Katrina E. Bulkley

A Decade of Charter Schools: From Theory to Practice

Charter schools have become an increasingly significant aspect of the educational landscape. After a decade of implementation and research, this article returns to some of the original ideas underlying charter schools—including autonomy, accountability, and performance outcomes—to assess what progress has been made and what is still unknown. Although some successes are evident, there is still much to learn about the quality of charter schools and the experiences of charter school stakeholders. There is strong evidence that parents and students who remain in charter schools are satisfied and that charter schools are more autonomous than other public schools. But the jury is still out on some of the most important questions, including those about innovation, accountability, equity, and outcomes. This article provides a framework for examining research on charter schools and some guiding questions for future work.

Learning to Learn From Data: Benchmarks and Instructional Communities

This article examines the use of interim assessments in elementary schools in the School District of Philadelphia. The article reports on the qualitative component of a multimethod study about the use of interim assessments in Philadelphia. The study used an organizational learning framework to explore how schools can best develop the capacity to utilize the potential benefits of interim assessments. The qualitative analysis draws on data from intensive fieldwork in 10 elementary schools and interviews with district staff and others who worked with the schools, as well as further in-depth case study analysis of 5 schools. This article examines how school leaders and grade groups made sense of data provided through interim assessments and how they were able to use these data to rethink instructional practice. We found substantial evidence that interim assessments have the potential to contribute to instructional coherence and instructional improvement if they are embedded in a robust feedback system. Such feedback systems were not the norm in the schools in our study, and their development requires skill, knowledge, and concerted attention on the part of school leaders.

The Changing Nature of Private Engagement in Public Education: For-Profit and Nonprofit Organizations and Educational Reform.

Recent years have seen a shifting landscape around private engagement in K-12 public education, one that involves a reorientation of education policy and practice around the principles of the marketplace. In this article, we examine the roles of both not-for-profit and for-profit agencies, as distinct from government agencies, in this movement. Past research has generally focused on subsets of these private actors (i.e., for-profit firms, charter management organizations, or alternative preparers of educators for public schools). We try to look more broadly in order to examine how private actors and the roles of those players in K-12 education are changing, both in terms of the scope of their engagement and the extent to which their role increasingly involves areas at the core of educational practice. In doing so, we consider some of the reasons for these changes, including the influence of federal policy, markets as drivers, and the broader political context. We conclude by raising questions for future research and examining how these developments intersect with values such as democratic voice, equitable distribution of resources, and the public purposes of schooling.

Building With Benchmarks: The Role of the District in Philadelphia's Benchmark Assessment System

In recent years, interim assessments have become an increasingly popular tool in districts seeking to improve student learning and achievement. Philadelphia has been at the forefront of this change, implementing a set of Benchmark assessments aligned with its Core Curriculum district-wide in 2004. In this article, we examine the overall context for Benchmarks in Philadelphia, the expectations district leaders had for the use of those Benchmarks, the supports put in place to assist those in schools in meeting those expectations, and the challenges encountered in that implementation.

Charter School Authorizers: A New Governance Mechanism?

This article explores the practices of charter school authorizers in Arizona and Michigan, including the two Arizona state boards and Central Michigan University (CMU). The author focuses on the role of authorizers in authorizing new schools, overseeing operating schools and holding them accountable, and providing technical assistance. When this study ended, CMU had developed a larger and more bureaucratic organization than the Arizona boards and tended to focus more on issues of compliance. An examination of the isomorphic pressures, or pressures to become similar to preexisting organizations (such as districts and state education agencies), helps to explain why authorizers in each state have taken rather different directions.

Understanding the charter school concept in legislation: the cases of Arizona, Michigan and Georgia1

This article explores the ways in which policy‐makers in Arizona, Michigan and Georgia understood the charter concept when adopting charter legislation. Drawing on literature on policy formation, the paper traces both the creation of the charter law in each state, and the underlying rationales that led policy‐makers to support the legislation. The author compares the rationales found in each state based on the goals of the legislation and the means to reaching those goals (including various interpretations of the concepts of autonomy and accountability). This analysis helps to explain why the idea of charter schools has received support from individuals and organizations that span the ideological spectrum.

Managing Community: Professional Community in Charter Schools Operated by Educational Management Organizations

This article examines ways in which entities external to schools, in this case for-profit educational management organizations (EMOs), can influence development of school professional community. Drawing on case studies of six charter schools operated by three EMOs, we examine the five elements of professional community described by Kruse, Louis, and Bryk; supports and barriers to development of professional community; and the role of EMOs in influencing supports and barriers. We found that in these cases, EMO staff influenced professional community in important ways through the design of their programs (including structures they set up for use of time and staffing) and their informal relationships with schools (including their roles as “cheerleaders,” constructive critics, flexible keepers of the model, and reliable managers). The findings of this exploratory study provide a basis for future research on how external entities such as EMOs can influence professional community.

Losing Voice? Educational Management Organizations and Charter Schools' Educational Programs.

Charter schools are one form of decentralizing public education by shifting power into the hands of school stakeholders by providing them with more “voice” in day-to-day decisions. However, the increasing involvement of educational management organizations (EMOs) as managers of charter schools raises newquestions about the influence of school stakeholders. This exploratory study examines the experiences of three very different EMOs and two schools operated by each company. Specifically, the author describes the role of each company in the development of the educational programs in the schools it manages. The three companies varied in the extent to which they limited school stakeholder “voice.” The analysis builds toward a greater understanding of the impact of EMOs on decentralization, including an exploration of the power of charter schools in the EMO-school relationship that examines how “exit” from the EMO-school relationship may provide power in a way that “voice” does not.

Bringing the Private Into the Public Changing the Rules of the Game and New Regime Politics in Philadelphia Public Education

Substantial policy and political changes have resulted from a 2001 state takeover of the Philadelphia School District and the subsequent hiring of Paul Vallas as the district’s new CEO. Using the lens of urban regime analysis, which emphasizes the importance of public and private actors in forming a governing coalition, this article analyzes the Philadelphia education regime and the policies it has promoted. The author determines that although decision making is highly centralized under this governing coalition, the role of private actors helps to define the regime as a “contracting regime,” in which public-private interaction shapes the political and policy context.

Local Politics and Portfolio Management Models: National Reform Ideas and Local Control

Amid the growth of charter schools, autonomous schools, and private management organizations, an increasing number of urban districts are moving toward a portfolio management model (PMM). In a PMM, the district central office oversees schools that operate under a variety of governance models. The expansion of PMMs raises questions about local control, as new national and local organizations become increasingly central players in the design and delivery of public education and educational systems. Looking across 10 distinct localities, this paper explores the variations in the role of local, state, and national actors in the initiation of PMMs and the provision of education within them. We find that the relationship between PMM reforms and issues of local control is a complicated one mediated by local contexts, including local civic and provider capacity, available resources, and issues of governance.