


































Chartered Waters: The Twisted Navigation of the American Charter School 

Movement 

 
James E. Schul 

James W. Reineke 

Winona State University 

 

 

Abstract 

 The American charter school 

movement began in the early 1990s as a 

means to revitalize a beleaguered public 

education system.  In this article, the authors 

explain how the charter school movement 

evolved from its genesis and later discuss 

trends among the contemporary charter 

school movement.  The authors also suggest 

that the movement should revisit its roots as a 

collaborator with traditional public schools 

rather than a competitor against them. 

Key Words: accountability; alternative 

schools; A Nation at Risk; business and 

educational reform; charter schools; 

educational policy; history of education; local 

control; No Child Left Behind Act; school 

choice; standardized testing 

 

Chartered Waters: The Twisted 

Navigation of the American Charter 

School Movement 

 

  Bluffview Montessori School resides 

in the picturesque small Minnesota city of 

Winona.  In 1991, the privately operated 

school was at a crossroads.  While its 

existence relied on tuition dollars, many of 

the families interested in enrolling their 

children into the school were unable to do so 

for financial reasons. The principal of the 

school, Michael Dorer, consulted with the 

Winona Area Public School (WAPS) system 

to discuss the formation of a publicly 

operated Montessori Program.  Modeled after 

the philosophy and practice of its namesake, 

the Italian educator Maria Montessori, 

Montessori schools are known for their 

nontraditional practices such as mixed-age 

classrooms and the use of physical 

manipulatives to teach concepts rather than 

direct instruction.  The notion of 

incorporating such a non-traditional school 

within a larger public system was not 

unfamiliar to public education in Minnesota.  

In fact, Minnesota had already been 

innovative in such ways with regard to school 

choice options (Nathan 2002).  So, it was 

logical for WAPS to willingly listen to 

Dorer‘s proposal.  During these initial 

discussions, Minnesota state representatives 

attuned to the situation with the Montessori 

school proceeded to contact Dorer about a 

new legislative initiative recently passed by 

the legislature called school charters.  The 

school charter concept, originally conceived 

years earlier by Ray Budde (1988) and Albert 

Shanker (Molnar 1996) and later discussed 

by Minnesota teachers (Nathan 2002), 

consisted of a public school that operated 

independently of a school district.  This 

school would be operated by a sponsor who 

was awarded funds by a particular state with 

the expectation that the school will produce a 

specified set of educational outcomes by a 

specified period of time.  In turn, the state 



57 
 

proposed to provide some freedom from 

bureaucratic requirements typically 

associated with traditional public schools. 

The contract, or charter, between the sponsor 

and the state promised to spur educational 

innovation within the public school system.  

The representatives told Dorer that his 

discussions with WAPS made a nice fit for 

this new charter venture.  The eventual result 

was an agreement between the state board of 

education and Michael Dorer on December 

10, 1991 to create the first charter school in 

United States History (Dorer 2002).
1
 

      The chartering of Bluffview Montessori 

Elementary began a surge of charter schools 

at the dawn of the twenty-first century.  In a 

study issued in 2012 by the National Center 

for Educational Statistics, it was reported that 

nearly six thousand charter schools exist with 

over two million students enrolled (See Table 

1).

 

Table 1: Growth in Charter Schools and Enrollment 

Selected 

Characteristic 

1999-2000 2011-2012 

Traditional 

Public Schools 

(Non-Charter) 

Charter Schools Traditional 

Public Schools 

(Non-Charter) 

Charter Schools 

Number of 

Schools 

90,459 1,524 92,632 5,696 

Student 

Enrollment 

46,350,000 340,000 47,199,000 2,058,000 

Number of 

Teachers 

2,622,278 13,599 2,920,353 107,929 

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common 

Core of Data (CCD), "Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey," 1999-2000 

through 2011-12. (This table was prepared March 2014.) 

 

 The pioneers of this charter school 

movement, namely Ray Budde and Albert 

Shanker, articulated a clear vision for the 

purpose and nature of charter schools.  As 

charter schools increased in number, this 

theoretical vision became blurred in practice 

as states throughout the nation began issuing 

charters to sponsors.  The authors assert that 

the current concept of charter schools 

understood and accepted by the public is a 

deviant from its original conception.  In fact, 

the authors believe that the charter school 

concept is currently mis-used by some 

economic and political leaders as a means to 

privatize public education. It is our aim to 

provide through this chapter the historical 

background of charter so school leaders and 

policy makers may be better informed of the 

current path of the charter school movement.  

 

The Genesis of Charters with Ray Budde 

 The roots of the modern charter 

school movement lie in the domestic and 

foreign political initiatives of the 1980s.  In 

1983, the U.S. Department of Education 

issued the A Nation at Risk report that 



58 
 

warned the nation that youth were 

academically ill-prepared in its public school 

system.  ―If only to keep and improve on the 

slim competitive edge we still retain in world 

markets,‖ the report asserted, ―we must 

dedicate ourselves to the reform of our 

educational system for the benefit of all‖ 

(National Commission on Excellence in 

Education 1983).  This initial warning sent a 

shockwave of concern throughout the nation 

that eventually led leaders in and out of 

American public education to call for reform 

of the school system.  Another national report 

called the Task Force on Teaching as a 

Profession emerged in 1986 from the 

Carnegie Forum on Education and the 

Economy emphasizing that a growing 

consensus in the nation demanded the public 

schools should return as ―engines‖ of 

progress and economic productivity (Budde 

1988).  The collective narrative among most 

education policy initiatives in the 1980s 

became clear: schools should be held under 

closer scrutiny as a cause for the economic 

decline of the United States.  It is in the midst 

of this testy landscape for American public 

education that Ray Budde, in 1988, 

introduced a new path to revitalize public 

education to a national audience yearning for 

solutions with his publication of a book 

entitled Education by Charter. 

 Ray Budde was a former middle 

school English teacher and school 

administrator who eventually become an 

education professor at the University of 

Massachusetts in Amherst.  By 1988, he was 

the director of an Educational Collaborative 

of school districts in Massachusetts (Saulny 

2005, June 21).  He had long thought of the 

concept of charter schools and formally 

announced his ideas in Education by Charter.  

This book served as the manifesto of charter 

school reform as it pragmatically presented 

why and how to form a charter school before 

any actually existed.  Budde used the term 

―charter‖ to describe his concept because he 

believed it to be akin to the charters given by 

European monarchs to navigators once new 

lands were discovered during the era of 

exploration in the late fifteenth century.  

Charter schools, he believed, was an 

exploratory venture to improve American 

public education.  In his book, Budde listed 

twelve goals ―a school board and educational 

staff should be able to accomplish‖ in a 

―reorganized school‖ for the 1990s (Budde 

1988, 8).  These goals were as follows: 

 

1. Give teachers responsibility for and 

control over instruction. 

2. Insure that pupils assume responsibility 

for their own learning and behavior 

and that they acquire the attitudes 

and skills to become lifelong 

learners. 

3. Link career development plans and 

professional growth activities to the 

instructional materials, curriculum 

and services needs of the school 

district. 

4. Move the school district from a ten-

month, rural-based school year to a 

210 + day school year for students 

and a full time, twelve-month work 

year for teachers. 

5. Provide opportunities for teachers to 

undertake professional-level, non-

classroom responsibilities as part of 

their careers. 



59 
 

6. Establish a program 

budgeting/accounting system which 

will enable educational programs to 

be planned and implemented over a 

three-to-five-year period of time. 

7. Enable principals to revitalize their 

leadership roles as creators of safe, 

positive environments for learning 

and supporters of teachers who are 

responsible for instruction. 

8. Establish a program/services monitoring 

and evaluation system not under the 

control of those whose programs and 

services are being monitored and 

evaluated. 

9. Productively tap and cope with the vast 

expansion and fundamental changes 

taking place within and across the 

fields and disciplines of knowledge. 

10. Make wide and appropriate 

applications of the computer and 

other emerging developments in 

technology and communications. 

11. Integrate various levels of educational 

research and professional 

contributions into the ―fabric‖ of the 

school district. 

12. Solicit and encourage the active 

participants of parents and persons 

from business and other vocations in 

the education of the children and 

youth of the community. 

 

Budde rationalized charter schools as a 

means to accomplish some or all of these 

goals.  He proceeded to explain, in a fictional 

tale, how an innovative Superintendent might 

proceed with a charter school initiative.  At 

the core of this tale was the Superintendent 

proposing the idea to his own staff within his 

own district.  Any teacher, or group of 

teachers, could submit a simple application 

for charter funds to begin an educational 

initiative within the district.  The listed 

reasons why teachers within a district might 

be interested in starting a charter were as 

follows: 

* Strong dissatisfaction with the present 

curriculum or teaching situation. 

* Excitement from trying out a successful 

new teaching strategy which could be 

developed and expanded. 

* Ideas a group of teachers bring back from 

a workshop led by a nationally known 

figure in education. 

* A new plan for organizing instruction 

learned by a teacher taking a graduate 

course in administration. 

* Ideas picked up during a visitation to a 

classroom in another school. 

* Ideas generated from reading, and/or 

viewing video cassettes and television 

programs. 

* Pressures felt by teachers and 

administrators to respond to the hidden 

and not so hidden criticism of schools 

found in the various national reports 

calling for educational reform 

 

The life cycle of the charter was proposed to 

last three to five years with an opportunity to 

possibly renew the charter after an evaluation 

of its program.  Charter schools, as Budde 

conceived them, were to emerge from within 

the ranks of teachers.  They were a vehicle 

for teachers to expand their power as 

professionals and spur innovation within a 

district.  To Budde, a charter school was a 

collaborative endeavor within a school and 

not a competitive one against it. 



60 
 

National Attention with Albert Shanker 

 While Ray Budde may have given 

birth to the concept of charter schools, he was 

not a nationally known figure and his ideas 

gained little traction when originally 

presented.  In fact, Budde‘s Education by 

Charter was first disseminated in 1974 as a 

paper presentation to the Society for General 

Systems Research with little to no response 

(Budde 1996).  New life, however, was 

breathed into Budde‘s charter school concept 

when Albert Shanker began to advocate for 

it. 

 Albert Shanker was synonymous with 

teacher labor movements throughout the 

latter half of the twentieth century.  His 

career began in 1952 as a mathematics 

teacher in East Harlem, New York.  By the 

1960s, he was intricately involved in labor 

issues for teachers, eventually leading up to 

his leadership of the American Federation of 

Teachers (AFT) in 1974 that lasted over two 

decades.  He became the face of teacher labor 

movements by writing a multitude of opinion 

columns in The New York Times that aimed 

at promoting and clarifying the AFT‘s labor 

position.  Shanker was long concerned with 

conditions of schools in East Harlem and 

sought innovative approaches to revitalize 

public education in that area.  He became 

aware of Budde‘s charter school concept and 

began to advocate for it as an approach worth 

consideration.   

 As Budde published Education by 

Charter in 1988, Shanker began to publicize 

his views of charter schools in a speech given 

at the National Press Club that same year.  

He addressed the improvements made in 

public education since the Nation at Risk 

report and emphasized that charter schools 

may be the encompassing resolution to the 

problems addressed by the report. Shanker, 

like Budde, conceived of charter schools as 

an internal improvement started by teachers 

within public schools.  ―Do not think of a 

school as a building,‖ Shanker explained to 

the audience, ―and you can see how it works‖ 

(Shanker 1988, 12).  Shanker proceeded to 

explain the nature of a charter school: 

 

Consider six or seven or twelve 

teachers in a school who say, ‗We've 

got an idea. We've got a way of doing 

something very different. We've got a 

way of reaching the kids that are now 

not being reached by what the school 

is doing.‘ That group of teachers could 

set up a school within that school 

which ultimately, if the procedure 

works and it's accepted, would be a 

totally autonomous school within that 

district. The district should create a 

panel that would be used to either 

approve or reject the teacher proposals 

that would come in. The panel could 

be a joint panel between the union and 

the board; it could include outsiders, or 

it might be a system in which the 

union and the board would separately 

have to ratify such proposals (Shanker 

1988, 12). 

 

A central component of Shanker‘s concept of 

charter schools was that it be teacher driven 

within a collective bargaining environment.  

As the leader of the AFT, Shanker saw the 

union as a central player in school reform.  

Shanker‘s public profile with the AFT lended 

the charter school movement credibility that 



61 
 

eventually enabled it to be pushed onto a 

larger political landscape. 

 

Ted Kolderie and the Minnesota 

Conception 

 Teachers and other educational 

leaders considered the concept of charter 

schools synchronously with Shanker‘s public 

advocacy.  Perhaps no initial conversations 

were as serious about charter schools as those 

first held in the state of Minnesota.  As 

previously mentioned, Minnesota had 

historically provided choice options within 

school districts, particularly in the Twin 

Cities (Nathan 2002).  This familiarity with 

teacher-led innovation spurred the first 

impactful discussions about charter schools 

in the state.  In 1988 a community 

organization called the Minneapolis 

Foundation held a conference where Shanker 

served as a keynote speaker.  After hearing 

Shanker espouse the charter school concept, 

several of Minnesota‘s educational leaders in 

attendance convened for a special meeting to 

discuss Shanker‘s ideas.  This coaltion 

consisted of five individuals: Barbara Zohn, 

president of the Minnesota Parent Teacher 

Student Association; Elaine Salinas, 

education program officer of the Urban 

Coalition in Minneapolis-St. Paul; Ted 

Kolderie, a former journalist and director of a 

Minneapolis-based public policy group 

entitled the Citizens League; Ember 

Reichgott, a Democratic state senator from a 

Minneapolis suburb; and Joe Nathan, a 

former inner city public school aide, teacher 

and administrator who eventually became the 

Director for the Center for School Change at 

the University of Minnesota (Nathan 2002).  

One key point discussed by this coalition was 

that in order for the charter school concept to 

work well, it needed to open up the concept 

of charters beyond local school districts.  

―After all,‖ Joe Nathan pointed out, ―school 

boards already had the power to offer 

different kinds of schools, yet less than a 

handful of Minnesota‘s more than 400 

districts were doing so‖ (Nathan 2002, 19).  

This decision became a key change in the 

evolvement of the charter school concept as it 

meant allowing individuals or groups outside 

of a school district to apply as a sponsor for a 

charter.   

      This new charter school proposal from 

the Minnesota coalition emerged out of more 

than mere pragmatism, as members of the 

coalition envisioned a larger problem behind 

the lack of applicants within Minnesota‘s 

public school system who proposed to form a 

school within a school.  The problem, they 

believed, was an inherent flaw in the U.S. 

public education system.  In a paper entitled 

―The States Will Have to Withdraw the 

Exclusive‖ written in 1990 for the Center for 

Policy Studies, a Minnesota based non-profit 

policy design organization, Ted Kolderie 

argued that ―our system of public education 

is a bad svstem …It is terribly inequitable. It 

does not meet the nation's needs. It exploits 

teachers' altruism. It hurts kids‖ (Kolderie 

1990, 3).  Kolderie proceeded to explain his 

rationale for allowing charter schools to be 

sponsored by individuals outside of school 

districts:  

 

The state's job is not to run the 

schools. The state's job is to provide a 

workable system for those who do. It 

owes boards, teachers and 

administrators -- and the public -- a 



62 
 

system in which those who do change 

and improve are supported and 

rewarded, and in which those who do 

not are the ones put at risk (Kolderie 

1990, 4). 

 

Public schools, according to Kolderie, were 

institutions naturally inclined to protect itself 

even when change was required from it: 

The district's ability and willingness to start 

new schools is bound to be limited, however, 

by its desire not to threaten the other schools 

it owns. The result would be what it is today: 

selected demonstrations, and waiting lists -- 

always the visible evidence of a reluctance to 

let change cause internal stress (Kolderie 

1990, 5). 

 To counterpoint school districts‘ 

hesitancy to change, Kolderie proposed two 

steps that he believed would stymie the 

exclusivity over public education that schools 

owned.  The first step, called ―choice‖, 

empowers students to make the decision of 

the school, or ―franchise‖ as coined by 

Kolderie, that he or she attends.  This first 

step intended to free the market of school, as 

if it operates as any other business, so 

competition among schools may spur change 

and innovation for the sake of public 

education.  The second step, called 

―diversification‖, enables the state to form 

new schools.  This second step was 

Kolderie‘s conception of charter schools 

where the state forms charters with sponsors 

who may be ―a business firm. Or an investor 

group. 

 Or a group of parents. Or perhaps 

educators; administrators or teachers‖ 

(Kolderie 1990, 7).  These new charter 

schools, according to Kolderie, would be 

held accountable by both ―whatever 

standards the local district is willing to 

impose on its own students‖ as well as ―to its 

families, through choice‖ (Kolderie 1990, 8). 

 The coalition, led by Kolderie‘s 

public vision, was persuasive in its views to 

garner state-wide acceptance as the 

Minnesota state legislature passed the 

nation‘s first charter school statute in 1991.  

The bill was authored by state Senator Ember 

Reichgott, a member of the coalition 

spearheaded by Kolderie.  While Michael 

Dorer‘s Bluffview Montessori may have been 

the first group to be chartered by the state, 

numerous other sponsors in the aftermath 

were granted charters.  By 2001, a mere ten 

years after the passage of the state‘s charter 

school statute, 64 charter schools were in 

operation in Minnesota.  What originated as 

an innovative idea deliberated by a small 

number of Minnesota educators committed to 

improving the state‘s public education system 

became, in some ways, a phenomenon.  This 

phenomenon, unbeknownst to the Minnesota 

coalition in 1990, engulfed the nation in a 

short period of time. 

 

A National Charter School Movement 

 The 1990s witnessed a remarkable 

surge in the number of charter schools.  Once 

Minnesota became the first state to pass 

charter school legislation in 1990, a domino 

affect of states choosing to take the very 

same route quickly followed.  In the first five 

years after the passage of the charter law in 

Minnesota, 25 other states passed charter 

school laws (see Table 2: State Adoption of 

Charter School Legislation). 

 

 



63 
 

 

Table 2: State Adoption of Charter School Legislation

1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 

Minnesota California Colorado 

Georgia 

Massachussets 

Michigan 

New Mexico 

Wisconsin 

Arizona 

Hawai‘i 

Kansas 

Alaska 

Arkansas 

Delaware 

New Hampshire 

Lousiana 

Rhode Island 

Wyoming 

Connecticut 

Washington, DC 

Florida 

Illinois 

New Jersey 

North Carolina 

South Carolina 

Texas 

Vergari (2002) 

 Currently, 42 states and the District of 

Columbia have passed charter school 

legislation.  Only eight states do not have 

charter school laws:  Alabama, Kentucky, 

Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South 

Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia (The 

Center for Education Reform 2015).  

 As states took up charters, other 

people began to show interest in these 

schools.  Although Budde and Shanker‘s 

vision of charters was for teachers to take 

more control over their own work, others saw 

charters as a means to challenge the public 

education system in the United States.  Joe 

Nathan, one of the members of the Minnesota 

coalition who produced the Minnesota 

concept, argued that charter schools gained 

national attention because they aligned with 

four concepts favored by the American 

people: ―freedom and choice for families, 

entrepreneurial opportunities for educators, 

explicit accountability for schools, and 

thoughtful, fair competition for public school 

districts‖ (Nathan 1996, 18).  These four 

ideas presented by Nathan - Freedom of 

choice, entrepreneurship, accountability, 

competition - were all part of a growing 

movement to create an alternative to the 

failing public schools as they were described 

in A Nation at Risk (National Commission 

on Excellence in Education 1983).  Public 

acceptance of charter schools grew with the 

public accolades thrown toward them by 

political leaders from both political parties 

(Presidents Clinton, a Democrat, and G. W. 

Bush, a Republican, were both staunch 

supporters of charter schools) and major 

foundations such as the Bill and Melinda 

Gates Foundation and the Eli and Edythe 

Broad Foundation poured money toward the 

growth of charter schools.  Even Oprah 

Winfrey jumped onto the charter school 

bandwagon by handing out one million dollar 

checks to six charter school leaders on her 

television program (Beazely 2010, September 

21).  The outpouring of public support led to 

increased student enrollment in charter 

schools.  The number of students enrolled in 

charters grew from 340,000 in the 1999-2000 

school year to 2,058,000 in the 2011-12 

school year (See Table 1 on page 57). 

 The expansion of charter schools in 

the U.S. made a significant impact on many 

American communities.  A report issued in 

late 2011 by the National Alliance for Public 

Charter Schools, reported the following: 



64 
 

A record number of school districts—

six—have at least 30 percent of their 

public school students enrolled in 

public charter schools. Charter schools 

in New Orleans enroll an astounding 70 

percent of public school students. 

Additionally, 18 school districts have 

20 percent or more of their public 

school students enrolled in charter 

schools, eleven more than when we first 

printed this report six years ago. Nearly 

100 districts now have at least 10 

percent of public school students in 

charter schools (National Alliance for 

Public Charter Schools 2011, 1). 

 

 It is important to note, however, that 

the increased enrollment did not necessarily 

come from growing public support.  For 

instance, the increase in the number of New 

Orleans students in charter schools can be 

explained by a change in school district 

policy.  After hurricane Katrina, New 

Orleans closed all the public schools and only 

opened new charter schools in a school 

district they called the ―Recovery School 

District‖ (Gabor 2013, September 20).   

      Support for charter schools, school choice 

in general, and other market-based reforms 

has grown and they have become the 

hallmark of federal education policy.  The 

U.S. Department of Education under the 

Bush and Obama administrations embraced 

the notion of school choice, charter schools, 

and other market-based reforms.  As a case in 

point, in a speech to the National Alliance for 

Public Charter Schools, Education Secretary 

Arne Duncan (2009) described Race to the 

Top, the Obama administration‘s program to 

improve schools by restructuring or 

eliminating poor performing schools.  In 

Race to the Top, school districts are required 

to ―stack rank‖ their schools.  The lowest 

performing schools—the bottom 5 percent—

are required to implement one of four 

―turnaround‖ options.  All of the options 

require at least a 50 percent turnover of 

faculty and administration and the 

implementation of new teacher accountability 

measures.  One of the proposed turnaround 

models (number 3) is to reinvigorate the 

school by ―replacing the staff and leadership 

and turning it over to a charter or for-profit 

management organization‖ (5).  Since 2001, 

with the inception of the No Child Left 

Behind Act (NCLB), this ―turnaround‖ 

option has been indicative of the paradigm of 

contemporary federal policy makers: charter 

schools can outperform traditional public 

schools with improving academic 

performance among the nation‘s poorest 

children. 

 

Contemporary Trends Among Charter 

Schools 

      Nearly a quarter of a century has 

passed since Minnesota blazed the trail by 

beginning the charter school movement, 

providing the public enough time to make a 

judgment on the movement.  There are many 

types of charter schools today, some vary by 

state and others even by school district, 

making it difficult to form generalizations 

about charter schools in the United States.  

This section will be our attempt to form some 

generalizations about charter schools as a 

means to analyze the contemporary American 

charter school movement. 

      The performance of charter schools have 

generally failed to deliver on the movement‘s 



65 
 

promise for academic improvement from 

traditional public schools.  Charter school 

advocates are known to use statistics to stake 

their claim for a high quality learning 

experience than their traditional public peers, 

but recent empirical studies reveal that most 

charter schools are no better or, in fact, worse 

than traditional public schools.  The Center 

for Research on Education Outcomes 

(CREDO), an independent research group 

housed in Stanford University, published 

significant research reports on American 

charter schools in both 2009 and 2013 (see 

Table 3 Comparison of Charter and Public 

School Performance).  The 2009 report, 

which examined test results from 16 states, 

revealed that 17% of charter schools 

produced better results in academic 

achievement than traditional public schools, 

leaving 46% of charters the same and 37% 

worse (Center for Research on Education 

Outcomes 2013).

  

 

Table 3: Comparison of Charter and Public School Performance 

Year of Study Charter Schools 

Better than 

Traditional Pubic 

Schools 

Charter Schools Same 

as Traditional Public 

Schools 

Charter Schools 

Worse than 

Traditional Public 

Schools 

2009 17% 46% 37% 

Total: 83% 

2012 25% 56% 19% 

Total 75% 

Center for Research on Education Outcomes (2013). 

 

 The 2013 study, which expanded 

upon the 2009 study to include test results 

from 26 states, had slightly more favorable 

results for charter schools than the 2009 

report.  However, the 2013 results still 

revealed that three-fourths of American 

charter schools were either the same or worse 

than traditional public schools.  These results 

show that some charter schools may live up 

to expectations and public perception placed 

on them but, as a whole, the charter school 

movement has not been as effective as 

traditional public schools in producing a 

more rigorous academic experience for 

students.  And, yet, charter schools are still 

held up by federal policy makers as a 

favorable alternative to traditional public 

schools.  Strangely, Secretary Duncan even 

referred to the CREDO report in Race to the 

Top documentation – yet continued support 

of charter schools as a viable academic 

alternative to traditional public schools.   

 While charter schools‘ academic 

results have not matched the rhetoric of 

policy makers, controversy surrounds some 

charter schools due to their peculiar response 

to public scrutiny.  Organizations who open 

charter schools do so using public funds.  As 

a result, charter schools are still purported to 

be public schools only with more 

bureaucratic leeway to adjust their 

curriculum than traditional public schools.  



66 
 

Traditional public schools are held 

accountable by the American public for their 

use of public monies.  In late 2014, for 

instance, charter schools in Ohio were put 

under public scrutiny for poor academic 

performance and financial corruption.  

Strauss (2015) writing in The Washington 

Post stated that Ohio has become the ―butt of 

jokes‖ among reporters who cover charter 

schools.  Among the many episodes that led 

to that moniker are widespread 

misappropriation of public funds, and 

collusion among charter schools.  As a case 

in point, the Virginia-based Imagine Schools 

charged the Ohio Imagine schools 

―exorbitant rent‖ and the rent was kicked-

back to private investors who bought up 

charter school property and leased it back to 

the school management company (Livingston 

2015).  The problem, according to Ohio 

governor, John Kasich, is too little state 

regulation on charter schools that enable 

some schools to be operated by private 

corporations who sought to create profit 

through questionable methods (Rowland 

2014, December 19).  Kasich promised to 

regulate Ohio‘s charter schools to ensure 

better financial transparency.  Another case 

where charter schools have been publicly 

criticized for their lack of financial 

transparency is the Roger Bacon Academy, a 

charter school in Leland, North Carolina, that 

refused to allow their employees‘ salaries 

made public as required by the North 

Carolina Department of Instruction, citing 

that it is protected by state law from doing so 

since the information is their business‘ 

confidential trade secret (McGrath 2014, 

October 14).  A dichotomy exists between 

the public funding of charter schools and 

some charter schools that are privately 

operated that raises this question: Are charter 

schools public or private schools?    

 Scrutiny toward charter schools for 

not behaving as public institutions, despite 

being publicly funded, is not new.  In late 

1994, a Michigan circuit court ruled that 

charter schools in its state were not actually 

public since the schools were not under 

exclusive control of the state (Miron & 

Nelson 2002).  To counter concerns that 

charter schools do not behave as public 

schools some advocates of charter schools 

called for increased transparency as a means 

for charter schools to be more accountable to 

the public.  This approach, which former 

Assistant Secretary of Education, Chester 

Finn, Jr. and other charter school advocates 

call ―accountability-via-transparency‖ would 

conceivably work this way: 

If flaky people are operating a dubious school 

with a weird curriculum, classrooms are out 

of control, money is being squandered (or 

pocketed by the school head), or test scores 

are sagging, this will be no secret to its 

community.  Either the school changes its 

ways or it finds itself without students (or 

without its charter school renewal).  

Conversely, a school that works well will 

find people beating a path to its doors (Finn, 

Jr., Manno, Vanourek 2000, 128). 

Theoretically, accountability-via-

transparency, would ensure that publicly 

funded charter schools are held accountable 

to the public.  However, the recent examples 

in Ohio and South Carolina call into question 

the transparency of contemporary charter 

schools.  In fact, new aspects of the 

contemporary charter school movement 

arguably dart further away from transparency 



67 
 

and public accountability.  At the forefront of 

this new private-oriented feature of charter 

schools is the introduction of non-

instrumentality charter school debuting in 

Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Milwaukee, as a city 

with a disproportionately high level of 

poverty, is experimenting with their 

education system by allowing some charter 

schools to operate outside the auspice of the 

Milwaukee Public School District.  The result 

is that these non-instrumentality charter 

schools have no accountability to the public 

since they are devoid of a publicly elected 

school board.  School boards are the primary 

means of democratic control that the public 

has over public schools.  To take away school 

boards, as non-instrumentality schools do in 

Milwaukee, erases democratic control over 

the schools, eliminates the public forum in 

which the public may inquire about 

budgetary concerns, and vanishes 

accountability for those who operate these 

schools (Ravitch 2010b).  This calls to 

question: Are non-instrumentality charter 

schools really public schools? 

      Another common criticism of charter 

schools‘ deviance from traditional public 

schools is the under-representation of 

students enrolled in special education.  

Charter schools have the reputation of not 

marketing to nor recruit students with 

disabilities and their families (Miron 2014).   

In fact, a study published in 2000 by the U.S. 

Department of Education ―found a pattern of 

charter schools systematically counseling out 

students with disabilities rather than making 

accommodations and providing the required 

services and supports‖ (Miron 2014).  

However, evidence recently surfaced that 

charter schools are enrolling more students 

with disabilities than in the past.  A study 

published in late 2015 by the National Center 

for Special Education in Charter Schools 

(NCSECS) found that 10.42% of students 

enrolled in charter schools were eligible for 

special education programs whereas 12.55% 

of students enrolled in traditional public 

schools were classified as eligible for special 

education.  The NCSECS report went on to 

claim that 115 of U.S. charter schools focus 

primarily on students with disabilities 

(National Center for Special Education in 

Charter Schools 2015).  Despite this recent 

report, criticisms of charter schools‘ 

enrollment of and service for special 

education students are likely to continue as 

long as a discrepancy remains between 

charter schools and their traditional public 

school counterparts in the area of special 

education.. 

      While criticisms of charter schools linger, 

the continual expansion of charter schools 

upon the American landscape signify that 

charter schools are still deemed by many as a 

viable solution to problems with American 

public education.  The popularity of charter 

schools by the public, despite the 

movement‘s shortcomings in satisfying the 

claims about it made by the U.S. Department 

of Education, may be testimony that the 

public‘s craving for flavor and variety 

outweigh federal policy makers‘ appeal for 

charter schools as a more academically 

rigorous alternative to traditional public 

schools.  Further research is needed to 

understand the causes for the popularity 

among the public writ large for charter 

schools.  However, charter schools 

undoubtedly do provide a variety of 

educational opportunities from which the 



68 
 

public can choose from.  A signature appeal 

of many charter schools, like Winona‘s 

Bluffview Montessori, is that the curriculum 

diverts from patterns of the traditional public 

school.  Some charter schools such as North 

Idaho‘s STEM Charter Academy center their 

curriculum around the popular merger 

between science, technology, engineering, 

and math (STEM).  Another contemporary 

trend among charter schools, like the 

Classical Academy Charter School of 

Clifton, New Jersey, is to focus schools 

around a classical curriculum that values the 

perrenialist philosophy that a robust liberal 

arts curriculum better serves students and 

society.  Still others, such as the Camarillo 

Academy of Progressive Education in 

Camarillo, California, center their schools 

around central proponents of the American 

progressive education movement from the 

twentieth century by emphasizing a child-

centered learning and inquiry-based learning 

experience.  The variety of school curriculum 

options that exist among charter schools 

represents an experimentation with varying 

philosophies of education that has been 

unprecedented in American public education.   

Discussion 

 Ray Budde conceived the concept of 

a charter school as a means to revitalize 

American public education.  By the 1980s, 

much hope was attached to the concept and it 

became a phenomenon throughout the United 

States.  Still today, charter schools are 

perceived by educators and politicians as a 

key to renewal in American public education.  

However, the movement is no longer new as 

it is now nearly twenty-five years old.  The 

results of the charter school movement have 

been underwhelming.  The vision of Ray 

Budde, and later Albert Shanker, for charter 

schools as a means to reinvigorate public 

education has been blurred over time and is 

not the movement that they originally 

conceived.  While Budde may have been 

optimistic about the charter movement that 

surfaced in the mid-1990s (Budde 1996), 

Shanker publicly denounced the charter 

school movement once he saw it began to cut 

ties with teacher unions (Ravitch 2013).  The 

anti-union stance of charter schools continues 

to this day as approximately 12 percent of 

charter schools are unionized and the teacher 

retention rate for charter schools is much 

lower than traditional public schools 

(Kahlenberg & Potter 2014).  Rather than a 

movement to reinvigorate the traditional 

public schools, charter schools became a 

centerpiece of a ―school choice‖ movement 

that worked in tandem with the voucher 

program started in Milwaukee, WI in 1990.  

When Ted Kolderie conceived charter 

schools as an opportunity for the franchise of 

public education to be operated by private 

businesses, it evolved into the pinnacle of a 

political vision of education first articulated 

in the mid twentieth century by Milton 

Friedman (1955) in his essay ―The Role of 

Government in Education‖ and reinforced in 

the 1990s by John E. Chubb and Terry M. 

Moe (1990) in a book entitled Politics, 

Markets, and America‘s Schools that 

envisioned the traditional public school as 

holding a monopoly on public education and 

that education would be improved if that 

monopoly was challenged by privatization of 

the system.  As a result, charter schools 

became viewed as a viable competitor to the 

American public school.  Federal and state 

governments, beginning with the 2001 



69 
 

passage of NCLB enlisted the use of 

standardized testing to gauge the 

effectiveness of traditional public schools 

adding a looming threat of a charter school 

takeover if traditional public schools failed to 

reach a particular cut score on the tests.   

 Parents the authors know who choose 

to enroll their children in charter schools are 

generally pleased with their choice.  This is 

not surprising since charter schools have 

indeed created a variety of educational 

options for the public.  However, the charter 

school movement gained national attention 

among federal education policy makers for 

other reasons, namely as a prescription to 

cure the academic struggles of lower socio-

economic students.  The research, however, 

shows that the charter school movement has 

been unable to improve upon this situation.  

This should serve as a lesson to school 

reformers that schools cannot be operated as 

businesses since the success and failure of a 

school is intrinsically linked to the social 

capital of the society is serves.  The real 

source of the historical struggle of American 

public education has been an increase in 

poverty in American society.   

      Businesses are concerned with turning a 

profit, whereas traditional public schools are 

concerned mostly with the betterment of its 

students and society.  Charter schools have 

become a big business venture, resulting in 

behavioral trends by some charter companies 

that are not befitting for democratic 

institutions like public schools.  The authors 

suggest that the charter school movement 

should revisit its roots with Ray Budde and 

make charter schools a piece of the 

traditional public school system instead of an 

outside competitor.  There is hope, however, 

as challenges to the contemporary charter 

school concept have received public 

attention.   Recently, for instance, Public 

Broadcasting‘s The Newshour, featured a 

charter school in Houston, TX that 

cooperates closely with the traditional public 

school (PBS Newshour 2014, July 22). 

Additionally, evidence is mounting against 

the nearly quarter-century old charter school 

movement that may lead to a call for change.  

The renowned historian of education, Diane 

Ravitch, for instance, recently wrote two 

critically acclaimed books, The Death and 

Life of the Great American School System 

(2010) and Reign of Error (2013) that 

directly challenges the contemporary charter 

school movement in support of the traditional 

public school.  The 2013 CREDO report 

further substantiates concerns about charter 

school effectiveness.   

       Ray Budde aptly coined the title 

―charter‖ school as a play on words to 

embrace how his idea would unleash an era 

of exploration in public education akin to the 

European exploration of the late fifteenth and 

early sixteenth centuries.  This navigational 

analogy is a useful one to explain the 

American charter school movement to date: 

the American charter school movement, like 

a ship gone astray, went from its original path 

and veered off course toward what its leaders 

thought was a panacea for a struggling public 

school system.  The panacea, however, 

proved to be merely a mirage.  Charter 

schools were originally meant to reinvigorate 

traditional public schools by empowering 

teachers within those schools to become 

educational entrepreneurs and start a school 

within a school in the hopes of better serving 

students.  Instead, it results in the occasional 



70 
 

production of a high quality school with the 

norm being the production of schools that are 

no better than the traditional public schools 

whose power it threatens to usurp.  

   

References 

Beazley, E. 2010 September 21. Oprah 

donates $6 million to charter schools,‖ 5 

NBC Chicago. http://www. 

nbcchicago.com. 

Budde, R. 1988. Education by charter: 

Restructuring school districts : Key to 

long-term continuing improvement in 

American education. Andover, MA: 

Regional Laboratory for Educational 

Improvement of the Northeast & Islands. 

Budde, R. 1996. The evolution of the charter 

concept. Phi Delta Kappan 78(1): 72. 

The Center for Education Reform (2015). 

Charter school laws across the states, 

2015. https://www.edreform.com/2015/ 

03/charter-school-laws-across-the-states-

2015-rankings-scorecard/ 

Center for Research on Education Outcomes 

(2013). National charter school study, 

2013. 

https://credo.stanford.edu/documents 

/NCSS%202013%20Final%20Draft.pdf 

Chubb, J., & Moe, T. 1990. Politics, markets, 

and America's schools. Washington, 

D.C.: Brookings Institution. 

Dorer, M. J. 2002. The first charter school. 

Spotlight--Montessori diversity: Charter 

schools. Montessori Life, 14(3): 40-41. 

Duncan, A. 2009. Turning around the bottom 

5 percent. Paper presented at the National 

Alliance for Public Charter Schools 

Conference, Washington, D.C. 

http://www.ed.gov 

Finn Jr, C.E., Manno, B.V., & Vanourek, G. 

2000. Charter schools in action: 

Renewing public  education. Princeton, 

NJ: Princeton University Press. 

Friedman, M. 1955. The role of government 

in education. New Brunswick, NJ: 

Rutgers University Press. 

Gabor, A. 2013, September 20. Post-Katrina, 

the great New Orleans charter tryout.‖ 

Newsweek. http://newsweek.com 

Kahlenberg, R. D., & Potter, H. 2014. A 

smarter charter: Finding what works for 

charter schools and public education. 

New York: Teachers College Press. 

Kolderie, T. 1990. The state will have to 

withdraw the exclusive. St. Paul, MN. 

Center for  Policy Studies. 

Livingston, D. 2015, June 4. ―Four Ohio 

charter schools to close for poor 

academic performance; one in Canton.‖ 

The Beacon Journal.  

McGrath, G. 2014, October 14. Charter day 

school could face sanctions over salary 

request.‖  StarNews Online. http://www. 

starnewsonline.com 

Miron, G. 2014. Charters should be expected 

to serve all kinds of students. 

EducationNext 14(4): Retrieved from 

http://educationnext.org/charters-

expected-serve-kinds-students/ 

Miron, G. & Nelson, C. 2002. What’s public 

about charter schools: Lessons learned 

about choice and accountability. 

Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, Inc. 

Molnar, A. 1996. Giving kids the business: 

The commercialization of America's 

schools. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. 

Nathan, J. 1996. ―Possibilities, Problems, and 

Progress: Early Lessons from the Charter  

 Movement.‖ Phi Delta Kappan, 18-23. 

http://www/
https://www.edreform.com/2015/
https://credo.stanford.edu/documents
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Nathan, J. 2002. Minnesota and the charter 

public school idea. In Vargari, S. (Ed.), 

The charter school landscape (pp. 17-

31). Pittsburgh: The University of 

Pittsburgh Press. 

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools 

2011. A growing movement: America‘s 

largest charter school committees (6th 

ed.). Retrieved from http://www. 

publiccharters.org/wp-content/uploads 

/2014/01/2011-NAPCS-Market-Share-

Report_20111013T104601.pdf  

National Center for Special Education in 

Charter Schools 2015. Key trends in 

special education in charter schools: A 

secondary analysis of the civil rights data 

collection 2011-2012. Retrieved from: 

http://static1.squarespace.com/static/52fe

b326e4b069fc72abb0c8/t/564109d3e4b0

27fb791d1964/1447102931798/crdc_full.

pdf 

National Commission on Excellence in 

Education, 1983. A nation at risk: The 

imperative for educational reform. 

Washington, DC: US Government 

Printing Office. 

PBS Newshour. (Producer). 2014, July 22. In 

Houston, traditional public school shares 

ideas and a roof with charter schools. 

http://www.pbs.org/newshour 

Ravitch, D. 2010. The death and life of the 

great American school system: How 

testing and choice are undermining 

education. New York: Basic Books. 

Ravitch, D. 2010b. Why public schools need 

democratic governance. Phi Delta 

Kappan 91(6): 24-27. 

Ravitch, D. 2013. Reign of error: The hoax 

of the privatization movement and the 

danger to America's public schools. New 

York: Alfred A. Knopf. 

Rowland, D. 2014, December 19. Kasich to 

revamp Ohio laws on charter schools. The 

Columbus Dispatch. http:// 

www.dispatch.com 

Saulny, S. 2005, June 21. Ray Budde, 82, 

first to propose charter schools, dies. The 

New York  Times. http://www. 

nytimes.com 

Shanker, A. 1988. National Press Club 

speech. Washington, DC. 

Strauss, V. 2015, June 12. Troubled Ohio 

charter schools have become a joke — 

literally. The Washington Post.  

Urahn, S., & Stewart, D. 1994. Minnesota 

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Pittsburgh Press. 

 

                                                            
1 There is some controversy over who had 

the first charter.  Bluffview Montessori was a 

private school prior to the charter law being 

passed.  It had tried unsuccessfully to become 

a public school option in the Winona Area 

Public Schools.  The charter law provided a 

new way for the school to become public.  

The Winona school board approved 

Bluffview Montessori‘s charter in November 

1991 and the state approved it in December 

of the same year.  The school was set to open 

in fall, 1992.  Before it could open, however, 

two of the three original charter signers left 

the school.  As a result the Winona school 

board pulled its support for the charter.  The 

school had to reestablish it‘s support and on 

December 22, 1992, the Winona school 

http://www/


72 
 

                                                                                           

board voted 4-2 in favor of the charter 

school.  The charter school opened on March, 

2, 1993.   

      Between the original granting of the 

charter and the 1992 Winona school board 

vote, two other schools received state 

charters: Toivola-Meadowlands in St. Louis 

county and City Academy in St. Paul.  

Toivola-Meadows received the second 

charter from the state and City Academy 

received the third.  City Academy, however, 

opened as a charter school before either 

Bluffview Montessori or Toivola-

Meadowlands.  City Academy opened in fall, 

1992, followed by Bluffview Montessori in 

March 1993, and Toivola-Meadowlands in 

fall, 1993.   

      In sum, the controversy centers on 

whether the order in which the charters are 

granted by the state or the date the charter 

schools opened determine who came first.  

Both Bluffview Montessori and City 

Academy claim to be first (Urahn & Stewart 

1994). 

 


