Katrina Bulkley, Education Policy Analysis Archives, 9(37), October 1, 2001
Katrina Bulkley of the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education has written a perceptive, troubling paper on charter school accountability, now available online. She argues that the theory may be out of whack with the reality. The theory holds that a charter authorizer will terminate a school that doesn't deliver its promised academic (and other) results. Bulkley suggests, admittedly on the basis of preliminary and fragmentary evidence, that this rarely happens; that when charters are terminated it's for other reasons (e.g. fiscal shenanigans); and that "there are very few examples of charter schools that have been closed primarily because of failure to demonstrate educational performance or improvement." She examines several possible explanations. One of them is the scary nature of the "all or nothing" decision about charter renewal at a time when a number of schools are demonstrating partial success. Another is that "a number of authorizers are themselves politically invested in the success of the charter school 'movement'." There's more, including some perceptive, if rather general, suggestions about what might be done differently. You can find this paper at http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v9n37.html.
