Charter Management Organizations: Innovations, Opportunities, and Challenges - BRIEF

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June 2010
Robin Lake, Brianna Dusseault, Melissa Bowen, Allison Demeritt, Paul Hill

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This brief presents findings from the National Study of Charter Management Organization (CMO) Effectiveness: Report on Interim Findings.

Over the past two decades, charter management organizations (CMOs) have become a significant force in the public K–12 charter school landscape. CMOs, nonprofit entities that directly manage public charter schools, are meant to meld the benefits of school districts—including economies of scale, collaboration among similar schools, and support structures—with the autonomies and entrepreneurial drive of the charter sector.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the major philanthropies funding charter schools invested heavily in CMOs and similar organizations, spending an estimated total of $500 million between 1999 and 2009. Their investments have been targeted to specific urban school districts that have been considered difficult, if not impossible, to reform.

In recent years, the strong reputations of CMOs in many of these districts (for example, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles) have led policy leaders, including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, to call for greater replication of high-performing charter schools via CMOs, especially as a strategy for turning around or replacing chronically low-performing public schools.

Yet, despite the amount of investment and policy attention, there has been limited research to assess the impact of CMOs and their potential for improving public schools at scale. The National Study of Charter Management Organization Effectiveness was designed to better understand which practices and contextual factors are associated with CMO impacts.

This brief presents findings from the study’s interim report; the final report (which includes student achievement analysis) will be issued in the summer of 2011.

Additional Information

• DATABASE: The CRPE National CMO Database includes all known CMOs and affiliated schools as of 2008. It also contains school locations, founding years, and grade levels served.
• PRESENTATION: "Interim Report Findings on National Evaluation of CMOs," presented at the National Charter Schools Conference in Chicago.
• COMPANION BRIEF: "Charter Management Organizations: Innovations, Opportunities, and Challenges"