Charter Schools and the Corporate Makeover of Public Education: What’s at Stake?

Abstract

1. An introduction to the landscape of charter reform : The rise of the charter school movement ; Charter schools, public education, and the front line of a contested political terrain ; Charters in the history of educational choice ; What is at stake? ; The structure of the book -- 2. The promise: the genesis of expectation and the challenge of charter reform : The luster and contribution of exemplar charter schools ; A history of charters in three movements ; The policy landscape: commitments and variation ; The charter landscape ; Policy dimensions: are charter schools public institutions? ; Charters, the marketplace, and a theory of change ; The appeal of charters to dominant economic interests: monetizing public education ; The question of money and corruption ; Scaling up reform through a network of charters: the tradeoffs of efficiency, and economic advantage ; Parents' search for alternatives to a system that has disinvested -- 3. The tension between promise and evidence : The promise-evidence gap ; Charters and the promise of equity ; Charter school dropouts, pushouts, and graduation rates: why do we know so little? ; The effect of charters on parent involvement ; The promise of charter innovation as a pathway to improving public education ; Teacher experience and stability as predicates for innovation ; Summary -- 4. Interlocking power and the deregulation of public education : The influence of wealth on public policy ; The state and philanthropy ; The charter campaign and political mobilization of the private sector: the case of New York State ; Charter schools and the maximization of economic gain: profiting from the privatization of public schools ; The slippery question of profit and the consolidation of power ; Partnership and profit in the game of educational privatization ; Claiming market share: strategic organizing of the charter campaign ; Collateral damage: the loss of accountability ; Reflections on politics, economics, and ideology -- 5. "Crisis": a moment for dispossession and profit : In a landscape of inequality: whose crisis is it anyway? ; After the floods: charter growth in New Orleans ; Building an education renaissance: Chicago and charter education ; Declaring "crisis": school closings and charter openings in New York City ; A geography and archeology of dispossession: tracking the policies and their impact ; Making a science of dispossession: focus on testing, ignore dropout ; The dropout epidemic ; Conclusion -- 6. Reclaiming "public": deepening national commitments to public investment and public innovation : New Jersey: the budget crisis and public education ; The binary tradeoffs of charter policy ; Provocative images of public innovation ; Toward a new consensus: the increasing call for investment to spur innovation and foster effective schooling ; Reimagining and reinvesting in a public education ; Conclusion.