Chapter 12: Trying to Thrive and Survive: An Ecological Approach to the Study of the Charter School Movement in the US

The K-12 education system in the United States is populated with many school organizations—ranging from the traditional comprehensive school to more recent “experiments” in virtual, distance, and nontraditional forms of schooling. Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, the public education system has been host to a variety of new school-forms including “free schools,” magnet schools, and career academies. By the 1990s, charter schools emerged to occupy a new niche in the educational ecosystems of several countries, including the US.

The emergence of charter schools in the early 1990s can be traced to changes in state legislation and to the demands of interest groups on the state system of schools for public school reform (Cuban, 1990; Fuller, 2000; Schrag, 2004). Parents, teachers, legislators, community associations and many other interest groups have played a role in the establishment of diverse, emerging populations of charter schools across 38 states and the District of Columbia in the US. In some cases, charismatic leadership has played a role in the burst of charter school activity. In other cases, social networks have developed and umbrella organizations have banded together to provide logistical, financial and political support to aid in the establishment of new charter schools. Major foundations and private donors have also provided seed money to launch these so-called new school ventures. Whatever the sources for systemic educational reform are, charter schools now occupy a legitimate (though at times contested) organizational form in today’s educational ecosystems.