A couple of books that I’d like to highlight this afternoon. The first is (and note I full endorse Kevin’s words)…
Teachers College Press today is releasing School’s Choice: How Charter Schools Control Access and Shape Enrollment. So we have a favor to ask you – even before you click through to grab your own copy. Please let us know of organizations, newsletters, podcasts, radio/television, blogs, and book reviewers who you think would be interested in sharing the book with their audiences.
Beyond the headlines about “Got to go” lists and steering away students with special needs, the book describes a complex system of decisions made by charter-school operators that individually and together shape their student enrollment. The issue of access has fundamental implications for many of the other key charter-school issues, from achievement comparisons, to scalability, to segregation/stratification, to fiscal impact.
Moreover, how “public” are charter schools when they restrict access? “Public schools should, as fundamental institutions within our democracy, minimize barriers to access,” we write in School’s Choice. Yet the book uncovers 13 different approaches that charters can and do use to shape their enrollment. We explain that some charter schools are a lot less public than others.
School’s Choice also describes the incentives and pressures on charter schools to restrict access. The book examines how charters navigate those pressures, explaining access-restricting practices in relation to the ecosystem within which charter schools are created. It explains how charters have sometimes responded by surrendering to the pressures to restrict access but have also sometimes resisted those pressures. The text presents analyses of these 13 different types of practices around access, each of which shapes the school’s enrollment. We conclude by offering recommendations for how states and authorizers can address access-related inequities that arise in the charter sector.
Very truly yours,
Wagma and Kevin