Charter Schools From Reform Imagery to Reform Reality

by Powers, Jeanne M.

• ISBN13: 9780230606272
• ISBN10: 023060627X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-05-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This bookbegins with the claims of policymakers and explores charter schools at each stage of the policymaking process, from legislation to implementation. Powers carefully and thoroughly examines how features of schools' policy contexts shape the ways that charter school reform unfolds at schools, providing a nuanced portrait of the schools participating in this much discussed and little understood reform movement. While policymakers are often prone to making sweeping claims about the efficacy of charter schools, in practice charter school reform is much more complex. By drawing on an extensive and compelling range of data, Powers assesses the validity of policymakers' claims.

Author Biography

Jeanne M. Powers is Associate Professor in the Division of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Arizona State University. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, San Diego. Her research focuses on school choice, accountability policies, school finance litigation, and school segregation and has been published in Law and Social Inquiry, the American Educational Research Journal, and Education Policy Analysis Archives.

Table of Contents

List of Tables and Figure	p. ix
Series Editor's Preface	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Introduction: Charter Schools in the Reform Imagination	p. 1
Mapping the Terrain of Charter School Reform	p. 17
State Level Policy Action	p. 39
School Level Implementation: Charter School Reform "On the Ground"	p. 61
How Policy Contexts Shape Implementation	p. 111
Policy Dynamics-Schools and Accountability Policies	p. 159
The Relationship between Policy Talk and Implementation	p. 185
Conclusion: Charter School Reform-Sweeping Claims and Modest Progress	p. 205
Notes	p. 213
References	p. 225
Index	p. 237
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