Charter schools. Another reform failure or a worthwhile investment?

Phi Delta Kappan

Volumn 81, Issue 10, 2000, Pages 745-750

  Good, Thomas L ^a   Braden, Jennifer S ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA   (United States)

^b NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0009949343     PISSN: 00317217     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. Otis Caldwell and Stuart Courtis, Then and Now in Education 1845-1923 (Yonkers on Hudson, N.Y.: World Book Company, 1924).
2. We thank Arizona State Rep. Marion Pickens for securing this information for us.
3. Thomas Good and Jennifer Braden, The Great School Debate: Choice, Vouchers, and Charters (Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum, 2000).
4. Joe Nathan, Charter Schools: Creating Hope and Opportunity for American Education (San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass, 1996).
5. Elsewhere in surveys of both state superintendents and charter school directors, we obtained compelling data that suggest that neither group believed that the current "problems" with education were because of public school teachers.
6. Jerry Horn and Gary Miron, "Evaluation of the Michigan Public School Academy," available on the Web at http://www.mich.edu/evalctr/, 1999;
7. Public Sector Consultants and MAXIMUS, "Michigan's Charter School Initiative: From Theory to Practice," available on the Web at http://www.mde.state.mi.us, February 1999;
8. SRI International, "Evaluation of Charter School Effectiveness: Part 1," available on the Web at http://www.lao.ca.gov/sri_charter_schools_ 1297-partl.html, 1998, p. 16;
9. Amy Stuart Wells, Beyond the Rhetoric of Charter School Reform: A Study of 10 California School Districts, 1998, p. 62 (for a copy, send an e-mail message with complete mailing address to charter@gseis.ucla.edu).
10. For an excellent review of the difficulty of defining innovation, see SRI International, Beyond the Rhetoric of Charter School Reform: A Study of 10 California School Districts, op. cit.
11. Beyond the Rhetoric of Charter School Reform: A Study of 10 California School Districts, Ibid.
12. Horn and Miron, Beyond the Rhetoric of Charter School Reform: A Study of 10 California School Districts, op. cit.
13. Public Sector Consultants and MAXIMUS, Beyond the Rhetoric of Charter School Reform: A Study of 10 California School Districts, op. cit.
14. Robert T. Stout and Gregg A. Garn, "Nothing New: Curricula in Arizona Charter Schools," in Robert Maranto, Scott Milliman, Frederick Hess, and April Gresham, eds., School Choice in the Real World: Lessons from Arizona Charter Schools (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999), pp. 159-72.
15. David Arsen, "Charter School Spending: Autonomous and Accountable?," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal, 1999.
16. Hank Prince, "Follow the Money: An Initial Review of Elementary Charter School Spending in Michigan," Journal of Education Finance, vol. 25, 1999, pp. 175-99.
17. F. Howard Nelson, "How Much Thirty Thousand Charter Schools Cost," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Finance Association, Jacksonville, Fla., 1997; also available on the Web at http://www.aft.org/research/reports/ private/chartfin/index.htm.
18. David Arsen, David Plank, and Gary Sykes, School Choice Policies in Michigan: The Rules Matter (East Lansing: College of Education, Michigan State University, 1999).
19. Chester E. Finn, Jr., "Politics of Change," in Diane Ravitch and Joseph Viteritti, eds., New Schools for a New Century: The Redesign of Urban Education (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 226-50;
20. Chester E. Finn, Jr., Bruno Manno, and Gregg Vanourek, Charter Schools in Action: Renewing Public Education (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000).
21. RPP International and the University of Minnesota, A National Study of Charter Schools: First-Year Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 1997);
22. idem, A National Study of Charter Schools: Second-Year Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 1998);
23. idem, The State of Charter Schools: Third-Year Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 1999).
24. Gregg Vanourek et al., "Charter Schools in Action Project: Final Report," available on the Web at http://www.edexcellence.net/chart;
25. RPP International and the University of Minnesota, Second-Year Report.
26. Gregg Garn and Robert Stout, "Arizona Charter Schools," unpublished manuscript, Arizona State University, 1998.
27. We are mindful of the debate between Naomi Zigmond and Nancy Zollers and Arun Ramanathan. Accordingly, we want to stress that these are data describing charter schools in general. We are not making the case that charter schools categorically ignore special education. However, we are arguing strongly that, as a group, charter schools are remiss in their responsibilities to educate students with special needs. See Nancy J. Zollers and Arun K. Ramanathan, "For-Profit Charter Schools and Students with Disabilities: The Sordid Side of the Business of Schooling," Phi Delta Kappan, December 1998, pp. 297-304;
28. Naomi Zigmond, "Special Education Revisited: A Response to Zollers and Ramanathan," Phi Delta Kappan, November 1999, pp. 228-34;
29. Arun K. Ramanathan and Nancy J. Zollers, "For-Profit Schools Continue to Skimp on Special Education: A Response to Naomi Zigmond," Phi Delta Kappan, December 1999, pp. 284-90.
30. Problems of Underfunded Maintenance Are Being Compounded by the Lack of Capital Renewal Plans, available at 3/D International website, http:// www.3DI.com, March 1999.
31. Mary Hartley has noted that charter schools do not currently have to meet the same adequacy standards as existing public school buildings and would have to spend millions to do so. See Mary Hartley, "A Voice from the State Legislature: Don't Do What Arizona Did!," in Maranto et al., pp. 198-211.
32. Gary Natriello, "Diverting Attention from Conditions in American Schools," Educational Researcher, November 1996, pp. 7-9.
33. U.S. General Accounting Office, School Facilities: Conditions of American Schools (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995);
34. idem, School Facilities: American Schools Not Designed for 21st Century (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995).
35. An architect in Arizona recently described some of the undesirable effects on building in that state because there are so many buildings needed and needed quickly. He told us of schools that are being built that are essentially windowless.
36. Good and Braden, School Facilities: American Schools Not Designed for 21st Century op. cit. We also wish to thank Arizona State Rep. Marion Pickens for discussing these ideas with us.
37. Edward Wyatt, "Investors See Room for Profit in the Demand for Education," New York Times, 4 November 1999, pp. A-1, A-21.
38. For a full explication of the need to keep some institutions public, see Robert Kuttner, Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets (New York: Knopf, 1997);
39. Jacques Steinberg, "Federal Funds for Teachers Reveal Surprising Hurdles," New York Times, 14 November 1999, p. A-14.
40. We are not arguing that no new charter schools should be opened. Rather, we want legislators to focus on issues of quality. Open charter schools only if they offer unique or compelling plans.