This article unpacks the decision to decharter a successful urban middle school serving African American students, especially focusing on parental choice in a school caught between two urban reform initiatives: charter schooling and state takeovers of urban districts. Originally chartered by a university, DeCharter became a "school of choice" in…

Reforms using market-style mechanisms of parental choice and competition between schools are intended to leverage change by compelling schools to diversify options and increase effectiveness. Yet, some research challenges those assumptions, suggesting that schools in competitive climates are more likely to focus on image management to attract a…

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…

In the inaugural issue of the "Journal of School Choice," John Merrifield offers an important, insightful, and highly provocative critique of charter schooling in an effort to "get people to think about the issues...and seek additional evidence". In "Charter Laws: Disaster, Detour, Irrelevant, or Reform Tool?" Merrifield maintains that economic…

Concerns have been raised over the potential of charter schools to re-segregate the nation's schools. This concern has been expressed mostly with respect to students with disabilities and with respect to ethnic and/or racial minorities. In this study, the enrollment statistics for charter and contiguous non-charter public schools in a large urban…

To date, few studies have quantitatively examined within-group differences among charter schools. This is largely due to the lack of a workable typology with which to describe and classify schools. This study fills that gap with a two dimensional typology constructed from a sample of 1182 charter schools in five states--Arizona, California,…

Stakeholder surveys conducted as part of the development of an accountability and assessment system for five charter schools in Miami-Dade County and Broward County, Florida, revealed high positive response regarding high expectations, school climate, basic skills instruction, and monitoring student progress. The lowest overall rating revealed…

Fifteen years ago charter schools were considered a radical addition to the public education landscape. Today they present a viable educational choice in 40 states and the District of Columbia. Much has been written about charter schools, their purpose, effectiveness, and future. However, to date, much of the dialogue has focused on ideology and…

Federal constitutional law currently permits choice programs that include religious schools only if they provide parents with "genuine and independent choice"; as the leading federal case demonstrates, whether this test is satisfied is an interesting and difficult empirical question. State doctrine regarding establishment of religion can be…

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…

In 2002 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state-supported vouchers, which parents can redeem in private schools, do not offend the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Thus, the legality of government vouchers to fund education will be determined primarily on the basis of state law. Specifically, programs are being challenged under state…

The study of school choice for special education students brings together several important pieces of legislation which are separately the focus of high interest. This paper reviews the features of the three major special education bills (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, section 504 of the Rehabilitation Acts, the Americans with…

The reform movement embracing charter schools is based largely on the promise that these autonomous schools will out-perform public schools plagued by bureaucratic administration--an expectation reflected in the federal NCLB law. However, the many state-based reports have been mixed, and previous national studies have suffered from serious…

Despite the creeping resegregation of public schools, recent court decisions have been involved in the lifting of court-ordered desegregation decrees, which could arguably cause further segregation. When dismissing desegregation decrees, lower courts have relied on three U.S. Supreme Court decisions during the 1990s that permitted a lower standard…

This paper describes and analyses some of the legal consequences of the schooling reforms of 1989 in New Zealand, which devolved the power to run schools to individual Boards of Trustees in each of the 2,600 schools in the country. The focus will be on three main kinds of legal action: between the state and schools (relating to interpretations of…