Quantity Counts: The Growth of Charter School Management Organizations

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August 2007

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The rapid national expansion of Green Dot Public Schools and the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) highlights the great potential for such organizations to provide more high-quality public schools by replicating successful charter schools. However, this report from the National Charter School Research Project makes it clear that efforts to quickly expand successful charter schools through “managed growth” will not be easy.

Quantity Counts: The Growth of Charter School Management Organizations shows that replicating successful charter schools has been tougher and more costly than expected for both for-profit and nonprofit charter management organizations (EMOs and CMOs). The report analyzes why this is so and offers strategies to help new management organizations shorten their learning curves and avoid problems encountered by pioneering management organizations.

The report documents problems that go well beyond the legal and political barriers thrown up by charter school opponents. Management organizations (MOs) have struggled more with start-up and quality control issues than they thought they would—issues such as dealing with local politics; recruiting and training principals and teachers; and figuring out how much centralization and standardization is necessary. Based on interviews with ten executives from a range of MOs, the report describes coping strategies these organizations have developed, including becoming much more realistic about expansion goals and savvy about anticipating political risks, training their own leaders, and creating systems of control over design implementation.

The report also challenges policymakers, advocates, and funders who wish to support the growth and expansion of high-quality charter schools to broaden their thinking about how to build effective national and local support infrastructures.