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In the 2019 case Cooper v. Kinston Charter Academy, the North Carolina Court of Appeals announced a bright-line rule allowing all public charter schools to claim, without reservation, the state's sovereign immunity from civil lawsuits. This decision arrived during a time of continued growth for charter schools. Three million American children are educated each year in charter school classrooms, and at least 200 North Carolina public charter schools--each sponsored and managed by a private nonprofit--are in operation as of the 2020- 2021 school year. And yet, the public charter school model remains controversial. Some argue that charter schools exacerbate racial disparities, while others fear the general lack of transparency in the system. Whatever your opinion, charter schools in North Carolina clearly occupy a legal middle ground: statutorily defined as "public schools," they receive state funds on a per-pupil basis while remaining free from requirements facing traditional public schools in areas such as teacher licensure. This Comment argues that the bright-line rule in Kinston improperly extends the state's sovereign immunity. Specifically, schools operated by Educational Management Organizations ("EMOs")--private companies that manage charter schools for a fee--should not benefit from immunity where the EMO's authority practically precludes the state's authority over a school's day-to-day functions. Instead, this Comment proposes a fact-specific test for charter school immunity centered around the school's function as a state subdivision rather than the school's statutory designation as a "public school." This fact-specific test would prevent misuse of state funds by private bad actors and mirror North Carolina's treatment of immunity claims by other quasi-public entities while allowing most public charter schools to innovate in the classroom without fear of liability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charter schools are the most popular alternative to traditional public schooling in the United States. The majority of research indicates positive effects of charter schools on student performance in traditional public schools. Most studies use the share of charter school students enrolled as a measure of the competitive pressure of charter schools. We contend that competitive pressure on traditional public schools also comes from an alternative teaching environment provided by charter schools. A teacher may be attracted to the freedom that a charter school provides, which can empower them to be innovative. These changes can spill over to traditional public schools. We empirically examine the impact this choice for teachers has on student performance in traditional public schools. We measure student performance by the percentage of 8th-grade students that attain proficiency level and above on National Assessment of Educational Progress exams. Our results indicate a positive relationship between teacher freedom in charter schools and the performance of traditional public school students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses that existence and aggregate quality of charter schools in a state depend on the provisions of state charter school laws. Topics discussed include that these laws address a wide range of issues and vary from state to state, and notes that the experiences of states with significant charter sectors, as well as those with innovative charter policies, provide lessons for charter school movement as a whole.

The article offers information on the charter schools, academy schools, and related-party transactions. Topics discussed include the Public Interest Disclosure Act and the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, and the acts protect workers who make disclosures in the public interest from dismissal and detrimental treatment.

The article discusses what the authors refer to as a charter school funding gap in America as of 2019, and it mentions the historical and legal aspects of the charter school movement in the U.S., as well as issues involving federal, state, and local education finance programs in the country. The U.S. Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and the nation's No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 are assessed, along with Local Education Agencies and funding based on an average per-pupil cost.

Since the first modern school choice laws were passed in the early 1990s, access to educational options has grown tremendously. Today, more than 6,900 charter schools exist in the 44 states and the District of Columbia which have charter school laws. These schools enroll more than 3.1 million children. During the same time period, prevalence of private school choice programs has grown dramatically with nearly 50 different programs in existence. Many have sought to examine the impacts of school choice programs on students. Indeed, there is a vigorous debate in the literature on this matter. This paper explores this issue from a different angle--school finance. The design of school choice programs, specifically how they are funded, has important implications for the legality of a program and with issues related to equity. These matters are incredibly important as states continually grapple with questions related to adequacy and equity in school finance. As school choice programs continue to expand, they offer an opportunity not just to expand educational options, as proponents suggest, but to improve how we fund education for all students. This paper explores the issues related to school finance and school choice litigation, then offers a school choice model that might be used to increase equity in finance and in educational options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on correlation between education and income inequality and forecasting the implications of charter school legislation in Kentucky. Topics discussed include proportion of charter schools to qualify for ranking, pathways to private and public capital and developmental risk factors in children that would otherwise hinder performance. It also mentions poverty rate with public-school students registered higher academic growth.

The article provide an overview of the nonprofit charter school system, including the historical backdrop, legislation, and how charter schools operate. Topics discussed include functions of education management organizations (EMOs); issues with rebranding EMOs as benefit corporations; and importance of improving the American public education.

The article focuses on a research relate to execution of charter school law in Washington, D.C. and role of federal government in shaping the same. Topics discussed include incentivization of Race to the Top (RTTT) competition for local education agencies, opposition of the Washington Education Association (WEA) for statewide charter school laws and relevance of RTTT for Washington policy through provision of empirical evidence.

Since the passage of the Charter Schools Act of 1992, charter schools have been hailed for achieving better results for students compared to traditional public schools in California. In particular, charter schools are touted for their ability to serve the needs of low-income students in urban areas. Proponents also assert that charter schools present teachers with the opportunity to work in a more flexible environment, where they allegedly enjoy greater flexibility and control over their instructional and curricular decisions, giving them the ability to innovate and experiment with new teaching pedagogy to meet the unique needs of their students. However, there is little discussion on the drawbacks that teachers face while teaching in this "increased flexibility" employment regime. Specifically, charter school teachers are deprived of statutory protections against arbitrary disciplinary decisions. This Note explores various legal routes that charter school teachers may navigate to protect themselves from arbitrary disciplinary and termination decisions. In particular, this Note examines various statutory and constitutional sources of protection, at both the state and federal level, and concludes that California due process provides the most promising opportunity for attaining protection from arbitrary disciplinary decisions. However, several unresolved ambiguities within California due process jurisprudence undermine the prospect of its ability to effectively shield teachers from uninformed or erroneous disciplinary decisions. This Note's conclusion provides for an alternative legal framework that would better balance charter school teachers' need to be respected and free from completely arbitrary disciplinary actions, with the charter schools' need to flexibly and efficiently make staffing decisions. Indeed, charter schools must be able to swiftly remove teachers who cannot meet the needs of their students due to their incompetence, unprofessionalism, or other faults. But at the same time, as professional educators and individuals as invested in their students as their own careers, charter school teachers should not be subject to the unfettered whim of their administrators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a reprint of the article "School of Hard Knocks" by Chester E. Finn Jr. and Brandon L. Wright, which appeared in the previous issue of the publication "Education Excellence." Topics mentioned include the signing of the first charter school law in the U.S. by former Minnesota Governor Arne Carlson on June 4, 1991, the disruptive education innovation following the emergence of charter schools and the importance of pluralism to support the concept of chartering.

The article focuses on litigations related to systemic governance issues in the U.S. schools. Topics discussed include constitutionality of a state law allowing for exclusion of unvaccinated students from schools during outbreaks of various illnesses being challenged parents in New York, class action purported by parents in Illinois over violations of No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and suits filed by community organizations against charter school law being approved by voters in a referendum.

The article focuses on the regulation of Pennsylvania which provides a right to appeal an administrative agency's decision to the state court system. It mentions the decision of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania in the case School District of Philadelphia v. Department of Education related to the appeal of the charter school grant. It also mentions several cases of Pennsylvania regarding the right to appeal from an agency decision such as Mosaica Academy Charter School v. Commonwealth.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility of Charter School system in Turkey, which was opened firstly in State of Minnesota of United States and was expanded to approximately 40 states in America today and also, in practice in some countries such as Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Sweden and Norway. Charter Schools are educational institutes that can be opened by signing a contract between a country's institution responsible for education and a person or a group who wants to be responsible for the management of this school. This system was based on performance and accountability and pursued more competitive and innovative goals. Moreover, Charter Schools put emphasis on democracy and equality in education by being free, addressing to all students living in the region where school was located and considering individual differences and diversity on behalf of students. Eight volunteering faculty members were chosen by criterion sampling who were working in the field of Educational Sciences of universities in Turkey. Interviews were conducted with participants who were informed about the structure and operation of this system in advance. The results of the study suggested that Charter Schools were advantageous in terms of individualism, diversity and flexible curriculum though flexible curriculum, monitoring and audition process could lead to some problems when it was practiced in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the legal aspects of the charter schools in the U.S. and discusses the growth in the charter schools as a prominent educational reform strategy nationwide. Topics discussed include issues concerning the quality and accountability of charter schools in California; justification for a sociologic approach to such schools; and bureaucratic structures and processes of charter school.

When California legislators passed the California Charter School Act of 1992, it allowed parents the choice of sending their children to public charter schools, places where teachers would have more autonomy and where schools faced exemptions from state education codes and from collective bargaining contracts. Hope Charter School (a pseudonym; HCS), located in a densely populated area of Los Angeles, was founded in 2000 by local community leaders, teachers, parents, and funders. In 2005, five years after the school was founded, the teachers at HCS voted to form a union, independent from the local district union. The experiences of teachers in this charter school are at the center of this article, which asks, “How did the promise of choice create an environment that led HCS teachers to seek unionization?” This article employed a qualitative case study design that focused on the experiences of one group of teachers who worked at the various HCS sites. There were 17 participants, including former and current teachers, all of whom were members or leaders of the teachers’ union. The teachers in this study described an environment where they were motivated to work on behalf of parents and students, yet the flexibility desired by the governing board was in conflict with the ability of teachers to collectively influence decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The focuses on the need of for developing the framework to analyze the differences in state charter school laws in the U.S. for the explain the significant variation across states in charter school performance and mentions that states can maximize charter school student achievement.

Over the past two decades, most states have adopted laws enabling charter schools, as charter advocates successfully presented charters as the solution to core problems in urban public education. Yet some states with large urban centers, notably Washington and Kentucky, resisted this seemingly inexorable trend for years. What explains their resistance? Furthermore, why did Washington—a state with a strong teachers’ union and long-standing Democratic political control (resources for charter resistance identified in prior research)—ultimately adopt charters in 2012 while Kentucky has not? I use comparative-historical narrative analysis to trace differences in charter battles in the urban centers of the two states. I find that supporters framed charters as the solution in both cases but varied in their ability to name public schools as the problem in the first place. I identify the source of the discursive resources used by opponents of charter schools in state-level ‘‘educational ecosystems’’: the cultural and institutional legacies of a range of state educational policies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Historically, strong teacher unions have been successful at gaining benefits and security for their members, but they have been put on the defensive by recent proposals for education reform. Charter schools are one such reform that could threaten unions, but there is wide variety in the content of state charter school laws. Using state-level data from 3 different years, I find that the stronger a state’s teacher union, the more antiunion provisions a state’s charter school law will contain. These results suggest that antiunion sentiment has reached a level high enough to overcome the unions’ ability to influence policy on this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on changes brought by charter school reform amendments in Missouri such as enhanced financial accountability procedures for charter schools. Topics discussed include amendment of the charter school laws by the Missouri Legislature in 2012 to improve academic and financial accountability standards, the impact of increased opportunities for establishment of charter schools on the traditional public school system in the state and the Missouri Charter Public School Association.

The article offers information on the role of the Ohio Courts in the adjudgement of policies related to the public charter school movement in Ohio. Topics discussed include the federal aid to U.S. public schools, decision of the Supreme Court of Ohio in the State ex rel. Ohio Congress of Parents and Teachers v. State Board of Education and the support of Ohio General Assembly in the enhancement of the education system in Ohio.

Despite failure to improve academic outcomes or close the achievement gap, school-choice policies, advanced by education legislation and doctrine, have come to dominate public discourse on public education reform in the United States, with students of color disproportionately enrolling in voucher programs and charter schools. This Article moves past the typical market-based critiques of school choice to analyze the particularly racialized constraints on choice for marginalized students and their families in the public school system. The Article unpacks the blame-placing that occurs when the individualism and independence that school choice and choice rhetoric promote fail to improve academic outcomes, and the ways in which choice merely masks racial subordination and the abdication of democratic values in the school system. Students of color and their families may be opting out, but their decisions to do so neither improve public education nor reflect genuine choice. This Article ultimately argues that the values underlining school choice and choice rhetoric--like privacy, competition, independence, and liberty--are inherently incompatible with the public school system. The Article concludes by suggesting an alternate legal and rhetorical framework acknowledging the vulnerability of minority students, as well as the interdependence between white students and non-white students in the system, and it advances strict limitations on school choice, even, if necessary, in the form of compulsory universal public school education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the Charter School Law (CSL) and the statutory interpretation of Pennsylvania. It cites the case Northside Urban Pathways Charter School v. State Charter School Appeal Board wherein the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania identified the implied power of school districts and their role in acting upon the amendment requests of the charter schools. The need for the charter schools to acknowledge the existence of charter amendments is also emphasized.

Free school policy claims to partly decentralise to local proposers decisions over who provides a free school, where and for what reasons, within the constraints of a government approval process. This article analyses empirically the people and organisations doing the proposing and their interactions with the approval process. The article begins by locating free schools within Big Society and quasi-market policies. The emerging free school landscape is then mapped and the motivations, aims and demography of a sample of 50 proposers are explored. A key distinction emerges between two analytical clusters. First, proposers able to negotiate the approval process are shown to draw on a range of professional networks, to have strongly academic educational aims and to on average not seek to specifically serve disadvantaged communities. Second, and conversely, the majority of proposers located in highly disadvantaged areas have aims and expertise that do not fit well with what the government is willing to accept. This is not conceived as a simple dualism but highlights the significance of both a lack of critical engagement with inclusion among accepted proposers and the effects of an approval process that has prioritised an unequal distribution of particular forms of professional expertise and experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the nation, 43 state/district legislatures have approved charter school laws and over half of these states require (n=13) or permit (n=10) nonprofits in the state to qualify for charters. The laws, however, focus almost exclusively on the establishment and government oversight of the charters, largely ignoring governance issues. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the charter school laws and their governance provisions. We find that only eight states require training while nine have no mention of the governance function in their laws. We conclude that more training and support for charter school governance should be included in public policies. The establishment of government authorized charter schools began in 1991 with the first charter school legislation passed in Minnesota. The charter school movement began as a way to promote the creation of alternative, free educational options for children. Charter schools are public schools, which receive public funding but operate, at least partially, outside of the traditional public education bureaucracy. Charter schools continue to grow and evolve. In the past three years, three states have added charter school laws - Maine, Washington and Mississippi. Currently, charter school legislation exists in forty-two states and the District of Columbia. The eight states that do not have charter school laws are Alabama, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article concentrates on charter school policy that is regarded as the fastest growing innovative policy in America. Its adoption is more impressive than other innovative policies in the public educational area. By 2008, 40 states among 50 American states have passed charter school law since Minnesota became the first pathfinder to create charter school law about two decades ago. However, 10 states have not adopted charter school law. Based on this dichotomous policy phenomenon, the primary research question of the study focuses on clarifying what factors drive American states to adopt charter school policy. To obtain answers for this research question, the study dedicates to analyzing main hypotheses from the regional diffusion model and state characteristics, using event history analysis. The results demonstrate that the three predictor variables—regional diffusion, similar innovation, and gubernatorial political tendency—positively have significant effects in explaining the adoption of American state charter school policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Chapter 2 of the "The Yearbook of Education Law 2013" edited by Charles J. Russoi is presented. It discusses various cases resolved by federal and state courts associated with the governance of K-12 public and nonpublic school in 2012. Some of the cases discussed include issues related to charter schools, election laws, school finance litigation as well as individual school board authority, bidding and awarding of contracts, school construction and student residency.