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No. 10 June 2000Civic Report

Does Charter School CompetitionImprove Traditional Public Schools?

Paul TeskeProfessor and Director of Graduate Studies,

Department of Political Science, SUNY-Stony Brook

Mark SchneiderProfessor and Chair,

Department of Political Science, SUNY-Stony Brook

Jack BuckleyPhD candidate, Department of Political Science, SUNY-Stony Brook

Sara ClarkPhD candidate, Department of Political Science, SUNY-Stony Brook

C E N T E R F O R C I V I C I N N O V A T I O NAAAAA T T H E M A N H AT T H E M A N H AT T H E M A N H AT T H E M A N H AT T H E M A N H A T TT TT TT TT T A N I N S T I T U T EA N I N S T I T U T EA N I N S T I T U T EA N I N S T I T U T EA N I N S T I T U T E

C C i

Civic Report June 2000

Does Charter School Competition Improve Traditional Public Schools?

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Summary of Findings 1

Why Should School Districts Respond? 2How New Ideas Can Leverage Change 2How Financial Pressure Can Leverage Change 3

Overview of Our Methodology 3Table 1: Principal Response Rates Vary Widely Across Districts 4

Several Factors Have Limited the Effects ofCharter Schools on Traditional Public Schools 4

Finding: District-Level Attitudes Toward Charter Schools Vary Widely 4Figure 1: Levels of Support Vary Across Districts 4Finding: District-Level Support is Not Related

to Market Share Held by Charter Schools 6Figure 2: There is No Evident Relationship Between Level of Support

and Percent of Students Enrolled in Charter Schools 6Finding: School Districts Have Been Shielded from

the Fiscal Implications of Losing Students 6Finding: To Date Individual Schools Have Been Held Harmless 7Finding: Population Trends May Also Be Blunting

the Impact of Charter Schools 8Figure 3: Charter School Students Represent

a Growing Share of D.C. Enrollments 8

What Factors Affect How Traditional Public Schools Respond? 9Finding: The Role of School Leadership is Critical in Reform 9Finding: Even if Districts Remain Insulated, Principals Respond to Pressure 10Figure 4: As Competitive Pressure Increases, Principals Innovate More 10Figure 5: As Competitive Pressure Increases, Principals Spend More

Time on Increasing Efficiency 10Figure 6: As Competitive Pressure Increases, Principals Feel They

Don’t Have Enough Autonomy 10

Perceived and Actual Differences Between Schools in the Two SectorsLimit the Leverage That Charters Are Exerting 11

Finding: There is Hostility Between the Sectors that Limits the Spilloverfrom Charter Schools to Traditional Public Schools 11

Finding: Public School Officials Do Not Believe the Charter SchoolsActually Provide New Models or Programs, Limiting Their Impact 12

Finding: Charter Schools and Traditional Public SchoolsDiffer in the Pattern of Innovations They Adopt 13

Figure 7: Traditional Public Schools and Charter Schools Differin the Range of Innovations They Adopt 13

Finding: Superintendents and Principals in Traditional Public SchoolsPerceive Limits in Their Freedom to Undertake Action in Responseto Competition—But This May be Changing 14


June 2000 Civic Report

Charter Schools Treat Parents Better than Traditional Public Schools 15Finding: Charter Schools are More Consumer Friendly:

Evidence from the District of Columbia 15Figure 8: Differences in the Physical Environment

of D.C. Public Schools and D.C. Charter Schools 15Results of Parent Visits: Physical Conditions 15How Do Schools in Different Sectors Treat Parents? 16Figure 9: Other Conditions in D.C. Public Schools and D.C. Charter Schools 16Figure 10: How Well Did Staff Treat Parents? 16Figure 11: Additional Indicators of How Parents Were Treated 17

Other Issues 17Finding: There is Little Evidence at Present Relating Test Scores

in Charter and Regular Public Schools 17Finding: Charter Schools May Be Evolving as Substitutes for Private Schools 18

Conclusion 19

Appendix 1: Summary of Conditions in the School Districts Studied 21

Appendix 2: D.C. School Visits Procedures 21

Appendix 3: Approach and Methodology 22A Brief Introduction to the Districts 22

The Massachusetts Districts 22The New Jersey Districts 23The Washington D.C. Schools 24

References 25

Notes 26



Of the many school choice initiatives spreadingthroughout the country, charter schools are byfar the most common. As of January 2000, over1,700 charter schools serving more than 350,000students have been created in nearly 40 states.That these schools are popular among parentscan be seen by a simple fact: approximately 70percent report having waiting lists. However,it’s critical to remember that despite the rapidgrowth of charter schools, nearly 90 percent ofAmerican children continue to be enrolled in“traditional” public schools.1 Since this distri-bution of students across sectors is likely tochange only modestly in the foreseeable future,we believe that one of the most important is-sues of the many raised by the charter schoolexplosion is the extent to which charter schoolsaffect the behavior of traditional public schoolsby competing with them for students.

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

We studied Springfield and Worcester, Massa-chusetts, Jersey City and Trenton, New Jersey,and the District of Columbia (D.C.), to appraisehow charter schools are affecting the traditionalpublic school system.2 We found that chartercompetition has not induced large changes indistrict-wide operations, despite the fact that asignificant number of students have left districtschools for charter schools.

This may be explained by the fact that state poli-cies generally cushion districts from the finan-cial effects of departing students. Demographics

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play a role, too. Rising total enrollments, a by-product of the “baby boom echo,” and recenthigh rates of immigration, have helped districtsavoid fiscal pain; some have maintained abso-lute enrollment (and budget) levels even as theirmarket share has shrunk.

Districts also cushion individual schools fromthe financial impact of declining enrollmentsand shrinking market share. They tend to pro-vide constant resources to shrinking schools, insome cases sending extra money to failingschools to “prop them up.”

Even though state and district policies shieldedpublic school systems from the effects of char-ter school competition, impeding a full test ofthe proposition that competition leads to betterschools, we found that many superintendentsand principals are responding even to muffledcompetition by making changes designed toproduce more appealing and effective schools.This is especially true in districts where the su-perintendent was already disposed to reformdistrict operations. There the likelihood of suchchange was enhanced by competition from char-ter schools. For example, Springfield Superin-tendent Peter Negroni has replaced more thana dozen of the district’s 42 principals and em-phasized school-level accountability for pupilperformance. Trenton Superintendent JamesLytle has developed a school-based budget pro-cess that will allocate funds to schools on a per-pupil basis, ultimately translating enrollmentlosses into financial losses.

DOES CHARTER SCHOOL COMPETITION

IMPROVE TRADITIONAL PUBLIC SCHOOLS?



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Superintendents have also made changes in re-sponse to specific features of charter schools thatare attractive to parents. Examples include:

•Springfield is starting a Montessori-style school and one that makes exten-sive use of laptop computers, both ideasalready implemented in popular localcharter schools;•The widespread belief among parentsthat the Sabis charter school is improv-ing children’s test scores led severalSpringfield schools to start Saturdaystudy programs, mimicking those atSabis;•Two Trenton elementary schools lo-cated in neighborhoods most affected bynew charter schools are changing fromK-6 to K-8 because of parents’ concernsabout safety in the public middleschools; and•In response to widespread parentaldemand for charter-style before- and af-ter-school programs, Worcester Super-intendent James Caradonio and hisprincipals are working with the teach-ers’ union to replicate such programs indistrict schools.

Furthermore, we found evidence that schoolmanagers respond to competition from otherschools. In surveying principals about whetherthey were changing their school operations inresponse to competition, we learned that:

•Principals adopt more innovations attheir school in direct proportion to thecompetitive enrollment pressure that theyfeel;•As that pressure mounts, principals tryhard to boost school efficiency;•As competitive pressure builds, princi-pals are likelier to feel they do not haveenough autonomy to run their schools asthey judge best.

These building-level patterns are evident evenin districts where the superintendent is hostileto charter schools, such as Worcester.

In the District of Columbia, we learned that par-ents believe that charter schools have superiorphysical facilities than district public schools.Washington parents are also more likely to saythat charter schools feel safe and that their staffis friendlier and more helpful. These factorsprobably help to explain why nine percent ofall D.C. schoolchildren are currently enrolled incharter schools, one of the highest proportionsin the country.

The fact that traditional schools attempt tolimit the effects of competition and respondto competition in a piecemeal, rather than awholesale, fashion may disappoint charterschool advocates. To understand why re-sponse occurs in this way, we first need toaddress the theories that underlie the compe-tition hypothesis and show how our observa-tions diverge from these expectations.

WHY SHOULD SCHOOL DISTRICTS RESPOND?

From our review of the literature on how com-petition can affect the behavior of organiza-tions, we identify two theories explaining howthe presence of charter schools can leveragechange in the public schools. The first theoryis based on the diffusion of innovation; thesecond is based on the indirect financial ef-fect of losing students.

How New Ideas Can Leverage Change

Many proponents of charter schools arguethat, because of their greater freedom andfewer bureaucratic rules, charter schools canbe “laboratories” for change and experimen-tation that will provide examples for the re-form of the traditional public schools. Manycharter school advocates believe that, giventhis freedom, charter schools will design newand original curricula and programs, that theywill experiment with new models of schoolorganization, and that they will develop newmethods to encourage parental involvement.Of these experiments, those proving success-ful will be conveyed to the education commu-nity at large and eventually adopted by the



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traditional public schools (Kolderie 1990;Nathan 1996).

However, at least one assumption in this line ofargument may not hold true. There is an expec-tation that the lines of communication betweenthe two sectors will be open and that informa-tion will flow freely between them. As we dem-onstrate below, the attitude of school districtofficials towards charter schools varies widely;districts that are hostile to charter schools areunlikely to encourage communication. There arealso concerns about whether information flowsin the other direction. An official of the Districtof Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) suggestedthat there is little actual communication betweensectors because there is no incentive for educa-tors at charter schools to convey informationback to the traditional public schools, as theyare too busy and because many of them havelittle desire to communicate.

How Financial Pressure Can Leverage Change

The second theory relates to the direct effectsof market competition. Specifically, we mightexpect that the traditional public schools willrespond as they lose students to the charterschools if there are financial penalties for thisloss, as there are for firms that lose customersor market share. In this view, the elementsnecessary to propel change are competitionand the prospect of financial reward or pen-alty based on performance and “customer” be-havior. This financial incentive could aid inthe flow of information concerning success-ful education programs and techniques be-tween charter and traditional schools: Iftraditional schools face a loss of budget result-ing from declining market share, the incen-tive to adopt programs that have been provensuccessful elsewhere should increase.

Indeed, charter school laws around the countryhave effectively “codified” this argument bymandating that some percentage of per pupileducational expenses follow the child to thecharter school, leaving less money in the tradi-tional public school district (though also

leaving fewer children to educate). Many ad-vocates have assumed that this financial losswould motivate the traditional public schoolsto improve performance. As we show below, inreality, such losses have not yet been felt inmany districts—mitigating the strength of the“market share” argument.

Some skeptical analysts have questionedwhether insulated urban school districts, of-ten run by bureaucrats, really can be changedby these incentives, especially when othertechniques tried in the past did not succeed(e.g. Rothstein 1998). The broader literatureon the effect of competition on public organi-zations shows that responses can be morecomplex than the above arguments indicate.Responses from the traditional public sectorcan range from outright hostility and resis-tance, to various degrees of realistic adapta-tion, including the use of competition toachieve other organizational goals, throughattempts to co-opt the competitive process tothe advantage of the organization or its spon-sors.3 Indeed, we find that the school districtswe studied have responded to the increasedcompetition from charter schools in ways thatspan the spectrum cited in the literature.

OVERVIEW OF OUR METHODOLOGY

To gauge the influence of charter schools anddistrict-level responsiveness, we intervieweddistrict superintendents, school board leaders,charter school heads, teachers’ union leaders,and other district leaders (such as parentalplacement center heads and school princi-pals). We searched various newspapers anddatabases to get “third-party” informationabout local politics, population trends, andissues surrounding the public and charterschools in these districts. We also examinedthe written materials and websites preparedby state education departments and the schooldistricts themselves. We combined these in-terview and other data with district-levelobjective data on enrollment trends, demo-graphics, and test scores to get a more completepicture of each district.



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In addition to this district-level information,we surveyed school principals by mail, e-mail,and telephone. The response we received tothe survey of principals depended greatlyon the degree of support we received fromthe district superintendent in carrying out thesurvey, which varied across districts. At oneextreme, cooperation in the Worcester andTrenton school districts was superb. In bothcities, the superintendents took an active rolein distributing our questionnaires (both inprinted and electronic versions) and askedtheir principals several times to participatein the study. At the other extreme, our effortsto survey principals in Washington D.C. werea dismal failure. We tried both regular mailand e-mail approaches to principals inD.C., but to no avail. Eventually, we were toldthat officials at the central office had in-structed principals not to respond. As evidentin Table 1, the support of the superintendentsclearly affected how many principals re-sponded to our survey.4

Given the low response rate in WashingtonD.C., we do not include these principals insome of the analyses presented below.5

However, given the large number of charterschools in the District, we were able to addresstwo other questions that could not be studiedin the other districts. These include a moredetailed comparison of the “consumer”friendliness of both types of public school andan analysis of the “package” of reforms evi-dent in the charter schools. With this back-ground in place, we present our mostimportant findings.

SEVERAL FACTORS HAVE LIMITED THE EFFECTS

OF CHARTER SCHOOLS ON TRADITIONAL

PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Finding: District-Level Attitudes TowardCharter Schools Vary Widely

Although our districts were not chosen as arandom sample, nor were they selected to in-crease the variance on the dependent variable,we found a wide range of district-level re-sponse to charter schools. Figure 1 illustrateshow support for charter schools varies acrossthe five cities. Starting with the strongest levelof support in Springfield, we give some illus-trations of how district-level support variesacross our five cities.

In Springfield, support for charter schools isextensive among district officials. Indeed, Su-perintendent Negroni and a member of theelected city school board actually sit on theBoard of Directors of the Sabis InternationalCharter School, the largest charter school inSpringfield. The support for the Sabis CharterSchool is also evident among the city’s politicalelite: the Mayor of Springfield serves as a direc-tor of the Sabis school as well.

In our interviews with school district officialswe found virtually no hostility directed at char-ter schools. To the contrary: Negroni considerschildren who attend charter schools to be “our”6

children, since they live in Springfield. He viewscharter schools as part of a “toolbox” of tech-niques available to him to leverage reform inhis district and he argues that “beating Sabis”has now become a mantra in the district, ener-gizing the public schools to perform better.

In Trenton, while no school official serves onany charter school board, district leaders

Trenton 20 87%Worcester 30 61Springfield 17 37Jersey City 9 25D.C. 12 8

ResponseRate

Number ofResponses

Table 1: Principal Response RatesVary Widely Across Districts

Figure 1: Levels of Support Vary Across Districts

D.C. Worcester Jersey City Trenton Springfield

Less support More support



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support charter schools as a form of competi-tion they can use to leverage further reform ac-tivity by their own principals. Lytle notes, “Ibelieve in competition. We intend to be in theforefront of urban education reform. We wel-come this competition and believe we’ll all bebetter for this.”(Shoemaker 1998).

While Springfield and Trenton represent by farthe most positive responses to charter schoolsamong our five sites, Jersey City demonstratesa fairly “neutral” response to charter schoolcompetition. As noted in Appendix 3, the Jer-sey City superintendent, Richard DiPatri, wasappointed by the state of New Jersey, whichtook over the city schools ten years ago. Offi-cials who we interviewed in the Jersey City pub-lic school district cooperate with charter schoolsbut do not see them as strongly positive or nega-tive influences on their actions, and they con-tinue to implement their own reforms, withoutseeing charter schools as a leverage point to fur-ther their own agendas. According to DiPatri:“We cooperate with the charter schools, but ourbusiness, and our state mandate, is to improvethe whole Jersey City public school system.”

Leaders in the two other districts, Worcester andWashington D.C., are negative towards chartersand have actively worked against them.

Worcester officials, including the superinten-dent, are actively opposed to charters and areleading a lobby of municipalities in Massachu-setts to get state rules governing charterschanged. There are several main issues thatmotivate their opposition, among the most ba-sic is the claim that parental choice of charterschools is motivated by racial concerns ratherthan by academic or programmatic consider-ations. Indeed, one official went so far as to ar-gue that “choice is race.”

In addition, most of the Worcester officials weinterviewed argued that the charter schools donot “add value” to the education of their stu-dents and that the charters represented an un-necessary drain on the resources of a district thatthey argue is actually performing quite well.

Moreover, echoing a common charge againstcharter schools, several officials we inter-viewed argued that the charter schools, de-spite laws to the contrary, were screeningstudents and either not admitting or “coun-seling out” high cost students, such as stu-dents in need of special education.

In D.C., although official statements from theoffice of Superintendent Arlene Ackerman re-flect a neutral attitude toward the charterschools, in fact, one of the primary ways inwhich the DCPS demonstrates opposition is byincreasing the level of difficulty charter schoolorganizers face in locating suitable facilities.Securing an acceptable facility is one of the mostpressing problems facing new charter schoolsthroughout the country, and despite the Con-gressional mandate to give District charterschools priority in obtaining vacant publicschool buildings, new charters continue to facean alarming level of difficulty in exercising thispriority. In their 1999 report, Henig et al. citeseveral examples of “puzzling” occurrencessurrounding the sudden unavailability of pre-viously available and occasionally already-promised school facilities. For example, theHyde Park charter school negotiated for 15months with D.C. school officials to lease a va-cant school building, with an option to buy it in10 years. However, when the plan was submit-ted to the Board of Trustees for approval, thelease process was halted without explanation.Hyde Park school officials were eventually in-formed that the lease price would increase andthat there was no guarantee of a building pur-chase. Council member Kevin Chavous told theWashington Post that: “It sounds like [school of-ficials] reneged on a deal.” (Wilgoren 1998).

Another problem has been obtaining chartersfrom the D.C. Board of Education. For ex-ample, the Kwame Nkrumah charter schoolwas told that the Board had approved a char-ter, and they prepared to open. But, just daysbefore the school year, the Board voted againsta charter in a closed meeting, and sent secu-rity officials to tell students that their schoolwas not authorized (Strauss 1999).



Figure 2: There is No Evident Relationship Between

Level of Support and Percent of Students Enrolled in Charter Schools

0

2

4

6

8

10

D.C. Worcester Jersey City Trenton Springfield

Level of support increases from left to right

Per

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of s

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D.C. charter school leaders believe that city of-ficials are slow and erratic in their responsesbecause they are worried that students and par-ents will favor the charters and leave the tradi-tional system in even greater numbers.Superintendent Ackerman and other districtleaders have expressed concerns about loss offinancing to charter school competitors, and ar-gue that such competition is not fair.

Finding: District Level Support is Not Relatedto Market Share Held by Charter Schools

As noted, a market share approach to charterschools would link the percentage of studentsattending charter schools to the behavior of of-ficials in the traditional public schools. We hy-pothesized that as the market share of chartersincreased, the resulting loss of market share fortraditional schools would lead district schoolofficials to take an antagonistic view of theircompetition.

However, as Figure 2 shows, the attitude ofschool district leadership to charter schools isnot a direct function of the loss of market share.We believe that there are two reasons for thislack of relationship:

•First, districts and their individual schoolshave to date been shielded from most ofthe costs of losing students to charterschools. In short, despite the compellinglogic linking market share, competition and

financial benefits or losses to organizationalresponsiveness, school districts have todate been essentially held harmless fiscallyfrom the growth of charter schools.

•Second, the attitude of the district super-intendent and, through the superintendent,the attitudes of other high level adminis-trators seem to be more a function of theirindividual beliefs rather than a function ofthe current level of charter school enroll-ment in their district.

We believe that both of these factors have re-duced the effects of competition from charterschools and changing “market share.”

Finding: School Districts Have BeenShielded from the Fiscal Implications ofLosing Students

Theoretically, the loss of students in the tradi-tional public schools to charter schools wouldbe accompanied by a corresponding loss ofresources. When districts start to lose a signifi-cant share of students, they are likely to feel thefinancial shortfalls. This would then lead tothe restructuring of failing public schools to at-tract students back and, in the extreme, a dis-trict-level decision to close (the equivalent of“bankruptcy”) those schools that cannot or donot respond.

In our fieldwork, however, we found that inevery district we studied a variety of financialand policy mechanisms have shielded the dis-tricts from most financial losses and, at the stateor district level, compensatory financial mecha-nisms have been put in place to soften the im-pact of the growth of charters.

For example, in Massachusetts, we found almostuniversal agreement among district leaders andprincipals that the financial impacts of grow-ing charter school enrollment have been negli-gible. This is partly because a Massachusetts lawenacted in 1995 and amended in 1999 created asliding scale of state reimbursement for finan-cial losses due to charter school enrollment.7



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The amount reimbursed decreases over fouryears after the new school opens its doors (from100 percent to 60 percent to 40 percent to 0 per-cent). This slow adoption of full financial pen-alty for loss of students, along with additionalstate aid to the schools through other channels,has thus far prevented the traditional schoolsin Massachusetts from experiencing the trueeffects of competition from the charter schools.8

The schools in the two New Jersey districtshave also avoided the full financial losses thatshould flow from growing charter enroll-ments. As a consequence of Abbott v. Burke,9

the latest N.J. Supreme Court decision in a 25-year long educational funding legal saga, the30 poorest districts in New Jersey, which in-clude Trenton and Jersey City, are entitled toa large share of financial resources from thestate. These extra funds support new pre-Kprograms, reduce class size, and fund a vari-ety of other compensatory programs. To makesure that these funds are well spent, the courthas mandated a set of reforms known as“Whole School Reform” (WSR). Thus, Tren-ton and Jersey City are receiving new fundsto implement WSR far in excess of theamounts they have lost to the charter schools.Most notably, Trenton received more than $10million for WSR, and by becoming a “light-house” district for WSR implementation, is at-tracting consulting funds and expects to gaineven more discretionary state monies.

Additionally, the state of New Jersey is expectedto provide substantial funding for new schoolconstruction and school modernization, whichare critical issues in Trenton and Jersey City. Asa result, even with the outflow of students tocharter schools, the schools have not experi-enced any severe financial repercussions.

In D.C., budgets of both traditional and charterschools are supposed to be determined by a uni-form per-student formula that includes a baseallotment of $5,500 per pupil, with extra mon-ies available for various add-ons and facilitiesallowances. However, federal legislation per-mits block appropriation of funds to the public

schools for “special needs,” thereby allowingindividual school budgets to be enlarged or heldconstant despite drops in enrollment, and, atleast so far, preventing the district from experi-encing an overall budget decrease. Henig et al.observe that “With enrollment levels in publiccharter schools expected to grow, it is unclearhow schools will be able to meet their financialresponsibilities without sacrificing their educa-tional missions. Luckily for both DCPS and pub-lic charter schools, the size of the elementaryand secondary education budget has grownsubstantially in recent years, easing, at least forthe time being, the potential for intense compe-tition between the two types of schools.” (1999,38). Again, this may be changing: As the Wash-ington Post recently reported, “[l]ately, city offi-cials have been warning [Ackerman] that theschool system could wind up with millions ofdollars less than expected for the 1999-2000school year, in part because of the growingpopularity of new D.C. public charter schools—which are drawing public finds away from tra-ditional schools.”(Strauss 2000)10 Thus while inthe future the financial costs of losing studentsto charter schools may force a response, to date,these costs have not yet been fully imposed.

Finding: To Date Individual Schools HaveAlso Been Held Harmless

Just as no district has yet been held fullyaccountable for losses of students to charterschools, we find that no district has yet held in-dividual schools fully accountable for theirlosses of students to charter schools. For mostdistricts, in the long run money will have to havesome reasonable relationship to enrollment inparticular schools. Indeed, in some of these dis-tricts, at least a portion of school-level budgetsis tied to the number of pupils served—butprobably not yet enough to force reforms. Andthis budgeting trend often comes into conflictwith a much more traditional response: Super-intendents often redistribute money to failingschools to try to “prop them up.” In some dis-tricts the resolution of these two forces may bechanging in favor of holding individual schoolsmore responsible.



Figure 3: Charter School Students Represent a Growing

Share of D.C. Enrollments

0102030405060708090

1989-1990 1997-1998 1998-1999 1999-2000

School Year

Tho

usan

ds o

f Stu

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s

Traditional Charter

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For example, only a few principals in Trentonreported feeling budget constraints this year as-sociated with loss of students, but many moreexpected to feel a large budget pinch next yearas a result of choice. This is not surprising, be-cause Superintendent Lytle plans to implementa flexible (50-60 percent “cash-based”) school-based budget process that will allocate fundingon a per pupil basis, with decisions made by ateam of administrators, teachers and parents.With this kind of budget process in place, Tren-ton will translate school-level losses of studentsinto financial cuts.

In the other districts, however, we did not hearmuch about any efforts to apportion cuts to spe-cific schools. This is not because districts areignoring school-level activities. In fact, in sev-eral of these districts, superintendents are hold-ing principals more accountable. In Springfield,Negroni has replaced more than a dozen of his42 principals and emphasizes the “District 2”model of choice and school-level responsibilitythat he learned from Anthony Alvarado in NewYork City before moving to Springfield.Caradonio in Worcester has developed an elabo-rate school-level accountability tracking system;he has not replaced large numbers of principals,because he believes that he and his predecessorput a strong cadre in place. DiPartri made prin-cipal accountability a centerpiece of his reformin Jersey City, appointing a new supervisor ofprincipals. But in general, while district super-intendents must ultimately care about how in-dividual schools are being run, so far, they arenot explicitly punishing schools for losing stu-dents to charter schools.

Finding: Population Trends May AlsoBe Blunting the Impact of Charter Schools

Despite the general decline in inner-city popu-lations over the past few decades, all of our dis-tricts, as a result of both the “echo baby boom”and recent immigration, have witnessed in-creases in total enrollment (See Appendix 1).This has acted to relieve the traditional schoolsof some of the competitive threat from charterschools as new students quickly fill seats

vacated by those opting for a charter school.Thus, even if enrollment in charter schools in-creases, the traditional public schools do notnecessarily experience a net decline in the num-ber of students in attendance. Even in the Dis-trict of Columbia, for example, the total numberof students in all public schools has increasedover the last decade. As Figure 3 illustrates, thegrowing number of charter school students istaking an increasing proportion of total enroll-ment, but even then, total public school enroll-ment was higher at the end of the decade thanit was at the beginning.

While D.C. does have surplus buildings, noneof the New Jersey or Massachusetts districtshave excess space to accommodate growing en-rollments. Trenton, for example, is alreadysending its special education children to otherdistricts because it lacks space to house them.In both Jersey City and Springfield, school dis-trict leaders explicitly regarded charter schoolsas a way of avoiding large capital outlays tohouse an expanding student population.

In short, with many urban districts currentlyexperiencing growth, charter schools can beviewed as a positive way to deal with spaceproblems. The fact that many schools are notseeing fewer students, even as charter schoolsare created, blunts the competitive pressure theyfeel from expanding charter schools.



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WHAT FACTORS AFFECT HOW TRADITIONAL

PUBLIC SCHOOLS RESPOND?

Finding: The Role of School Leadershipis Critical in Reform

The “effective schools” literature and manyother studies of high-performing schools arguethat school leadership is critical to performance(e.g., Teske and Schneider 1999; Chubb and Moe1990; Purkey and Smith 1983, Byrk, Lee and Hol-land 1993). According to Hess (1999b, 7):“School improvement requires time, focus, andthe commitment of core personnel. To succeed,the leadership must focus on selected reformsand then nurture those efforts in the schools.”Thus, we might expect to see variation in theresponse of school districts based on differencesin leadership styles.

In our fieldwork, we found that district lead-ers and principals who are entrepreneurialand reform-oriented are using charter schoolsas a tool to increase their leverage over theirschools and force them to institute new pro-grams and improve performance. We alsofound that the predisposition of superinten-dents toward competition seems to precedethe growth of charters.11

Of all the district leaders we interviewed,Springfield Superintendent Negroni was themost vocal supporter of charter schools. Givenhis background, his support for choice is notsurprising. For example, Negroni worked withAnthony Alvarado, one of New York City’smost successful advocates of choice, and washired by Springfield a decade ago with the ex-plicit mandate to reform the Springfield publicschools. Indeed, he talks about training his prin-cipals in the expanded choice models thatAlvarado pioneered in New York City’s Dis-tricts 2 and 4. Therefore it is not surprising thatNegroni regards charters as “a spark plug toaccelerate change in the system,” and that heargues charter schools “get people’s attention”and provide additional leverage for reform. Andit is not surprising that he has borrowed ideasdeveloped in local charter schools: Springfield’s

traditional public schools will soon include aMontessori-type school and a school basedaround laptop computers, a key element of theEdison Project’s approach. Perhaps most impor-tantly, Negroni believes that his principals havethe power and the flexibility necessary to im-prove the quality of services their schools pro-vide—and that charters are forcing them to usethat authority to make beneficial changes.

Similarly, in Trenton, Lytle had an explicit man-date to reform the public schools and, as notedearlier, had in fact written at least one applica-tion to create a charter school. Lytle appreciatesthe increasingly competitive environment inwhich public schools are operating. In his firstspeech to Trenton principals he pointed out thathe could, in effect, “sell” the whole system tothe Edison Project, who could run it cheaper andperhaps better than it was being run. Lytle wasmaking an explicit market competition argu-ment to support his push for reform.

In contrast, Worcester SuperintendentCaradonio took over a relatively stable schooldistrict after serving for over 10 years as theDeputy Superintendent to James Garvey, apopular and well-regarded superintendent. Hesimply does not see the need for wholesale re-form, and views the resources and attentiongiven to charter schools as harming his progresstowards incremental improvements.

Although DiPatri had been involved with char-ter school legislation as a state official, he feltthat his state mandate in Jersey City was to cleanup the previous mess, and to do so with a cen-tralizing approach, emphasizing top-down ac-countability. For example, he has implementeda principal mentoring program and an academyfor the preparation of principals. He appointedfive new principals in the latest school year.While not at all hostile to charters, he views themas irrelevant, at best, to his reform agenda.

Finally, in D.C., Superintendent Ackerman hasbeen working hard to reform, and to improvethe image of, the traditional public schools. But,she has been criticized for putting more re-sources into attempting to improve the worst



Figure 6:As Competitive Pressure Increases,

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schools, at the expense of maintaining thegood ones. And, some principals feel that shehas increased their bureaucratic burdens,while not forming strong and useful relation-ships with them.12

Finding: Even if Districts Remain Insulated,Principals Respond to Pressure

While superintendents clearly set the tone fortheir school districts and set the general courseof reform for the individual schools in their dis-trict, we found evidence from our survey ofprincipals that the sound of parent footstepsheading to charter schools is being heard at theschool level, regardless of what their superin-tendent says about charters. As front-line man-agers, many principals recognize that thefunding of their schools and even their job ten-ure will increasingly be tied to enrollmenttrends, so perhaps this is not surprising—andmay be occurring even as superintendents saythat a response is not necessary.

We found several patterns in our surveys thatsuggest that the growth in charter school en-rollments is affecting how principals behave.Here we report data from our survey of 76 prin-cipals in the four districts with reasonable re-sponse rates (that is, we exclude D.C.).

As Figure 4 illustrates, there is a relationshipbetween the principal’s expectation of loss ofstudents to charter schools and other forms ofcompetition in the near future and thenumber of recent reforms introduced or ex-panded in a school.13 Similarly, as expectedlosses to competitors increase, principals reportspending more of their time on improving theefficiency of their schools (see Figure 5). AndFigure 6 shows that principals who fear the lossof students to competitors are also more likelyto feel that they do not have enough autonomyto implement the kinds of changes and policiesthat they see as necessary to make their schoolsperform better and more competitively.

In short, principals feeling competitionare trying to act more entrepreneurially:

enhancing efficiency, changing the program-matic mix of their schools and expressing frus-tration over restrictions on their ability to domore. It is important to note that these samepatterns generated in the aggregate data alsoappear among principals in a district like



11

Worcester, where the superintendent andother district-level officials downplay thechallenges represented by growing charterschool enrollments. So, principals, the front-line managers, may be feeling the effects morestrongly, and in turn may be trying to reactmore quickly, than are district officials.

The pressure on public school principals is likelyto increase, especially in districts where the su-perintendent is intent on reform. For example,in Massachusetts, principals are no longer ten-ured and now serve on contracts that last fromone to three years, due to provisions in thestate’s 1993 Education Reform Act. Since the lawwas enacted, in Springfield, SuperintendentNegroni has used this new power to a consid-erable degree: he reports that he forced out prin-cipals from about a dozen (of 42) schools sincethe 1993 enactment.

PERCEIVED AND ACTUAL DIFFERENCES

BETWEEN SCHOOLS IN THE TWO SECTORS

LIMIT THE LEVERAGE THAT CHARTERS

ARE EXERTING

The literature supporting charter schools oftenportrays them as venues in which new teach-ing techniques and new packages of serviceswill be pioneered and then diffused to the tra-ditional public schools. In the most extremeforms, many advocates of charter schools viewthem as “shining lights” that will illuminate thefuture of education. Indeed, for many propo-nents of charters, this diffusion of ideas throughexample is as important as any theory of mar-ket competition.

Contrary to this view, we found a sharp di-vide between leaders in the traditional publicschools and the charter schools that has so farmuted any diffusion effects of charter schoolreforms. At the most fundamental level, manyleaders in the traditional public schools feelthat the environment in which charter schoolsoperate is not the same one they face. Andmany public school leaders think that thecharter schools are not doing anything newor innovative that they wish to emulate.

Finding: There is Hostility Between theSectors that Limits the Spilloverfrom Charter Schools to TraditionalPublic Schools

Significantly, we found that there is often a fun-damental hostility between the traditional pub-lic schools and the charter schools. Even indistricts where the level of hostility is low wefound little evidence that schools in either sec-tor have reached out to schools in the other sec-tor. Consequently there is little evidence ofcooperation and little evidence of shared ideasand information in any of the districts we stud-ied. In many ways, each side feels that the otherside has great advantages that make for an “un-even playing field” and limit the lessons thatcan be learned across sectors.

Not surprisingly, district officials in Worces-ter were quite aware of this gap, but even withthe tight cross-sector links, they still note thatthere is no information shared between thecharters and the district. Indeed, there doesnot even seem to be much interest in what thecharters are doing.

Worcester’s Superintendent Caradonio does notbelieve that charters are real laboratory schoolsintroducing real innovations, and consequentlydoes not spend any time learning exactly whatthey are doing differently. In addition, districtand union leaders share the view that chartersare “union busters.” Mark Brophy, the presidentof the Worcester teachers’ union, called them,“a conspiracy to implode public education.”Springfield teachers’ union President TimCollins, echoed these sentiments, adding thathe believes charters create a two-tier system thatexacerbates differences based on race and socio-economic status.

The Rosenblum Brigham report (1998) on Mas-sachusetts charter schools shows that the atti-tudes found in Worcester are not unique. Itfound that: “There is no significant sharing ordissemination of practices from charter schoolsto district schools at this time. The reasons rangefrom the practical (a lack of mechanisms for



12

sharing) to the philosophical (there is a sense ofcompetition and even hostility toward the char-ter school system that precludes sharing).”

In D.C., a high ranking official in the DCPS ech-oed this, arguing that “there is no incentive forcharters to convey information back to tradi-tional public schools about what is and isn’tworking for them. Administrators, faculty, andstaff at charters either have too much to do tohave time to do this, or they have consciouslyleft the traditional system so they don’t want tocommunicate with DCPS regarding successfuland/or failed programs.”

One fundamental source of the suspicion thatleaders of traditional public schools show forcharter schools is that, despite the laws andempirical evidence to the contrary, many pub-lic school officials believe that charter schoolseducate a different population than the tradi-tional schools do. For example, echoing a com-mon charge, officials in Jersey City argued thatcharter schools can effectively force or “coun-sel” out problem students, who them return tothe responsibility of the traditional publicschools. Similarly, in a front-page EducationWeek article, Caradonio pointed out that theAbby Kelley Foster charter school has noLEP students (compared to 7 percent in Worces-ter public schools) and only half the proportionof free-lunch eligible students as the traditionalWorcester public schools (Schnaiberg 1999).

We should note that while our focus in thisstudy is on traditional public schools, there issome evidence that, at least in the District of Co-lumbia, charter schools feel that they are “be-ing punished” by the traditional districtleadership. We noted earlier that the charterschool leaders in D.C. have frequently chargedthe DCPS central administration with harass-ing them over the issue of buildings. And theschools chartered by the Board of Educationcomplain of lack of administrative support fromthe DCPS, including on such basic items as stu-dent records (Henig et al. 1999). In fairness,Henig et al. argue that not all of the problemscan be chalked up to bureaucratic hostility:“some of the tension is a predictable and

perhaps unavoidable offshoot of the deliberatelyambiguous nature of the charter concept. . . .From the standpoint of DCPS, there is concernthat those fundamentally hostile to publicbureaucracies will use charters to embarrassthem and to dissipate resources . . . fears thatthe charter movement might precipitate theunraveling of the traditional public edu-cation system are deeply held and not with-out foundation.” (1999, 78).

While hostility is common, there are some ex-amples of cooperation. The best example wefound was in Springfield. In that district, whichuses controlled choice to achieve desegregationthat was court-mandated, the charter schools arepart of the system; while charter students areselected by lottery, the charter schools agreedto be part of the controlled choice system toachieve racial balance. Again, this may not besurprising given the positive view of chartersheld by district leaders and the institutionallinks between schools in the two sectors.

Finding: Public School Officials Do NotBelieve The Charter Schools ActuallyProvide New Models Or Programs,Limiting Their Impact

While there may be a fundamental hostility be-tween the two sectors that leads to a lack of com-munication and sharing, there is also evidencethat officials of traditional public schools do notbelieve charter schools in these cities are bea-cons of innovation, particularly in terms of cur-ricula. Thus, even if lines of communicationbetween the sectors were open, in reality pub-lic school officials may not want to listen.

Clearly, many charter school innovations arebased on a return to basics (which Jersey Cityschool officials dismiss as “rote” education) anda rejection of “progressive” education that maybe more popular in some of the regular publicschools. Even in Trenton, where SuperintendentLytle embraces competition from the charterschools, he argues that they are not particularlyinnovative, emphasizing instead basic educa-tion and parental involvement.



Figure 7: Traditional Public Schools and Charter Schools Differ in the Range of Innovations They Adopt

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13

In Worcester, Superintendent Caradonio,teachers’ union president Brophy, and thedistrict research director all believe that thecharters in their district have not introducedany new educational ideas. According toCaradonio, while they do offer extended dayprograms that parents want, the rest of theirpackage is the recycling of old, unprovenideas, and “selling snake oil.”

Even in Springfield, where SuperintendentNegroni and several members of the electedschool board are positive about the effects thatcharters are having on the system in general,none of them point out any particular innova-tions in the charter schools, apart from before-and after-school programs.

Districts recognize some exceptions to their be-liefs. For example, in Trenton, the Granville/Edison Project charter school introduced laptopsfor all students and their parents—in response,the district is now examining the developmentof “net-schools” which would give parentslaptops that could be easily connected to a main-frame controlled by the school.

But for the most part, charter schools define in-novation differently than do public school offi-cials; they want to please their “customers.” InWorcester, Steven Wilson, CEO of Advantage

schools argues that his schools, like Worcester’sAbby Kelley Foster, are responsive to their “cus-tomer base.” “These parents,” he states, “cravea school setting that is orderly and safe and fo-cused and on task. And that’s the brand we en-deavor to provide them with.” (Schnaiberg1999). Of course, the fact that these ideas areconsidered innovative by charter school opera-tors and that parents enroll their children inthese schools is itself a significant indicator ofwhat the public finds lacking in their districtpublic schools.

Finding: Charter Schools and TraditionalPublic Schools Differ in the Pattern ofInnovations They Adopt

This difference in outlook leads to significantlydifferent emphases on which innovations eachsector is likely to adopt.

In our survey of school principals, we presentedprincipals with a list of common innovationsthat schools throughout the nation are imple-menting and we asked which of these reformsthey have introduced or expanded in the lastyear. We presented the charter school principalsin D.C. with the same list and asked them thesame question. In Figure 7, we compare the pat-tern of innovation across the schools in thesetwo sectors.



As is evident in our data, we found that theregular public schools are much less likely tohave implemented or expanded any of thereforms in our battery than are charter schools.14

It is interesting to note that the innovation mostlikely to be adopted by the traditional publicschools is the creation or expansion of programsthat take place before or after the traditionalschool day. In our fieldwork, the expandedschool day was the aspect of charter schoolprograms that was most frequently mentionedby traditional public school leaders as attractiveto parents. We believe that this is probably thesingle clearest case of charter schools leveragingschool-level change in the traditional publicschools that we have uncovered in our studies.

We should note two further dimensions to thisissue. First, we found that while charters oftenadopt many of these innovations as part of thedefinition of the school culture and mission,traditional public schools usually adopt reformsin a piecemeal fashion and do not use them toredefine their mission or fundamental style ofmanagement. Thus, charter schools are morelikely to adopt a wider suite of reforms and tryto integrate them into the culture of the schools,while traditional public schools are more likelyto adopt single reforms, such as expanded dayprograms, without changing their standardoperating procedures.

Second, at least one of the reforms we queriedschool leaders about may be particularlydifficult for traditional public schools toimplement. We found that many of theacademic leaders we talked with (especiallyprincipals of traditional public schools) said theywould like to involve parents more in the day-to-day operation of the schools, but that theycannot negotiate the kinds of parentinvolvement contracts that are common tocharter schools. Since increasing parentalinvolvement may be particularly important increating a viable school community (see, e.g.,Schneider, Teske and Marschall 2000), the limitson the ability of traditional public schools to usesuch parental contracts may handicap themrelative to the charter schools.

Finding: Superintendents and PrincipalsIn Traditional Public Schools Perceive LimitsIn Their Freedom To Undertake Action InResponse to Competition—But This May Be Changing

While we believe that the differences betweenthe two sectors are often exaggerated by schoolofficials, it is clear that the traditional publicschools are more constrained by state rules andunion contracts in their ability to enact reforms.The example of parental involvement contractswe just discussed is one illustration. The issueof teacher pay and teacher assignments is an-other critical element.

For example, Worcester SuperintendentCaradonio admitted that charters offer the be-fore and after school programs that parentswant and that his principals are trying to dothe same, but are hampered by the require-ments of the union wage scale. Union presi-dent Mark Brophy confirmed this constraintand added that the charters bypass the prob-lem by paying what he characterized as “lessthan a living wage” and by not paying over-time for extended days. The president of theSpringfield union, Tim Collins, noted that thestatewide Massachusetts Teachers’ Associa-tion had lobbied to create the Horace Manncategory of charter schools and to get most ofthe union contract to apply to teachers in theseschools. At the Horace Mann schools there areextended day programs, but teachers are com-pensated for this extra commitment—and thisdrives up the cost of these programs.

In New Jersey, where teachers in charter schoolsneed to be certified, teachers’ union officials notethat most of the teachers in charter schools havejoined the unions. This raises a question ofwhether future negotiated bargaining will leadcharter school teachers to question the longerhours that they now work, compared to teach-ers in regular public schools.

Traditionally, one limiting factor on reformin public schools has been the inability of su-perintendents to replace failing principals

14



Figure 8: Differences in the Physical Environment

of D.C. Public Schools and D.C. Charter Schools

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who, as front-line managers, are key to thesuccess of schools. However, we found thatin several of the districts we studied, super-intendents have replaced a significant num-ber of principals, helping to expand thenumber of entrepreneurial leaders in thedistrict and helping to create a “managementteam” more interested in reform. In somedistricts, charter schools help provide thejustification for such turnover—but sincecharter schools came on line at the same timeas other changes that increased the abilityof superintendents to fire principals a causallink is hard to prove.

CHARTER SCHOOLS TREAT PARENTS BETTER

THAN TRADITIONAL PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Parents as “consumers” exercising choice are amajor force for change, and as consumers par-ents are clearly “voting with their feet” in favorof charter schools. Given growth of charterschool enrollments, it is not surprising that pub-lic school officials know it.

Peter Levanos, who advises parents in Spring-field, notes that many parents know of theSabis International School’s reputation forimproved test scores. Trenton teachers’ unionpresident Kevin O’Brien notes that both par-ents and school officials are well aware of thepresence of competition. Officials in JerseyCity believe that parents like the newer build-ings and the smaller schools that characterizecharter schools there.

But even parents who do not enroll their childin a charter school may gain more leveragefrom the presence of such schools. We arguethat there is a relationship between exit andvoice—as parental exit options increase,schools are forced to pay more attention to thepreferences (voice) of parents. For example,in Trenton, Lytle notes that in neighborhoodsmost affected by the new charter schools twoelementary schools chose to expand theirgrades from K-6 to K-8, because parents ex-pressed great concern about the level of safetyin the regular public middle schools.

This added parental voice may ultimately pres-sure all public schools to become more “con-sumer friendly.” But in the next section, weshow that, at present, there is a large gap be-tween charter schools and traditional publicschools, at least in the District of Columbia.

Finding: Charter Schools Are MoreConsumer Friendly: Evidence from theDistrict of Columbia

To assess the level of “consumer friendliness”of charter schools and traditional publicschools, we sent a set of parents to visit asample of Washington D.C. schools (both pub-lic charter and traditional public schools). Weasked them to report on the condition of theschools they visited, how well they weretreated, and how responsive the school staffwas to their requests for information aboutprograms and performance.15

Results of Parent Visits: Physical Conditions

Figure 8 shows substantial differences in thephysical conditions of the DCPS schools and thepublic charter schools. On all four dimensionsmeasuring the physical environment, DCPSschools are in worse condition than the charterschools. For example, our site visitors found

15



Figure 9: Other Conditions in D.C. Public Schools

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slightly more than 10 percent of the DCPSschools had broken windows and more than 20percent were marked by graffiti. In contrast,none of the parents visiting the D.C. charterschools found these conditions. Moreover, com-pared to the charter schools, almost twice theproportion of DCPS schools had bars on theirwindows and while almost one-quarter of theDCPS schools were located on streets with aban-doned buildings, no charter schools were onstreets with abandoned buildings.

There is a body of research linking these condi-tions to feelings of safety, actual levels of safety,and performance (Schneider et al. 1999). Our vi-sual evidence points to the fact that the charterschools provide a better environment than theDCPS schools.

These conditions are external to the school andmay be a product of a variety of factors overwhich the school itself has only minor control,including, for example, the actions of buildinginspectors or the age of the neighborhood.But we also asked parents to evaluate a set ofphysical conditions that are more under thecontrol of the school. As demonstrated in Fig-ure 9, we again find a consistent set of resultsindicating better performance by the charterschools—their facilities were more likely to bejudged in good working order; they felt cleaner,safer and more exciting.

How Do Schools in Different SectorsTreat Parents?

As part of this research, parents entered theschools and asked staff about the schools’ pro-grams and performance. We asked our parentsto evaluate how well the staff treated them. Asis evident in Figure 10, charter school staff wereevaluated as being both more responsive andmore courteous than the staff of the D.C. publicschools visited.

In addition, we also asked parents to evaluatehow responsive staff was to a series of requestsfor information about school programs. Asshown on the following page in Figure 11, on

each measure that we report, the charter schoolswere by far more responsive to the legitimaterequests of parents for information essential tojudging the appropriateness of a school for aprospective student.

We recognize that our findings are based onsmall numbers (although our parents did visitalmost half the charter schools that were openat the time of this research and 15 percent of thetraditional public schools). We also recognizethat because the charter schools are relatively

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Figure 11:Additional Indicators of How Parents Were Treated

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Finding: There is Little Evidence At PresentRelating Test Scores in Charters and RegularPublic Schools

Due to lack of systematic data over time, thereis as yet no firm evidence of higher performanceby students of charter schools.

Nevertheless, in Springfield there has been con-siderable “buzz” among officials and parentsthat the Sabis school has improved test scores.There is evidence supporting this argument: TheCenter for School Change at the University ofMinnesota reports that when the school wasconverted from a regular public school, in 1995,only 38 percent of students performed at orabove grade level, making it one of the lowest-performing schools in Springfield (Cheung etal. 1998). At the end of the second year, withessentially the same student body, about 62 per-cent of Sabis students performed at or abovegrade level. Superintendent Negroni used thisevidence of higher performance in his own cam-paign to improve the rest of the Springfieldschools.

The success of Sabis forced the traditional pub-lic schools to put much more emphasis ontesting their students more often, according toPeter Levanos, head of Springfield’s interdistrictchoice program. Several schools also startedup Saturday programs, to match the Saturdayprograms at Sabis. Levanos noted that thiscompetition has led to ten of Springfield’stwenty elementary schools now outscoringSabis, five of which were previously scoring atthose levels, with the other five stepping upto “beat Sabis.”

In Worcester, Research Director Patty Mostuestated that out of 34 elementary schools in thecity, the two charter schools are scoring in thebottom ten. The district did not, however,report whether scores at the two charter schoolswere better or worse than at traditional publicschools serving children from similar demo-graphic backgrounds.

In New Jersey, there is not yet any good infor-mation on charter school test scores and whether

new they may be more likely to be located innewer facilities located in better locations.And it may be that their relatively smallersize enables their staff to be more parent-friendly. Nonetheless, the patterns here arestrikingly consistent. At this time, both the“hardware” of the charter schools (the build-ings and their facilities) and the “software”(the staff) are consistently more conducive toan environment supportive of a good educa-tional experience and more appealing andopen to parents.

OTHER ISSUES

There are two other issues that we feel are cen-tral to studying the relationship between char-ter schools and the traditional public schools.The first one focuses on the academic perfor-mance of charter schools and traditional publicschools, and it has been discussed at some lengthin national debates. The second issue we believehas been under-studied but may emerge as acentral issue as charter schools continue togrow—the movement of children from privateschools to charter schools. While we do not haveextensive empirical evidence on the extent ofthis movement, we do find anecdotal evidencein most of the districts that this flow is becom-ing increasingly common.

17



or not they are influencing the regular publicschools. Test scores in Jersey City have im-proved over the period of the state take-overand they are higher now than in Trenton. Thisprovides fuel for the Jersey City approach ofproceeding with their own reforms, rather thanactively competing with the charter schools.

Finding: Charter Schools May Be Evolving asSubstitutes For Private Schools

We have identified an unanticipated effect ofcharter schools on private school enrollments.Some parents seem to perceive charter schoolsas “free” private schools, in part because, likemany private schools, they are small, safe, andoften have thematic emphases. Many charterschool pupils are coming from parochialschools, particularly in Trenton, where the lo-cal Catholic diocese is closing several schools,some of the physical facilities of which are be-ing taken over by the regular public schools andby the charter schools.

While there are little firm data, Trenton’s Lytleestimates that as many as 30 percent of the char-ter school students are former private schoolstudents. According to the Trenton Times, threeCatholic schools in Trenton have been closedsince 1993 and the diocese claims to have lost450 students, representing 15 percent of its to-tal enrollment, since 1996, when charter schoolswere approved. Diocesan spokesperson EileenMarx notes about the role of charter competi-tion in these losses: “It is certainly a factor. It’s abig piece.” (Southwick 1999).

Similarly, in Jersey City, as many as twenty per-cent of charter school students may be comingfrom private schools (of course it is impossibleto determine at the Kindergarten level whereparents would have sent their child absent theoption of charter schools). While this is part ofa long-term decline, Jersey City Catholic schoolenrollment fell 2 percent from 1995 to 1997,but fell 5 percent in the next two years, aftercharter schools entered the environment(Parello 1999). Overall, in 1998-9, N.J. state sta-tistics showed that 18 percent of charter school

students across the state had previously beenin private schools. Not surprisingly, the num-ber is higher in urban areas.

This student flow in New Jersey suggests thatcharter schools are creating a larger market forschools, expanding the choice set of parents whomight otherwise have left the public school sec-tor entirely for sectarian schools. For some ob-servers, this is a positive development, as theretention of students (and their parents, who areclearly motivated to make active choices) in thepublic school system has many positive benefits.For others, such movement suggests that char-ter schools are “subsidized” private schools forparents who would otherwise not cause any fi-nancial expense to the public system.

This student flow seems to be less of an issue inMassachusetts, where a state Department ofEducation report claims that 96 percent of char-ter school students came from public schools,with only four percent coming from privateschools (Massachusetts Department of Educa-tion 1998). But even in Massachusetts, there issome evidence that parochial schools are re-sponding to this new form of competition. InMarch 1999, the Boston Archdiocese launchedits first-ever television advertising campaign insupport of Catholic education. Church officialsclaim, however, that this campaign was not aresponse to the threat of the new charter schools;rather, the ads simply represented the next stagein a long-term strategy to reverse “decades ofdeclining enrollment.” (Lazar 1999).

Finally, although no official documentation ex-ists, movement from private schools into thepublic charter system in the D.C. appear to becloser to the experience in Massachusetts. In ourtelephone survey, 18 D.C. charter school prin-cipals report that at least 90 percent of currentcharter students were believed to have previ-ously attended traditional public schools, butthey also estimated that between 0 and 10 per-cent of their students previously attended pri-vate schools. Although the effects of chartersubstitution for private schools are relativelysmall at this point, the availability of public

18



alternatives to private education via new char-ter schools each year will continue to increase.Undoubtedly, many parents who exited the tra-ditional system in search of private sector alter-natives will find it increasingly in their interestto explore the potential of the publicly fundedcharter system.

CONCLUSION

While competitive effects from charter schoolsare not as extensive as many advocates hadhoped for, our research has uncovered some rea-sons why this may be so: resistance from offi-cials who don’t like charter schools; policiesthat shield districts and schools from feeling thefinancial consequences of failing to attract stu-dents; increasing enrollments because of demo-graphic changes; a belief among traditionalpublic school leaders that charters are not do-ing innovative things that are worthy of imita-tion. Our research also uncovered evidencethat traditional public schools are reacting tocharter school competition when they have rea-son to feel threatened. Principals report theychange educational and administrative proce-dures when they feel competitive pressure,and districts adopt new programs when theycan clearly see that parents want those pro-grams. Those who believe traditional publicschools can be driven to improve efficiency andachievement from competition can take heartfrom these findings.

States wishing to see more competitive effectsought to consider changing many of the poli-cies that currently shield public schools fromfeeling the effects of competition and hindertheir ability to respond when they do feel pres-sured. These changes would include:

•Enacting and implementing statewideschool finance policies that subtract moneyfrom school districts on a per-pupil basiswhen students enroll in charter or othernon-district schools;•Resisting the temptation to replace any fi-nancial losses caused by these policiesthrough increases in other funding sources

for affected districts;•Encouraging districts to enact and imple-ment similar per-pupil financing policiesfor individual schools;•Providing principals with more autonomyto effect administrative and educationalchanges at the school level; and•Encouraging districts to work with teach-ers’ and other unions to foster experimen-tation and flexibility in educational andadministrative practices.

States that embark on such reforms will pro-vide the conditions for a purer test of the ef-fects of market-style competition on schoolsand school systems, enabling parents andpolicy makers to determine whether suchcompetition really does improve studentachievement or produce other measurable im-provements in the quality and efficiency of theeducational experience.

Our research also points to lessons for thoseleading traditional public and charter schools.Traditional public school leaders need to startseeing school policy decisions from the view-point of parents. Clearly, many parents likewhat charter schools are offering, and, basedon our data from D.C., it is easy to see why.Maybe what charter schools are offering doesnot appear innovative to many public schooladministrators, but to parents and charter schooloperators it can be a novel and well-deliveredblend of basic elements now lacking in thepublic schools.

Charter school operators can also learn to bemore forthcoming and communicative aboutwhat they are doing. Competition can lead togood outcomes, but everyone recognizes thateducation is different from other consumergoods in at least one respect: children get onlyone chance to become educated. If traditionalpublic school leaders and charter school opera-tors can learn to communicate better, even asthey remain competitive, the worthwhile les-sons from the charter school experiment willspread much more quickly. That can only ben-efit our children.

19



20



APPENDIX 2:D.C. SCHOOL VISITS PROCEDURES

We contracted D.C. Parents for School Choice,a Washington-based non-profit organization, totrain parents to visit both public charter andD.C. public schools. These parents were trainedto pose as parents thinking about enrolling theirchild in the particular school and were trainedto ask for information pertinent to that enroll-ment decision. Since all of the parents selectedhad recently enrolled their own children in newschools, they were already familiar with enroll-ment procedures and what to look for in schools.

We prepared a checklist for each parent to fillout reporting on the observed conditions in theschools they visited and reporting on what theyexperienced during their visit. Parents wereasked to report on two different aspects of theirvisit. First, they were asked to evaluate thephysical condition of the school and its neigh-borhood, and, more subjectively, to evaluate the“feel” of the school. Second, parents were in-structed to ask school personnel for informationabout the programs that the schools offer andto ask for materials about programs and per-formance. These second types of data were gath-ered to assess differences between schools in thedegree to which school staff was responsive torequests for information that is important in al-lowing parents to evaluate the appropriatenessof the schools for their children.

Traditional D.C. public schools visited:Amidon ESAnne Beers ESBrightwood ESBrookland ESCook ESDavis ESLafayette ESLangdon ESMildred Green ESMiner ESRandle Highlands ESBackus MSBrown MSBrowne JHSJefferson JHSLincoln MSBallou SHSCoolidge SHSEastern SHSSchool Without Walls SHS

D.C. public charter schools visited:Chamberlain (K-5)Children’s Studio (ungraded, ages 3-8)Community Academy (K-3)Edison-Friendship (K-5)Options (grades 5-8)The SEED school (grades 7-8)Village Learning Center (K-8)

APPENDIX 1: SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS IN THE SCHOOL DISTRICTS STUDIED

Washington, D.C.

67,313

77,500

~150

29

9%

85%

9%

62%

1990 Enrollment

1998 Enrollment

Number of Public Schools

Number of Charter Schools

Charter school enrollmentas % of total enrollment

% Black

% Hispanic

%LEP

% Free Lunch

Worcester

22,084

25,552

45

2

4.7%

10%

28%

7%

50%

Springfield

23,454

25,649

42

3

4.1%

31%

41%

12%

71%

Jersey City

27,612

32,902

33

9

4.5%

39%

39%

11%

75%

Trenton

11,850

13,106

23

7

7.5%

70%

24%

6%

75%

21



Cesar Chavez PCHS (grades 9-10)IDEA academy (grades 9-12)Richard Milburn (grades 9-12)The Washington MST (grades 9-12)

APPENDIX 3APPROACH AND METHODOLOGY

In this paper, we built on existing work to studyhow charter schools influence the traditionalpublic school system. Given the early state ofresearch into this question, as well as time andbudgetary constraints, we chose to undertakerelatively detailed case studies in a small num-ber of school districts rather than to try to con-struct a large national database. Our goal wasto increase our understanding of the extent towhich both individual schools and urban dis-tricts as a whole respond to charter competitionand to identify the mechanisms that either im-pede or facilitate that response. We chose tostudy five urban districts facing growing com-petition from charter schools: Springfield, Mas-sachusetts; Worcester, Massachusetts; JerseyCity, New Jersey; Trenton, New Jersey; and theDistrict of Columbia (D.C.).

We had several criteria in mind in choosingthese cities. First, we chose to focus on urbandistricts because it is in those districts that somany of the problems common to the publiceducation system are manifest. The need to ad-dress these problems has been increasingly ad-dressed by the introduction of competition tothe traditional school system via charterschools.16 Second, we chose to focus on mid-sizeurban districts because they were more acces-sible than the largest cities for the type of ex-ploratory study we conducted. Third, we chosenot to study cities in the states in which thespread of charters is most advanced (e.g., Ari-zona, Michigan), since these locations are al-ready receiving scholarly attention. Conversely,we avoided states that only recently passedcharter legislation (e.g., New York), as the im-pact of charters on the traditional schools islikely to be small and too early to detect. How-ever, we wanted to insure that the cities selectedfor study would be representative of the widely

varied strengths of charter legislation through-out the country. The laws in Massachusetts andD.C. have been ranked among the most favor-able to charters, while New Jersey’s law isranked in the middle of the 37 states studied bythe Pacific Research Institute (Billingsley andRiley 1999). Finally, in order to “hold constant”some of the situational context in which citiesare attempting to meet the challenges of educa-tion reform, we chose two cities in each of twostates.

While we acknowledge that our cases do notrepresent a random sample of urban school dis-tricts, the results we report are congruent withtheories predicting the manner in which com-petition can affect traditional public schools (see,e.g., Schneider, Teske and Marschall 2000;Chubb and Moe 1990). Our study also indicatesseveral new patterns in the relationship betweencharter schools and traditional public schoolsbeyond those documented in existing studies.

A Brief Introduction to the Districts

As noted above, we studied the effects of char-ter competition in five urban districts. The twoMassachusetts districts were Springfield andWorcester, both with approximately 26,000 stu-dents. In New Jersey, we studied Trenton(13,500 students) and Jersey City (33,000 stu-dents). The fifth city, Washington, D.C. (77,500students), is a larger district that has by far thegreatest number of charter schools of districtsin our analysis. In the following section, webriefly outline the conditions found in these dis-tricts.17

The Massachusetts Districts

Similar to schools in many urban areas, the pub-lic schools in Springfield have experiencedmany problems over the past few decades.About 10 years ago, a reform coalition of Spring-field business leaders and politicians decided itwas essential to improve the schools, andthereby help the future development of the city.The school board, which is an elected bodyheaded by Springfield’s mayor, hired a reform-

22



oriented superintendent, Peter Negroni, whohad been a superintendent of a New York Citycommunity school district. Negroni wasclearly expected to shake up the Springfieldschool system and he has done so, replacinga number of principals who were not perform-ing well and instituting an environment thatemphasizes reform. When he arrived, the dis-trict was under a court order to desegregate;with Negroni’s support, Springfield has usedcontrolled interdistrict choice as a means ofvoluntary desegregation.

Springfield faces competition from three char-ter schools in or near the district. The SabisInternational School is run by a multinationalcorporation and is the largest of the three,enrolling over 800 students in grades K-9.North Star Academy is a storefront highschool with about 140 students run by Learn-ing Tree, an education advocacy group. TheNew Leadership School is a “Horace Mann”charter school resulting from a partnershipbetween the Urban League of Springfield, theMassachusetts National Guard and theSpringfield School Committee. The schoolopened in the summer of 1998 with grade 7and is expanding to grade 12. It currently en-rolls 75 students and plans to have around thisnumber of students per grade.

In Worcester, the public schools have generallyperformed better than those in the other districtswe are studying, at least partly because the stu-dent body is not as low-income as in the othercities (see Appendix 1). Thus the Worcesterschools have not experienced the sense of “cri-sis” that has been a hallmark of the school sys-tems in all of the other cities we studied. In fact,in recent years, as the high-technology devel-opment around the Boston area has pushed outeven further toward Worcester, Worcester’spublic schools have received good press andhave been cited as an attraction for families con-sidering living in the city. As a consequence ofthis sense of success, leadership has been fairlystable in Worcester. Three years ago the electedschool board appointed James Caradonio assuperintendent, who had formerly been the

Deputy Superintendent of the district for sev-eral years prior to his appointment.

There are two charter schools in the Worcesterarea, Seven Hills, which is associated with theEdison Project, and the Abby Kelley Fosterschool, which is run by Advantage Schools.Abby Kelley Foster was featured in a Decem-ber 1999 front page article in Education Week(Schnaiberg 1999), and one theme of the articlewas the fact that district officials are not sup-portive of the charter schools—a point we dis-cuss in this report.

The New Jersey Districts

In Trenton, for the past decade, the schools haveperformed at the very lowest level in the state,even when compared to other low-income ur-ban areas. The district barely escaped beingtaken-over by the state 10 years ago when sev-eral other urban systems became state-run op-erations. Under the previous chief schools ad-ministrator, the Trenton schools were clearlyfailing and the district’s efforts at reformingoperations were lagging. As a consequence, in1998 the Mayor and the appointed school boardhired James (“Torch”) Lytle, who was knownas a reformer from his experience in Philadel-phia—and was also known as a supporter ofcharter schools. Indeed, while in Philadelphia,Lytle had even written a charter school proposal.His approach, like that of Negroni in Spring-field, has been to shake things up quickly. Henoted: “Our kids have been failing state testsand dropping out for too long. We can’t pre-tend that tinkering is going to make things bet-ter. . . . We need to transform schooling if weare to get where we need to be.” As an exampleof his efforts, and despite some controversy, heis breaking down the large and traditional Tren-ton High School into several smaller, thematic“learning communities.” (Coryell 1999).

There are seven charter schools in the Trentonarea, of which the Granville School, which is apartner with the Edison Project, is by far thelargest. The Village Charter School, with a state-of-the-art new building, is the second largest.

23



Others include the International Charter School,the Greater Trenton Academy and TechnologySchool, the Emily Fisher School, the TrentonCommunity Charter, and the boarding schoolProctor Academy.

Jersey City schools also performed poorly but,in contrast to the Trenton schools, were actu-ally taken over by the state 10 years ago, partlybecause there was also corruption related to theelected school board, which was using theschools to provide patronage employment. Thecurrent superintendent, Richard DiPatri, was astate Education official appointed three yearsago to head the Jersey City schools. DiPatri hasundertaken several reforms, including appoint-ing a new supervisor of principals, to try to makeprincipals more accountable to the system. Inthe last few years, student test scores in JerseyCity have improved to nearly the best amongthe 12 most low-income urban areas in the stateand the district is now meeting most of the statemonitoring indicators (it was meeting only 37percent of them 10 years ago). As a result of thisimprovement, the state plans to cede authorityfor Jersey City’s schools back to the electedBoard in two years.

Mayor Bret Schundler, an emerging Republicanpolitical star, strongly supports vouchers andschool choice, and city school board electionslargely involve the Mayor’s candidates squar-ing off against those of the teachers’ union.While Schundler believes the state improved theschools, in part because they increased thedistrict’s annual budget from $180 million to$380 million, he notes that, “…less than half ourkids are graduating from high school and therehas been only a small increase in test scores.”(Newman 1999).

There are nine charter schools in the Jersey Cityarea (seven in Jersey City and two in nearbyHoboken), of which the Golden Door School is

the most prominent. Others include the Gate-way School, the Second Chance High School,Jersey City Community Charter, Learning Com-munity Charter, Soaring Heights Charter, andthe Elysian Charter.

The Washington D.C. Schools

The public school system in the District of Co-lumbia has long been regarded as one of theworst in the country, despite funding that is 26percent higher than the national average. A 1996report (Board 1996) documented system-widedeficiencies in areas ranging from basic opera-tion—for a variety of reasons, many tracing backto mismanagement, D.C. schools had notopened on time in three years—to extremelypoor test scores—70-90 percent of tenth grad-ers were consistently scoring below nationalaverages in reading and math.18 As a result, theD.C. Financial Control Board declared a stateof emergency in the schools and seized control.Using a military crisis approach, the Board hiredthree-star Army General Julius W. Becton Jr. assuperintendent, who was replaced in 1998 bythe current superintendent Arlene Ackerman.

The 1996 federal law allowing charter schoolsin D.C. vested chartering authority in the electedD.C. Board of Education and in a newly created(and appointed) Public Charter School Board.There are now 29 charter schools in D.C., andthey serve one out of every eleven public schoolstudents, with an enrollment of approximately6,700, compared to the almost 71,000 studentsenrolled in the traditional public schools. D.C.may represent the fastest growing charter sys-tem in the country, and there should be enoughcapacity for one-quarter of D.C. students to beenrolled in charter schools by 2004.

In Appendix 1, we provided a table with sum-maries comparing several indicators of condi-tions found in the five districts.

24



REFERENCES

Barzelay, Michael and Babak J. Armajani. 1992. Breaking Through Bureaucracy: A New Vision forManaging in Government. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Billingsley, K. Lloyd and Pamela Riley. 1999. Expanding the Charter Idea: A Template for Legisla-tive and Policy Reform. San Francisco: The Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy.

Board, District of Columbia Financial Control. 1996. “Children in Crisis: A Report on the Failureof D.C. Public Schools.” The District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and Manage-ment Assistance Authority.

Byrk, Anthony S., Valerie E. Lee, and Peter B. Holland. 1993. Catholic Schools and the CommonGood. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Cheung, Stella, Mary Ellen Murphy, and Joe Nathan. 1998. “Making a Difference? Charter Schools,Evaluation and Student Performance.” Center for School Change, Minneapolis, MN.

Coryell, Lisa. 1999, December 9. “Superintendent Talks About Future of Trenton’s Schools.” Timesof Trenton, Trenton, NJ. p. A3.

Hale, Sandra. 1996. “Achieving High Performance in Public Organizations.” in Handbook of PublicAdministration, 2nd ed., edited by J. Perry. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Henig, Jeffrey R., Michele Moser, Thomas T. Holyoke, and Natalie Lacireno-Paquet. 1999.Making a Choice, Making a Difference? An Evaluation of Charter Schools in the District ofColumbia. The Center for Washington Area Studies, George Washington University, Wash-ington, D.C.

Hess, Frederick M. 1999. “Hints of the Pick-Axe: the Impact of Competition on Public Schoolingin Milwaukee.” Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, Washington,D.C.

Kolderie, Ted. 1990. Beyond Choice to New Public Schools: Withdrawing the Exclusive Franchisein Public Education. Washington, D.C.: Progressive Policy Institute.

Lazar, Kay. 1999, March 7. “Parents Forsake Public for Private, Parochial Schools.” Boston Herald,Boston, Mass. p. 1.

Massachusetts Department of Education. 1998. Massachusetts Charter Schools: Expanding thePossibilities of Public Education. Boston, Mass.: Massachusetts Department of Educa-tion.

Nathan, Joe. 1996. Charter Schools: Creating Hope and Opportunity for American Education. SanFrancisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Newman, Maria. 1999, May 27. “State Plans Return of Jersey City Schools to Local Control.” NewYork Times, New York, NY. p. B6.

Osborne, David and Ted Gaebler. 1992. Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spiritis Transforming the Public Sector. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.

Parello, Nancy. 1999, March 20. “Charter Schools Stealing Catholic School Students.” Times ofTrenton, Trenton, NJ. p. B5.

Purkey, S.C. and M.S. Smith. 1983. “Effective Schools: A Review.” The Elementary School Journal83:427-54.

Rosenblum Brigham Associates. 1998. Innovation and Massachusetts Charter Schools. Boston,Mass.: Massachusetts Department of Education.

Rothstein, Richard. 1998. “Charter Conundrum.” The American Prospect, pp. 46-60.Schnaiberg, Lynn. 1999. “Seeking a Competitive Advantage.” Education Week, December 8, p. 1.Schneider, Mark, Melissa Marschall, Christine Roch, and Paul Teske. 1999. “Heuristics, Low In-

formation Rationality, and Choosing Public Goods: Broken Windows as Shortcuts to In-formation about School Performance.” Urban Affairs Review 34:729-741.

Schneider, Mark, Paul Teske, and Melissa Marschall. 2000. Choosing Schools: Consumer Choice

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and the Quality of American Schools. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Shoemaker, Crissa. 1998, November 3. “Expectations Are Great for Charter School.” Times of Tren-

ton, Trenton, NJ. p. A2.Southwick, Ron. 1999, March 3. “Blessed Sacrament School to Close in Trenton.” Times of Trenton,

Trenton, NJ. p. A3.Strauss, Valerie. 1999, September 30. “Parents Seek to Save School; D.C. Officials Order Chartless

Kwame Nkrumah to Close Today.” Washington Post, Washington, D.C. p. B 02.Strauss, Valerie. 2000, January 10, 2000. “A Leader’s Pass-Fail Test.” Washington Post, Washing-

ton, D.C. p. B1.Wilgoren, Debbi. 1998, December 18. “Chavous Proposes New Office to Supervise Charter

Schools.” Washington Post, Washington, D.C. p. C 04.

NOTES

1 We call these “regular” or “traditional” public schools, to distinguish them from charter schools,

which are also publicly funded.2 We present a fuller description of our methodology and a description of each district’s back-

ground in Appendix 3.3

The classic discussion of adaptive public sector organizations with a customer orientation isOsborne and Gaebler’s Reinventing Government (Osborne and Gaebler 1992). Other relevant dis-cussions include Hale (1996) and Barzelay and Armajani (1992).4 Note that even in districts with the strongest support from the superintendent response rates,

while high, were not 100 percent. We believe there is a simple lesson here: while the support ofthe superintendent will help generate principal participation, it will not guarantee full participa-tion. On the other hand, opposition from a superintendent can make access to principals virtuallyimpossible.5

We recognize that there may be a selection bias affecting the pattern of principal responses.While there is no relationship between the level of support given to charters and the level of effortthe superintendent put into getting principals to respond, the principals who did respond couldrepresent a non-random set of the total population of principals.6 Unless otherwise cited, all quotes are taken from our interviews with the person quoted.

7 Massachusetts General Law Chapter 71 § 89.

8 It is likely that this will change as the scheduled reductions take place. Indeed, according to

Worcester Superintendent Caradonio, his district, presently with 1,100 charter pupils, could loseup to $5 million in three years when the reductions begin to more fully reflect the recent growthin charter school enrollment.9 153 N.J. 480.

10 Our finding of blunted financial losses is not limited to these case districts. Hess (1999a) found

that the Milwaukee public schools received increased funding to make up for the financial lossesfrom students choosing private schools with vouchers.11

Of course, district superintendents do not hire themselves. While we emphasize the role ofsuperintendents, we recognize that their appointments and some of their success is related totheir relationships with the school board and local politicians. Nevertheless, superintendents havea great deal of freedom in the operation of their school systems and how they respond to charterschool competition is not necessarily dictated by local officials (see, e.g. Hess 1999b). In D.C., therelationship of the superintendent to other political officials is even more complex, as Ackermanmust deal with several elected and appointed officials in D.C. and in Congress.12

For a detailed recent profile of Ackerman’s leadership style, see Strauss (2000).13

The “pressure” variable is a count of the number of competitive sources an individual principal

26



expects to lose students to in the near future, including charter schools, private schools, and intra-district movement of students to other public schools.14

There are two limitations on these data that must be noted. First, there is the obvious problemthat we are comparing traditional public schools in districts other than in D.C. to charter schoolsin the District. Second, there is the problem of the “baseline”—that is, some innovations may notbe adopted or expanded in some schools because they are already in place for some time. In ouranalysis, we tried to minimize this problem by dropping from consideration reforms that werealready in place in most traditional public schools and which could not be expanded. For ex-ample, we dropped all day kindergarten from this chart because most public schools in our sur-vey already had them and it is a “binary” condition—either you have it or you don’t have it—and, thus, asking principals if they “expanded” the program makes no sense. In contrast, webelieve that the innovations that do appear in Figure 7 can be expanded or else were in place inrelatively small numbers of traditional public schools.15

In Appendix 3, we describe our procedures in more detail.16

While schools in rural areas often have severe problems, their relatively sparse populationsoften limit the number of competitive schools that can be supported. And while there are manyfailing suburban schools, most seem to be producing relatively a satisfactory education for theirstudents.17

Our goal in this report is not to provide a comprehensive history of the development of charterschools in these cities. Rather, we are outlining the basic institutional features in these cities andthe manner in which charter schools affect the behavior of the three sets of stakeholders—super-intendents, principals and parents—with which we are most concerned in this study. For fullerexplorations of the development of charters in these states: see, for example, Henig et al (1999) onD.C., Kane (1998) on New Jersey, and Massachusetts Department of Education (1998) on Massa-chusetts.18

One other basic task on which the DCPS has failed (and which affects some of the numbers wereport in Appendix 1) is accurately counting their students. The 1996 report on public educationin the District of Columbia, “Children in Crisis” reports that “the DCPS does not have an accuratecount of its students. Estimates vary between 75,000 and 81,000 students. The National Center forEducation Statistics (NCES) found a discrepancy of 20.6% between the 1990 census and the num-ber of students reported by DCPS. The General Accounting Office (GAO) also has questionedDCPS’ record keeping. After the 1995 sample student enrollment count authorized by the Super-intendent identified 80,450 students, the GAO stated that its usefulness for validating enrollmentwas ‘limited because of mistakes made in selecting the sample.’ GAO estimated that DCPS’ Stu-dent Information Management System may contain approximately 5,000 obsolete or duplicativestudent records.” (Board 1996)

27

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