Chapter 7: News Framing and Charter School Reform

Charter schools have been debated with great fervor since their initial development in the 1980s. At the national level, advocates for charters have successfully convinced the American public that charters are best course of action to improve public education. According to the most recent Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup Poll, “Americans’ support for public charter schools remains high at slightly less than 70%, and two of three Americans support new public charter schools in their communities” (Bushaw & Lopez, 2013, p. 15). According to Bulkley (2005), this national consensus reflects the broad based appeal of charter schools to individuals with a variety of viewpoints ranging from free-market conservatives to moderate Democrats. Such broad support for charter schools raises questions about where most American’s get their information about charter schools and how that information might influence their perspectives with respect to school reform. In this chapter, I examine the news media as one source of information about charter schools and some of the ways that newspapers have framed the issue of charter school reform.