Charter schools are said to have grown out of the educational reform movement of the 1980s and 1990s as part of the general approach looking for options to public schooling(Poland, 1996). Currently the U.S. charter school movement has produced about 800 schools in 29 states and the District of Columbia, enrolling over 100,000 students (Hadderman, 1998).
Poland (1996) defines charter schools as:
...public schools which operate through a contract with a sponsoring agency...this contract states the education plan, the teaching methods,, and curricular concepts to be employed...(p. 1)
In addition, Poland (1996) reports that the contract often also includes specifications of evaluation plans and outcome measures, the school's management plan, fiscal responsibilities and provisions for ancillary services. Poland further points out that charter schools have complete autonomy from all rules and regulations with the exceptions of state requirements regarding school safety, civil rights, and financial disclosure.
However, the National Education Association (NEA,2000) has recently raised a number of concerns regarding charter schools. Specifically, the NEA states that research indicates that there is a lack of diversity in the student bodies of many charter schools. In particular, it is noted that examination of enrollment data tends to show that charter schools' student bodies are predominately composed of those students are least costly to educate. In other words, they tend to select the most able from a given school rather than to select students of diverse educational capabilities.
In addition, the NEA (2000) reports that still other charter schools show a lack of diversity across variables other than academic capability, variables that include race, socioeconomic status, and level of academic achievement. The purpose of this paper is to examine charter schools in the context of these equity issues. The issue is examined in two...