine the predominating factors of reduced feelings of embeddedness and, ultimately, turnover. Findings indicate that teacher embeddedness is threatened by methods the CMO has proliferated as “best practice” and factors researchers have empirically correlated with turnover.

When art works in networks: A multiple-case study of network-level arts education supports in charter management organizations in New York City

The purpose of this exploratory multiple-case study was (1) to develop an understanding of how charter management organizations (CMOs) operating schools in New York City (NYC) during the 2021–2022 academic year developed, promoted, and sustained arts programming, and (2) to explore the role of the network-level arts director. Given the desire to understand network-level arts support provided by CMOs in detail and in the context of how that support functions contemporarily and in the real world, an exploratory multiple-case study method with an embedded design was situated as the preferred mode of inquiry. Within the research design, the quintain – or phenomenon studied across cases – was the support provided by CMOs at the network level to arts education programming at the school level. The embedded units of analysis for each case included a brief questionnaire completed by the network-level arts director, a semi-structured interview with the network-level arts director, and the documentation publicly available about arts education within the CMO (e.g. how the CMO’s website positioned arts education offerings within the network). Data was collected during March–May 2022 in NYC. The first theme from the cross-case analysis involved the strategic vision-setting and on-the-ground implementation, which highlighted the potential disconnects that could occur between what was supposed to be happening within arts education (in the vision) and what was actually happening within arts education (on the ground) regardless of whether arts were considered “core” or “noncore” in a given network. The importance of the balance between autonomy and prescription provided to teachers and expansion, capacity-building, and vertical alignment also emerged as themes. In addition to shedding light on network-level practices and policies that support arts programming in schools and network-level arts directors’ roles within this support, several specific implications are provided for theory, practice, and future research alike.

Student Mobility between Charter and Traditional Public School Sectors: Assessing Enrollment Patterns among Major Charter Management Organizations in Texas

Student enrollment and transfer patterns between the traditional public and charter school sectors help shape the role of charter schools in the broader educational ecosystem, especially as related to the enrollment and segregation of low-income students, English learners, students of color, and students in special education. We examine patterns of student transfer between traditional public schools and charter schools among four of Texas’s largest charter networks, which cumulatively make up over one-third of Texas charter students. We find that these schools serve fewer special education students than traditional public schools, but a greater share of low-income and English learners. Transfers between sectors contribute to enrollment gaps in special education and other classifications, but the findings do not apply uniformly across charter districts, student enrollment classifications, or grade levels. These findings highlight nuanced enrollment patterns between the charter sector and traditional public schools, suggesting that differences in student characteristics between sectors likely stem from a range of sources. Policymakers should acknowledge this nuance, consider alternatives to blanket enrollment regulation policies, and conduct similar analyses of enrollment patterns among charter districts.

The Money Chase: The Role of Racial Innuendo and Marketized Discourse in Courting Private Dollars

Background/Context: The business and philanthropic sectors have been a persistent force in shaping U.S. schools. Recently, they have used their resources to advance policies that embody newer principles of industry—reforms that suggest that competition, choice, and deregulation can spur improvement and effectiveness. This has most notably included deep investments in the proliferation of charter schools, surfacing questions as to the sector’s reliance on private dollars as well as the equitable and democratic impact of advancing this manifestation of neoliberal reform. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: While scholars have elucidated the role of business and philanthropic funding in promoting charter schools, less is known about how the well-substantiated connections between charters and the private sector have been facilitated or how discourse—the ideas, representations, and argumentation conveyed in acts of communication—is mobilized to create a rationale for support. To date, research has typically examined the discourse and messaging intended for families navigating choice settings. Yet, how these depictions are crafted for donors, who typically inhabit positions of economic and social power and are critical actors in charter growth, remain comparatively less understood. Research Design: This study fills this empirical gap and investigates the tactics used to solicit donor investment by charter management organizations (CMOs). It uses a conceptual framework that synthesizes tenets from the research on neoliberal policy networks and the sociology of race to enable a multifaceted analysis of the discursive tactics used to secure donor support while attending to the often-nuanced ways in which race may be invoked in those efforts. Methodologically, this study follows an embedded case study design to investigate the tactics deployed by a population of CMOs in Northern California and relies on observational and documentary data to examine how CMOs design and execute donor outreach and the resonant messages they aim to elevate. Conclusions/Recommendations: I find that CMOs elevated business-friendly themes related to workforce preparation, impact, and return on investment in their outreach and at times commodified their constituents by offering their labor as exchangeable resources to elevate donor profiles. Simultaneously, CMOs advanced color-evasive discourse, relying on deficit-laden racial narratives to create a reinforcing and complementary rationale for intervention. These findings suggest that CMOs relied on market and racialized logics as the persuasive fodder for donor investment, leaving the economic and racial status quo—and the democratic and equity implications it perpetuates—unchallenged.

The Importance of Being “Woke”: Charter Management Organizations and the Growth of Social Consciousness as a School Quality Marker

Charter management organizations (CMOs) have increasingly had to respond to questions surrounding their organizations—particularly in the context of the broader social awakening around systemic injustices and evidence of their racially inequitable practices. This study investigated how CMOs counteracted criticisms and managed perception by characterizing their organizations as socially and racially conscious. It compared social media content for one CMO population during two time periods that surround the 2016 election: 2014 to 2016 and 2017 to 2019. Findings suggest that the CMOs have increasingly characterized themselves as socially conscious, but their attentiveness to issues of race and racism remained temporally and topically bounded. The article concludes with a discussion of how CMOs’ evolving discourse may influence public perception and considers how CMOs perpetuate a form of neoliberal multiculturalism that normalizes market reform under the discursive cover of a bounded articulation of equity and racial justice.

Navigating Politically Muddy Waters: Charter Management Organizations and Their Efforts to Craft a Counternarrative

In the face of growing critiques, charter management organizations (CMOs) increasingly contend with criticism as they maintain their presence in districts, particularly with school board members who often serve as gatekeepers for charter authorization. Yet, little is known about how CMOs navigate these politically muddy waters in local settings. The localized political maneuvers of CMOs are the central focus of this case study, which demonstrates how CMOs in one city deployed strategic discourse to buffer anticipated critiques and assuage concerns though questions as to the equitable and democratic character of their actions and rhetoric remain.

Code Switching and Political Strategy: The Role of Racial Discourse in the Coalition-Building Efforts of Charter Management Organizations

With the pervasiveness of racism, some scholars have interrogated the role of discourse in perpetuating the racial status quo. While research has denoted how prominent leaders and policies advance deficit-laden characterizations of minoritized groups that reify racial hierarchies, how racial discourse is mobilized in day-to-day politics remains less understood. This study investigates this phenomenon by examining the racial appeals used by charter management organizations as they garner support. It finds that charter management organizations used color-evasive discourse and variable racial narratives to build the case for their organizations with funders, families, and school board members. This code-switching points to the strategic use of racial discourse in local politics while demonstrating how racial power can be manifested in the pursuit of resources.

Leading in complex environments: the role of leadership in multi-school organization improvement

ABSTRACT School improvement in chronically under-performing schools remains a formidable challenge for school leaders. Recent policies in the U.S. have created incentives for school leaders to attempt new strategies to improve outcomes, and increasingly, school leaders of charter management organizations and other multi-school organizations (MSOs) are taking on this work. Research suggests that the most successful school leaders of MSOs have established robust systems of instruction and professional development. This article is based on a longitudinal qualitative case study of a school leadership team at a new MSO and uses the framework of epistemic communities to consider how leaders can generate, manage, and transfer knowledge within and across school boundaries while operating within an accountability-focused school turnaround context. Given the diverse professional backgrounds of U.S. educators, creating the capacity for school leaders and teachers to develop a common theory of action and leverage common tools may both be necessary for improvement in student outcomes but also complex and resource-intensive work. Developing highly capable MSOs is an iterative process that requires significant time and resources in school leadership positions to build a shared curriculum, align on instructional design, and develop leadership capacity to support teaching and learning within and across schools.

Crystallizing Coaching: An Examination of the Institutionalization of Instructional Coaching in Three Educational Systems

BackgroundInstructional coaching has gained popularity as a reform instrument, yet it varies widely across contexts. This variability plays a role in weak implementation or even rejection of coaching within schools. Further, there are gaps in our understanding of how coaching is adopted and accepted in different educational systems. Purpose: This article uses concepts from organizational institutionalism to gauge the legitimacy and taken-for-grantedness of coaching in two charter-management organizations and one public school district. It surfaces the processes as well as the outcomes of the institutionalization of coaching.Research designI collected qualitative data for this study in three systems to draw out comparisons in the structures, practices, and norms regarding coaching: This included 38 interviews, over 20 observations, and over 30 documents. I coded and analyzed the interview, observation, and document data to answer questions about how and why coaching was institutionalized in each system.FindingsMy findings reveal that coaching was more highly institutionalized in the two charter-management organizations than in the public school district. In particular, coaching was deemed appropriate and desirable by most educators in the charter systems. Additionally, coaching was embedded in system-level policies and school-level routines in the charter systems. My findings also indicate that organizational structures, actors’ role definitions, and artifacts were associated with the institutionalization of coaching.ConclusionsThis study sheds light on how and why coaching, as a counternormative lever for instructional reform, is institutionalized in various educational systems. It points to the importance of system and school leaders’ routines for increasing the legitimacy and taken-for-grantedness of coaching.

Charter-ing a Different Course: A Critical Policy Framework to Support Black Women in Marketized Cities and Schools

ABSTRACT This article features interview excerpts from 10 Black women who worked as educators in marketized cities and schools, including urban charter schools operated by charter management organizations, and independent schools, known as standalone charter schools. Using a critical race policy framework, the article considers the pedagogical implications of race, gender, and power embedded in market policies and which shaped the women’s experiences in their schools. Key dilemmas for the women included: limited resources in district schools, lack of autonomy in privately managed charter schools, and difficulties enacting critical and culturally inclusive pedagogy in market settings premised on individual competition and test score production. As several of the women left their charter schools, or the profession altogether, their experiences map onto larger concerns with Black teacher turnover and decline in urban districts embracing marketization of public schools. The article ends with three broad strategies to support Black women in market settings.

Following the Leader: The Evolving Network of Charter School Giving

Background/Context Research on the patterns of philanthropic funding of charter schools has largely focused on the behavior of major foundations. This work has documented how the once diffuse giving by these major foundations has become increasingly concentrated on a small number of jurisdictional challengers in the form of charter schools, charter management organizations, and intermediary organizations. Purpose The current study examines whether this convergence in giving has spread to the entire network of foundations giving to charter-school-related organizations. We do so by extending current work and focus on the broader institutional field that includes the interactions between major foundations, smaller foundations, and grantees over time. Moreover, we look to see, if such a field-wide convergence is present, whether there is evidence consistent with the institutional process of isomorphism in which low-status foundations match the giving strategy of higher status ones. Research Design We test for these dynamics using exponential random graph models (ERGMs), a hypothesis-testing framework for network analysis. More specifically, we analyze the funding ties among 809 foundations that gave grants to California charter schools and charter-school-related organizations between 2003 and 2014, as available through the Foundation Directory Online. We constructed multiyear windows to examine funding ties between foundations and recipients, using organizational characteristics, such as foundation type, foundation year, professionalization, foundation size, organizational type, and location, and endogenous features of the network as independent variables. Findings Results indicate centralization of giving over time, as larger and newer foundations began practicing more targeted giving and the most connected recipients were involved in a disproportionate number of funding ties. We also found evidence consistent with institutionalization, as foundations with professional staffs played a larger role in giving, and smaller foundations increasingly engaged in behavior similar to their larger peers over time. Finally, we found evidence for the consistent effect of propinquity: We observe co-funding and co-receiving ties between foundations and grantees in geographical proximity to each other. Conclusions This work examines the network dynamics of charter school philanthropic giving and provides evidence for the centralization and institutionalization of the field. In turn, this may create inequity in funding for charter schools because it may be more difficult for smaller or less ideologically popular organizations to penetrate the field. Policy makers should be aware of these forces and should take them into account when making budgetary and funding decisions.

Opportunities and challenges for NGOs amid competing institutional logics

PurposeThis paper considers the implications of reform efforts that rely on charter management organizations to assume operational control of underperforming neighborhood schools. The purpose of this paper is to examine the way in which changes to the education sector place enormous pressure on these organizations to both manage instruction and their social environments.Design/methodology/approachThe research presents the results from a longitudinal case study of two organizations operating within the Tennessee Achievement School District (ASD). Interviews, observations and document analysis provided insight into the perspectives of school operators, state officials and community leaders. The study design allowed researchers to observe the influence of the environment on school operators over a four-year period.FindingsResults show that the environment that included a muscular state, market pressures, NGOs and local communities placed an extreme and contradictory set of demands on organizations operating schools, pressing them to develop robust systems of instruction, leadership and teacher development while actively working to ensure social legitimacy in the community. Neither a national network nor a small local startup began with a strategy aligned to these environmental demands, and both needed to make substantial revisions.Research limitations/implicationsResearch into contemporary educational reform should account for rapidly evolving environments that feature a complex mix of resources and incentives. Careful examination of the consequences of these environments for educational organizations will further our understanding of how markets, communities and governments are shaping the education sector.Practical implicationsThe extraordinary challenges that confront organizations that operate in crowded and contested environments preclude fast or dramatic results. Policymakers and the public should assume an incremental process of organizational learning and improvement. Setting unrealistic expectations and focusing exclusively on impact risks delegitimizing organizations and policy initiatives before they have time to adapt.Originality/valueThis research reported here is among the few studies that have explored the experiences and implications of NGOs that have attempted to assume operational control of underperforming neighborhood schools. The popularity of this approach among a growing number of states highlights the importance of this topic.

Neglected Issues: How Charter Schools Manage Teachers and Acquire Resources

Background/ContextCharter schools are commonly discussed as being more effective at matching student and family interests with school mission, ensuring family choice of educational products and improving education quality and the efficiency of resource use as a result of the competitive dynamics they are assumed to generate between themselves and public schools. The rhetoric around charter schools in general puts little attention on teacher management and resource acquisition, and the literature on charter schools has tended to focus on outcomes such as student achievement. The prevalence of charter schools within and outside the United States underscores the need to understand what role such issues as teacher management and resourcing play in this increasingly popular education reform.Focus of StudyThe purpose of this article is to uncover and present the strategies that charter schools employ for managing teachers and acquiring resources, and with what implications.Research DesignThrough a qualitative case study of a charter school program in Bogotá, Colombia, that began in 1999, we investigated (a) the regulations that governed the hiring, firing, and compensation of charter school teachers, in addition to (b) how charters respond to those regulations in contracting teachers, and (c) the overall approach of charter principals and the charter management organizations (CMOs) that oversee them when it comes to teacher engagement, collaboration, supervision, and professional development. In terms of resource acquisition, the focus was on understanding (d) the extent of government-provided resources to charter schools, (e) the perceptions of charter principals and CMO directors of the resources provided by the government, (f) the ways in which these actors have sought to complement these resources, and (g) the kinds of additional resources that have been obtained. Data in the form of documents, archives, literature and evaluations, and qualitative interviews were collected over eight months.ConclusionsFindings indicate that charter school teachers in Bogotá feel that many aspects of their work environment are positive, though they also report tradeoffs in terms of job security and financial compensation. Charter schools use the flexibility afforded to them around employment to spend half as much on teachers by hiring nonunionized teachers, contracting them for periods of a year or less, assigning teachers to lower compensation categories, and offering significantly lower salaries, despite teachers working over 12 hours more each week than their public school counterparts. Findings with regard to resource acquisition address differences between public and charter schools, perceptions of school leaders, and the routes to resource acquisition used by charter schools, namely budget prioritization, donations, volunteers, partnerships, and alumni networks. Implications for future research are discussed, including the need for studies to distinguish among types of charter schools. The article concludes that, when addressing the costs and benefits of charter schools, we need to ask: Costs in what sense? Benefits for whom? And at whose expense?

Stay or go? Turnover in CMO, EMO and regular charter schools

BackgroundWe examine whether working conditions in different types of charter schools lead to different levels of teacher turnover. We consider two types of teacher turnover behaviors. One is teacher migration, which refers to the transfer of teachers from one school to another. The other one is teacher attrition, which describes the phenomenon of teachers leaving the profession entirely. We distinguish among charter schools managed by for-profit education management organizations (EMOs), those managed by non-profit charter management organizations (CMOs), and regular charter schools. Method/analysisOur data come from the 2011–12 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). We estimate multi-level models with hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) software. Findings and implicationsWe find that teachers in charter schools managed by EMOs and CMOs have higher levels of migration and attrition intention than do teachers in regular charter schools. Teachers, particularly in EMO-managed charter schools, are more likely to consider moving to another school or to leave the teaching profession. Our analyses suggest that the increased migration and attrition among teachers in MO-managed charter schools can be partially explained by the differences in working conditions, such as the degree of administrative support in the school, the degrees of classroom control and school-wide influence of teachers, salary, opportunities of professional development, the quality of the student body, and the degree of student misbehavior.

Converging on Choice: The Interstate Flow of Foundation Dollars to Charter School Organizations

A growing body of research has been documenting the pivotal role that philanthropic funding plays in advancing state and local charter school reform. However, there is little understanding of the geographic flow of these funding patterns and the market, policy, and organizational conditions that have concentrated funding in some clusters of states more than others. To address this limitation, we use descriptive cartography and quadratic assignment procedure (QAP) regression to analyze longitudinal funding data from 15 philanthropic foundations along with data related to the contexts of the states where grant recipients reside. We find that between 2009 and 2014, foundations were increasingly converging their funding flows to charter school organizations in select clusters of states as they shifted the concentration of funds away from individual charter schools to charter management organizations (CMOs) and advocacy organizations. A substantial portion of the variation in this interstate convergent grant f...

The shame of shaming

Historically, public schools have often used shaming techniques to discipline students, even though researchers have found shaming to be not just an ineffective means of curtailing misbehavior, but, more important, psychologically harmful to children. The author reviewed policy documents from nine leading charter management organizations and found that they provide official support for specific disciplinary practices that entail shaming.