Hopes, Fears, & Reality: A Balanced Look at American Charter Schools in 2005

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November 2005
Edited by: Robin Lake, Paul Hill

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In six essays, this report provides new data on many aspects of charter schools in the United States and examines issues and controversies surrounding reform.

The 2004-05 school year was tumultuous for charter schools, marked by dueling studies with conflicting conclusions on whether charter schools boost student performance or hinder it. Even before this dustup occurred, a consortium of foundations decided to support a new national research center to raise the standard of research on charter schools and provide balanced perspectives on issues that had become polarized. The result was the National Charter School Research Project(NCSRP), which is the author of this report.

The report is in two parts. In the first, NCSRP provides new data that inform questions such as: Is the charter school movement growing or slowing down? Do charter schools serve more or fewer disadvantaged children than regular public schools? Are charter schools innovative? The report also identifies several important questions on which state and local record keeping needs to be improved.

The second part of this report takes up issues and controversies that characterized the discussion of charter schools in 2004-2005. NCSRP's goal is to provide essays that examine these controversies in a broad context and assemble evidence in a balanced and informative way. The essays are unlikely to settle any of these issues definitively, but they may establish a more constructive basis for continued discussion.

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