What's Public About Charter Schools?

Charter schools represent an important shift in the definition of the _public_ in public education.

By Gary Miron and Christopher Nelson

Charter schools seek to reform public education through a blend of elements traditionally found in public schools, such as universal access and public funding, and those traditionally associated with private schools, such as choice, autonomy, and flexibility. This represents an important shift in the definition of the "public" in public education, one that reserves a clear place for the use of private interests in the pursuit of public educational goals.

The blending of public and private elements is not, however, without controversy, a fact to which recent debate over the U.S. Supreme Court's consideration of the Cleveland voucher case attests. While the court's ruling will rest on the constitutional question of separation of church and state, the broader issues at stake involve setting the ground rules for mixing traditionally private concerns like churches and religion with the public provision of education.

As evaluators of charter school reforms, we have spent a considerable amount of time reflecting on the extent to which this public-private hybrid actually serves important public purposes. For the past five years, we have been analyzing evidence from Michigan that bears on these questions. With one of the nation's more permissive charter school laws, and with extensive involvement of private groups (75 percent of the state's 184 charter schools were operated by one of 44 for-profit education management organizations during the 2000-01 school year), Michigan provides an illuminating setting in which to observe the interplay of public and private...