Year: 2013
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Charter schools are publically funded schools that are granted autonomy in functioning in exchange for increased accountability for academic achievement (Betts & Hill, 2010).These schools are not operated by school districts and are thus free from collective bargaining agreements and bureaucratic regulations.They are granted charters by authorizing agencies, which have the right to approve new schools, oversee and evaluate performance, and close failing charter schools (NACSA, 2011).The first charter was granted in 1992 (Weil, 2000), and the system has quickly grown.Currently, 1.6 million American youth are enrolled in nearly 5,000 charter schools in 39 states (Dynarski et al., 2010).This is largely due to enhanced funding for charter schools at the federal level and the birth of wide scale school choice in No Child Left Behind, the sweeping federal education law of 2001 (NCLB, 2002).The term "charter school" represents an incredibly diverse category.Although all schools are accountable to state and federal education standards, schools differ in the rigor of their authorizing agencies, their level of funding, their aims and pedagogy, and their populations served.While there is some evidence that charter schools tend to use more traditional pedagogical strategies (Weitzel & Lubienski, 2010), generally speaking, there is no more a prototype for "charter school" than there is for traditional public school.Indeed, their instructional and organizational freedom make charter schools considerably less uniform than their traditional public school counterparts.Despite the ability to operate outside of district requirements however, charter schools do not necessarily guarantee flexible responses to student needs. Previous ResearchCharter school research methodology.Most of the existing charter school scholarship addresses whether charter schools enhance students' academic outcomes, defined as standardized test
Author: Anna J. Markowitz
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W117428854