Purpose: This study examines how district governance and different school contexts in Denver's portfolio management model affect shared leadership for learning. We define this as shared influence on instructional leadership and school-wide decision making, which research suggests have strong ties to student achievement and teacher commitment.…

As charters and other autonomous schools grow to serve larger percentages of students both nationally and internationally, it is becoming increasingly important to understand how to best support and prepare leaders in this alternative setting. This study focuses on how charter school leaders perceived pre and in-service preparation and support.…

This study examined the ways in which for-profit comprehensive management educational management organizations (EMOs) operating charter schools respond to the need to balance school autonomy and flexibility with the fact that centralized operations require consistency, coordination, and legal constraints. The study focused on the perspective of…

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…

Analysis of selected set of charter-school research reports through late 2001. Finds, for example, that charter schools are more autonomous than other public schools, but that the jury is still out on some of the most important questions, including those about innovation, accountability, equity, and outcomes. Provides a framework for examining…

Based on a literature review, this report provides an overview of charter schools. A total of 52 studies of operating charter schools and documents exploring the origins of the charter school concept were reviewed. The report covers the following topics: why and how people create a charter school; charter schools' autonomy compared with public…