A growing number of ethnocentric or culturally oriented niche charter schools have opened around the country. These ethnic or culture-oriented models raise legal and policy concerns about church/state entanglement as well as concerns about diversity. Indeed, there has already been litigation focused on racial and ethnic aspects of charter schools…

Virtually all state charter school legislation addresses teacher rights and working environment. Relationships with teacher unions are either specified in the law, or approval of the charter requires suitable provisions for employee hiring, firing, grievances, etc. Charter school evaluation almost without exception includes some references to…

The fact that the reform movement in public education has directed greater attention to the needs of underperforming students than to those of gifted and talented (G/T) students is both well documented and not surprising in the current political climate. Some advocates for G/T education greeted the growth of charter schools as promising a more…

State-by-state comparison of charter school laws is complicated by the wide variation in terminology and by the idiosyncratic impact that interpretation and implementation by mid-level administrators has on the actual way in which charter school laws work. In this regard, each state is different and true comparison can best be accomplished by…