Hopes, Fears, & Reality: A Balanced Look at American Charter Schools in 2008

Robin Lake, via email:

Over the last three years, Hopes, Fears, & Reality has provided new evidence and analysis about what is going on in charter schools, how well they are doing, where they need to improve, and what can be learned from the research on these types of public schools. Past volumes have outlined how achievement studies should be conducted and interpreted, suggested how to achieve more effective public oversight of charter schools and how to eliminate barriers to growth, and presented nationwide trends in the number of charters opened and closed and the characteristics of these schools.

In this year's edition, the National Charter School Research Project (NCSRP) brings new evidence to some of these past questions and turns to some new ones.

What is striking throughout this year's essays is that charter schools are more different than alike, not only in terms of the populations they serve, the academic missions they pursue, and the results they produce, but also in their response to local need and capacity.

The essays in this volume show, for example, that:

National charter school achievement is promising overall, but highly varied

Posted by Jim Zellmer at December 12, 2008 1:33 AM
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