Inside Charter Schools: Unlocking Doors to Student Success
Bethany Gross
Center on Reinventing Public Education
February 2011

Abstract:

Over the last four years, the Inside Charter Schools initiative at the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) has examined how charter schools differentiate themselves from traditional public schools to attract students and families and how they recruit and manage their staff.

CRPE’s research shows that allowing schools to develop their own mission, granting them freedom over their budgets and personnel, and holding them accountable for performance can have valuable effects in schools and for the educational system more broadly. Autonomy, however, also creates new challenges and does not guarantee high-quality schools.  As the charter school movement pushes for more consistent quality, CRPE argues it could easily lead charters to employ conventional, and seemingly safe, methods and avoid exploring promising but unproven practices.