SECTION 3

How Schools Manage Accountability Relationships

Archived Information

Faced with complex external accountability relationships, how do charter
schools cope? Are they pulled in many directions by the need to maintain
the confidence of many different parties, including families, teachers,
people who provide help and donate funds, and their authorizing
agencies? Or can school leaders learn to manage all the demands on them
efficiently? This chapter examines charter schools' relationships with
key constituencies. Our main findings are:

Charter schools learn to manage their disparate external accountability
relationships by clearly defining their approach to instruction and
expected student benefits, and by making sure students get what the
school promised. By "tending to their knitting" as managers of effective
teaching and learning, charter schools keep their programs simple and
ensure that the work lives of their leaders and teachers are, however
demanding, nonetheless manageable. By avoiding relationships with
families, teachers, and donors who want something that the school is not
designed to provide, schools avoid developing constituencies that they
cannot satisfy.

Charter schools are responsive to their authorizers, though
school-authorizer relationships are not as sharply focused on academic
performance as the theory of charter schools would predict.

**Maintaining Family Confidence**

Charter schools and parents are interdependent and therefore
reciprocally accountable. Schools that cannot attract students do not
get funding. Parents, on the other hand, want and need to send their
children to schools that provide a caring and motivating climate and
effective instruction. Evidence from our interviews confirms the results
of national surveys, which show that parents choose charter schools
because of the methods of instruction they offer, the safe and studious
climate they maintain, and the sense of commitment to the individual
child.[^1]

In order to attract parents, charter schools must make, or at least
imply, some promises. Most charter schools offer a smaller, more
intimate setting, staffed by people who chose to work in the school.
Parents also know that charter schools can be more responsive to
individual needs

than regular public schools, since teachers and staff on site are in
charge and cannot dodge a reasonable request by saying "the central
office won't let us."[^2] Most charter schools also expressly promise to
be more open, interesting, focused on academics, and caring than regular
public schools.

Though most parents do not want to continue shopping for schools once
they have placed their child in a charter school, all know that they can
leave a charter school if it does not keep its promises or if it fails
to provide good instruction. Parents do withdraw their children from
charter schools, for many of the following reasons predicted by charter
advocates.

Some charter schools, as discussed above, do not "jell' quickly.
Founder-parents are patient with such schools, but parents who chose
such schools expecting them to be fully formed educational institutions
can be disappointed. Further, parents are capable of wishful thinking
when choosing a charter school. Some believe that a charter school will
do things it never promised. Some parents find that methods of
instruction that sounded appealing in the abstract do not in fact meet
their child's needs. Some who have placed their children in brand new
schools find that the school develops in directions they do not like.
Some parents assume that a charter school will accommodate them or their
children in any way the family desires, and find out that it cannot.
Others choose charter schools after trying a series of public schools
and finding them all somehow wrong for their children. Though a few
"frequent shopper" parents find a charter school to be just right, many
are as Finn and Manno report, prone to conclude that the charter school
is also against them or their children and move on.[^3]

Not all parents perceive that they have many choices. For some a charter
school is a last resort. For others who have given up on conventional
public schools, there is no practical alternative to staying with a
charter school that is struggling or has a philosophy with which the
parents are not entirely comfortable. In several of the schools we
visited, parents were not apt to leave unless a situation became
terrible or unsafe.

The numbers of parents who remove their children for these reasons are
small. But all schools suffer some family attrition, and it creates
leverage for new parents and parents who remain. Even the large numbers
of schools that have waiting lists understand that they cannot survive
if parents lose confidence in them.

For most parents, choosing a charter school is their most important form
of involvement. Parent choice gives parents standing to make reasonable
requests and get action. The school's control of its resources enables
flexible responses to the needs of individual children. One parent

we interviewed had pulled her child from a Massachusetts public school
because the administration would not put her in an advanced reading
program. At the charter school, this fifth-grade student was put in the
sixth grade for English and the fifth grade for math. This is the
solution the parent was looking for and she is now content.

Parents who choose schools with firmly-established programs (e.g.,
schools run by large management companies such as National Heritage
Academies, Edison, and SABIS) typically have confidence in the school's
basic design even if they do not fully understand all the details of the
curriculum and teaching methods. Many families choose schools run by
Heritage and SABIS, for example, because they expect discipline, respect
for teachers and other students, and back-to-basics courses. These
families complain if the school does not live up to its image, but they
are unlikely to get involved in day-to-day governance as long as the
teaching and climate remain consistent.

Our case study schools are learning how important it is to help form
parent expectations, to socialize them to the school, and to discourage
parents who could never be satisfied with a school from enrolling their
children in it. Schools that were once private and have converted to
charter status have a head start on this, as many parents already have
some idea of what to expect. Most, though not all, startups have a much
harder time and usually take several years to articulate the school
mission and vision well enough to attract the kinds of families that
will fit well with the school, and give families good bases on which to
join or avoid them.

One school in Michigan takes the parent education process very
seriously. When prospective parents (or teachers) approach the director,
he suggests they purchase books written about the curriculum and
philosophy of the school so they have a better understanding of its
principles. The school has also held seminars for both existing and
potential parents about the programs and methods used by the school. A
new district-sponsored school required prospective students and parents
to complete a challenging questionnaire, which explored the family's
real willingness to forego television in order to do significant amounts
of homework, and commit to very high rates of attendance and effort.
Such mechanisms ensure that parents clearly understand what the school
offers. They are designed as much to help parents conclude that they
would *not be* satisfied with the school as to increase enrollment.

Some have worried that this process might be used to exclude low-income
or minority families.[^4] We saw no evidence that this was the case. To
the contrary, charter schools' clear expectations are often a magnet for
poor and minority parents who feel strengthened and supported, not
rejected, by schools that create high expectations.[^5]

What both schools and parents are learning about charter schools is that
choice creates reciprocal accountability. Parents must meet the school's
expectations as well as vice versa. This relationship is new and it is
one of the charter school movement's greatest contributions to public
education.

Though critics have warned that schools of choice would cater to
parents' every whim, we saw no evidence of that in our case studies.
Most charter schools try to attract parents by offering a definite
instructional program. Most also promise individualization, but within
the boundaries of the school's goals and approach to instruction. Thus,
a student who needs extra help or some tutoring that provides new angles
on the subjects taught can usually get it. But a parent who objects to
the school's avowed approach to instruction, or who wants special
concessions (exemption from attendance and discipline rules or
family-supervised homework) is less likely to be accommodated.

Competent school leaders know that they must keep faith with other
parents by putting the school's energy into the things it is determined
to do well and staying the course. One highly regarded private
African-American school in Michigan opted to become a charter school.
The school's "internal gyroscope," its long waiting list, and a
charismatic school founder all helped to keep the important elements of
the school intact, even while it recruited a larger and more diverse
student body and a teaching force that changed certain aspects of the
school.

In sum, the charter schools we visited take account of parents'
aspirations, but they are not dominated by parents' whims. Nor do they,
as some critics have feared, compete for students on the basis of easy
courses, lax requirements, or emphasis on entertaining noncurricular
activities. To the contrary, the vast majority of charter schools we
visited offer a safe, caring environment and many also promise high
standards and heavy workloads. These promises are especially attractive
to low-income and minority parents who feel that the public schools in
their neighborhoods are chaotic and academically inferior.

####### Accountability to Teachers

A charter school needs to attract and keep a teaching staff that is not
only able but also willing to provide the kind of instructional program
promised in its charter. Thus, every school needs to provide the working
conditions, climate, support, and pay that satisfy current teachers and
impress potential teachers that it is a good place to work. Charter
school employment of teachers leads to mutual accountability---schools
must make and keep promises to teachers and teachers must perform
effectively in the context of the school.

Some teachers have specific preferences about instructional style and
would not choose to teach in a school that required methods that made
them uncomfortable.[^6] Most teachers,

however, make more general demands. They want to work in a caring,
collegial environment where they carry few administrative burdens and
where classroom practice is not always changed by mandates from on
high.[^7]

School leaders also feel accountable to their teachers. Most of the
school heads in our case studies regard good teachers as assets that
must be cherished and protected. Some schools have strict discipline
policies for students and remove children from a class if they act out.
For some teachers, this is an area that makes their job much easier and
more rewarding. It also gives them a sense that the administration is
there to back them up.

In our case studies we encountered no charter schools that have created
exploitative "sweat shop" conditions for teachers. Most have tried to
make teaching in the school as rewarding as possible. Because charter
schools receive less public money than regular public schools, some
offer lower average teacher salaries, though most pay about the same as
neighboring public schools for beginning teachers.[^8] They try to
overcome these disadvantages with pleasant working conditions, careful
consultation about important decisions, and more overt appreciation for
teacher accomplishments. As Koppich et al. report, most, though not all,
charter school teachers say they would choose to teach in a charter
school if they had it to do over again.[^9]

Some teachers joined charters expecting to play major roles in school
governance. There are teacher-run charter schools, and a larger number
of schools in which a small group of teacher-founders share
administrative responsibilities. But most teachers who hoped to decide
all matters by committee eventually change their minds: some see that
constant committee work takes too much time away from teaching and gets
too little done, and others simply burn out and return to conventional
public schools. Most charter schools settle down rapidly, creating a
clear set of well-defined roles, including division of some
administrative responsibilities among teachers.

Most teachers who choose to work in charter schools want to collaborate
with other teachers, making sure students' knowledge accumulates across
different courses and between grade levels. They want school leaders to
make collaboration possible by creating free periods for discussion and
rewarding collaboration. But as charter schools mature, and teachers
come to understand what is possible within them, teachers value internal
clarity over open-ended deliberation on all matters.

Even in localities like Mesa, Arizona, where teachers are scarce and
competition between charters and conventional public schools is intense,
few charter schools have had trouble attracting capable teaching
staffs.[^10] Most teachers who choose to join charter schools in their
first

few years of existence did so because they liked their school's
educational philosophy and for other reasons consistent with the
development of coherent, productive instructional environments.[^11]

Some new charter schools also employ retired public school teachers, who
are eligible for pensions and no longer want to work in conventional
public schools. If a national teacher shortage predicted for the
early-2000s actually occurs, charter schools might have to recruit high
proportions of their teachers from unconventional sources---retired
teachers, other retirees, and educated adults who are skilled in other
fields but lack teaching experience. Teachers from these sources have
had other professional opportunities and might be demanding employees.

Conversion schools, which often start out with the same teaching staff
they had when they were conventional public schools, do not need to
attract new teachers, at least at the start. But school leaders know
that valuable teachers can choose to leave, and that retirement and
residential moves will inevitably create turnover. Thus, a conversion
school's reputation among teachers is extremely important. Conversion
charters are attractive to teachers who are tired of being told that
good ideas violate central office rules. However, some conversion
schools have very little independence. This is particularly true for
schools whose principals can be abruptly reassigned by the parent school
district. In that situation, it is difficult for a school to promise
anything in particular, and its accountability to teachers is thus
weakened.

As with parents, charter schools' relationships with teachers are not
always idyllic. Some new charter schools that started out without clear
ideas about instruction experienced conflicts within the teaching staff,
and between school leaders and teachers.[^12] Of the schools we studied,
some new schools experienced teacher and administrator turnover in their
early months, and some came close to failing. Without judging each case,
it is possible to say that these conflicts led many schools to sharpen
their commitments on instruction. Many that endured staff conflict and
attrition now present themselves more clearly to prospective teachers.

The need to make the school attractive to teachers puts a premium on
internal accountability. Many teachers we interviewed remarked on the
differences in internal communication in charters versus conventional
public schools. They said that teacher-teacher and teacher-administrator
communication is more personal, more frequent, and more focused on
instruction in charter schools than in conventional public schools.

Some teachers in new schools found the requirement to renew their
contracts each year unnerving, but were convinced of its value. One
teacher said that during her 4 years at a traditional public middle
school, no teachers left, even though several were vocally unhappy with
their jobs and vigorously resisted efforts to upgrade the school's
teaching methods. As this teacher said, when it happens for the right
reasons turnover can be healthy. At these charter schools, good
performance is praised, bad performance is dealt with and people who do
not want to work in a common enterprise are encouraged to find other
schools where they will fit in better. Teachers we interviewed said this
gives the school an atmosphere of fairness and energy.

Many teachers we spoke with described their charter schools as having a
"professional environment" of shared responsibility and demanding mutual
accountability. At a conversion school in Georgia, teachers attributed
this to their school's charter status, saying that it forced them to
work constantly on school improvement. Though teachers started by
working in their own autonomous zones, they soon realized that the
school was going to be held accountable at the end of the year for test
scores, and this led them to begin to talk seriously with each other.
Charter school status meant that the school had flexible funds, which
allowed them to bring in a consultant who helped them focus their staff
development on particular instructional improvement goals.

In general, the charter schools in our case studies rely heavily on good
reputations to attract teachers. In many cases teachers who are having a
difficult time are noticed quickly and offered extra support and
mentoring. Teachers have personal relationships with the principal that
help them feel listened to and valued. These charter schools have the
flexibility to deal with teachers individually and creatively to help
them grow.

####### How Relationships with Authorizers Affect Internal Accountability

No matter how carefully they manage connections with parents, teachers,
and others, charter schools must always tend their relationships with
authorizers. Authorizers approve charter applications, release public
funds so that schools can use them, and must ultimately decide whether
to renew the charter when the school's term expires (5 years in most
states, up to 15 years in Arizona and an unlimited number of years in
the District of Columbia and Michigan). This section focuses on how
schools manage their relationships with authorizers. Section 4
immediately following discusses how authorizers operate.

How does the key external accountability relationship between school and
authorizer affect the internal life of a charter school? Charter schools
are not controlled in detail by their authorizers, but there are times
in which relations with authorizers are critical.

Authorizers are all-important before a school gains its charter. Groups
drafting charter proposals must consider whether what they want to do
meets the authorizer's priorities. In states where there are multiple
routes to charter approval, such groups can select the authorizer most
likely to be friendly to their ideas. Then, throughout the process of
proposal drafting, submission, defense, and amendment the group seeking
a charter must pay rapt attention to the authorizer's concerns. This
intense focus on the authorizer continues until the charter is approved
and sometimes longer. Schools that must find new space are often subject
to careful scrutiny until after the school is open and teaching
students. [^13]

Once a school is opened, a school's relationship with its authorizer is
not an everyday concern. School staff, the governing board, and founders
focus their energies on day-to-day school operations. The inevitable
startup crises---facilities problems, a teacher out sick, more or fewer
students than expected, conflicts between the school head and the
governing board, a new faculty member who did not take seriously what
was said about the school's teaching methods---consume everyone.

Even after school is up and running, the focus of most energy is
internal. Heads of charter schools are at least as busy as the
principals of regular public schools---perhaps more, since they must
also manage a facility, keep positive relationships with a governing
board, deal with parents who can threaten to remove their children from
the school, and in many cases, lead a newly-assembled teaching staff.

Heads of new charter schools attend meetings that they call for the
school's purposes, but they try to minimize meetings with their
authorizers. In contrast, heads of most conversion schools feel the same
obligation as principals of conventional public schools to respond to
district demands for their presence. This leads to a big difference
between new and conversion schools in how much time the principal has
available to spend on the school's internal business.

Most school leaders remain aware of their promises to the authorizer,
and of unresolved issues that might lead the authorizer to ask for data
or conduct a monitoring visit. However, many school leaders know that
the authorizer is very unlikely to initiate any contact. This is
especially true in states like Arizona, where some authorizers are
responsible for dozens of schools but have little or no staff
capacity,[^14] and in states where school districts authorize schools
but manifestly take no interest in them.

As the next section will show, some authorizers are highly active and
remain a frequent---at least monthly---presence in the lives of their
charter schools. The Massachusetts State Charter School Office and the
Chicago Public Schools Charter School Office are examples of active
authorizers that have very frequent contact, both formal and informal,
with individual schools. Other authorizers are less active, but any of
them can become engaged when problems in the school come to their
attention---parent complaints, feuds, firings, lack of fiscal controls
leading to budget crises, conflicts with contractors, etc.

As figure 3.1 shows, schools in our sample states rate their authorizers
as an important, but not the primary, external entity to which they are
accountable. Except in Michigan and Arizona, school leaders are more
keenly aware of the need to maintain relationships with their own
governing boards, parents, or the state education agency than with their
authorizer.

In general, the more smoothly a school operates the less it has to do
with its authorizer on a day-to-day basis. Most authorizers fall on the
reactive end of the spectrum, since few have the resources to pay close
attention to what schools are doing. Authorizers pay selective
attention, driven by conflicts and complaints from within the school or
from its neighbors. Scandals, and charges of illegal activity or misuse
of funds, will always draw authorizers' attention.

Internal conflicts that draw the attention of authorizers or newspapers
weaken the school. School heads soon learn this. So do teachers and
parents when they see that the school's ability to take action and solve
its own problems is important to them. The majority of charter schools
quickly learn to avoid conflicts by describing the school up-front in
ways that discourage people with incompatible expectations from taking
jobs or placing students there.

##### Dealing with Authorizers on School Effectiveness

All the charter schools in our sample assess their own academic
performance and provide required data to their authorizers. The charter
schools we studied were quick to create instructional improvement
strategies when they, their authorizers, or parents, identified
school-wide deficiencies in student performance.

Nationwide, only four charter schools have been closed by their
authorizers for poor academic performance.[^15] However, a much larger
number---based on our case studies at least one in 20 charter
schools---have received comments from authorizers based on poor student
test results. These interventions almost always lead to intense work
within the school (including some brief periods of frantic overwork)
leading to greatly increased time on instruction in the areas where the
school is weak. In this way charters are not different from conventional
public schools that come under threat of sanctions for low
performance.[^16]

Charter schools generally do not look to their authorizers for technical
assistance. Moreover, some important authorizers---including the
Massachusetts and Chicago Charter School Offices---have made conscious
decisions to stay out of the "assistance business." They fear that
advising a school would conflict with their job of assessing the
school's progress. These agencies, however, refer schools to nonprofit
resources centers and other sources of assistance.

![](media/image32.wmf)

As discussed in the next section, both the Massachusetts and Chicago
charter school offices have created independent review teams that
conduct periodic reviews of school operations. Though charter school
leaders find "inspection" visits uncomfortable and anxiety provoking,
most say that the results are an extremely helpful, if sometimes grim,
account of a school's strengths and weaknesses. Inspection results can
help school staffs get beyond minor personal differences of opinion and
focus on the most critical school wide issues.

At one school, administrators described an inspection team's findings as
"right on." In 1 day the visitors were able to see that school
leader-governing board conflicts and facilities problems were plaguing
the school. The report served as a wake-up call and a lever. Realizing
that their charter might be in jeopardy, the school's governing board
immediately backed off in their overzealous involvement of the
day-to-day operations and more aggressively began looking for a new
facility. An administrator who had been at the school since it opened
said, "We knew the board's micromanaging was destructive, but we didn't
have the leverage to make them stop. We appreciated the report because
it helped us get something done at the school that we might not have
been able to do on our own."

####### Conclusion

Chartering puts schools into a unique combination of accountability
relationships, as described above. But does the need to maintain the
confidence of multiple constituencies distract teachers and
administrators from the schools' main business of providing effective
instruction to students? Based on the evidence in this section, the
answer to that question is a qualified no. For most charter schools, the
best way to maintain the confidence of all these constituencies is to
tend to the academics, serving students well and keeping promises about
the type and quality of instruction delivered. In the vast majority of
situations we studied, charter schools do not have to "buy off" their
different constituencies by making concessions that compromise
instruction. They can meet their obligations to authorizers, parents,
internal board members, teachers, and donors in the same way, by making
the school a good place to learn and to teach.

Charter schools do get into trouble. As we have seen, a school
threatened with loss of parents, or a teacher walkout, strife on its
governing board, or withdrawal of financial support from a donor, must
go into a crisis mode. Schools that do not resolve these crises perish
(or never open, as has happened several times in Massachusetts and
Chicago).

The mechanism by which schools manage their different relationships with
external constituencies is internal accountability---a clear division of
responsibilities focused on accomplishing the school's goals for
students. Internal accountability is related to a broader concept we
have introduced in other research, *integrative capital*, which is the
set of all values, commitments, and responsibilities that holds a school
together and ensures that it can and will

provide students the experiences they need in order to learn.[^17]
Integrative capital includes traditions, values, leadership, and shared
experience about what works for students. Internal accountability is an
aspect of integrative capital. It is the arrangements a school makes to
ensure that it can meet its commitments to legitimate external
constituencies without abandoning its goals for students.

Tensions among parents, teachers, governing boards, and donors can
strain any school. But in charter schools that survive the first 3 years
of turbulence and role-clarification, the need to maintain the
confidence of all these parties strengthens the focus on motivating and
educating students. Private schools are similarly strengthened by their
need to create relationships of trust and confidence with parents,
teachers, governing boards, and donors.[^18]

Internal accountability must be created and tended by the people who
work, volunteer, and learn there. No external authority can create
internal accountability simply by commanding it. In fact, as Fred
Newmann has argued, external authorities can destroy internal
accountability by forcing school teachers and leaders to spend all their
time on matters other than providing quality instruction.[^19]

Charter schools become internally accountable for two reasons; because
they must, and because they can. They *must* be internally accountable
because coordinated, consistent effort is necessary if the school is to
keep all its promises and survive. They *can* be internally accountable
for many reasons: Because they control their own processes and assets.
Because they can decide whom to hire, and assign staff flexibly. Because
they can invest in teacher training, new equipment, and other assets to
improve instruction. Because they can assess their own performance and
initiate their own correctives. Because they can inform parents in
advance about what children will and will not experience.

The consequences of charter schools' accountability relationships with
government agencies---their authorizers and agencies with broader
jurisdiction such as like civil rights agencies and building
inspectors---are less clearly conducive to internal accountability. As
the next two sections will show, such agencies are having great
difficulty defining their own powers and responsibilities toward charter
schools.

[^1]: See, for example, Berman, Paul, Beryl Nelson, John Ericson,
    Rebecca Perry, and Debra Silverman, *A Study of Charter Schools:
    Second Year Report, 1998*, Washington DC, the U.S. Department of
    Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, 1998, p.
    99.

[^2]: We did not survey parents, but interviewed many in the course of
    our school case studies. The statements about parents here reflect
    what we heard and observed in our case study schools. We cannot say
    for sure whether the relationships reported here apply to all
    charter schools. But we can say that they were remarkably consistent
    in the schools we studied.

[^3]: Finn, Chester E., Gregg Vanourek, and Bruno V. Manno, *Charter
    Schools in Action: Will they Save Public Education?* Princeton, NJ,
    Princeton University Press, 2000.

[^4]: See e.g., Cobb and Glass 1999, and Horn and Miron 1999.

[^5]: The debate will continue over whether charter schools serve the
    "right" numbers of minority students. Our case study results are
    consistent with reports by others that many charter schools intend
    to serve diverse populations and take great pains to do so. See
    e.g., Berman et al., 1998. Finn et al., 2000.

[^6]: We did not survey teachers, but interviewed many in the course of
    our school case studies. The statements about teachers in this
    section reflect what we heard and observed in our case study
    schools. We cannot say for sure whether the relationships reported
    here apply to all charter schools. But we can say that they were
    remarkably consistent in the schools we studied.

[^7]: Koppich et al.

[^8]: See Koppich, Julia E., Patricia Holmes, and Margaret L. Plecki,
    *New Rules, New Roles? The Professional Work Lives of Charter School
    Teachers*. Washington, DC, National Education Association, 1998, p.
    26--34.

[^9]: Koppich et al., op. cit., p. 23.

[^10]: See, for example, Berman et al. p. 108: Less than 10 percent of
    all charter schools, including new schools, reported difficulty
    hiring staff.

[^11]: Finn, Vanourek, and Manno, op. cit*.,* ch. 2.

[^12]: See Berman et al, op. cit*.*, p. 106--109. Nearly 20 percent of
    charter schools reported problems with internal conflicts.

[^13]: For information about charter approval and startup see Millot,
    Dean and Robin Lake, *So you Want to Start a Charter School?
    Strategic Advice for Applicants*, Recommendations from an Expert
    Workshop, Seattle, Center on Reinventing Public Education, 1996. See
    also Finn, Manno, Bierlein, and Vanourek, 1997, op. cit*.* Berman,
    Paul, Beryl Nelson, Rebecca Perry, Debra Silverman, Debra Soloman,
    and Nancy Kamproth. *The State of Charter Schools*, Third Year
    Report, Washington DC, U.S. Department of Education, Office of
    Educational Research and Improvement, 1999, p. 41--54.

[^14]: The Arizona State Board of Education employs two staff members to
    oversee their 55 charter schools. Charter schools are only a small
    part of the responsibilities of this department that also
    establishes educational policy for all schools in Arizona. The State
    Board of Education has tried to tighten its application process, but
    once a charter is awarded, they do little more than monitor the
    schools for compliance. Boxes of paper 3 and 4 feet high line the
    walls of the state office, and the director acknowledged that she
    had only physically visited about half (29 of 55) of the schools.
    Usually the "problem" schools got the visits (i.e., the schools that
    parents complained about). She generally conducted these visits on
    her own and they were informal in nature. Surprisingly, she said
    that she could only "recommend" that a school take certain
    corrective actions, but that her office really had "no teeth" to
    force compliance.

[^15]: See Charter Schools, A Progress Report: Part II, Closures. *The
    Opportunity for Accountability*. Center for Education Reform, 1999.

[^16]: For an account of how low-performing public schools in a
    standards-based reform state respond to ominously low scores on
    state standards-based tests, see Lake, Robin J., and Paul T. Hill,
    *Making Standards Work*, Washington DC, The Thomas J. Fordham
    Foundation, 1999.

[^17]: Hill, Paul T., and James W. Guthrie, A New Paradigm for
    Understanding (and Improving) Twenty First Century Schooling, ed.
    Murphy, Joseph and Karen Seashore Louis, *Handbook of Research on
    Educational Administration, Second Edition*, San Francisco,
    Jossey-Bass, 1999.

[^18]: See Bryk and Lee, *op. cit.*, Hill Fostrer, and Gendler *op.
    cit.,* Coleman , James S., and Thomas Hoffer, *Public and Private
    High Schools: The Impact of Communities*, New York, Basic Books,
    1987.

[^19]: Newmann et al, 1997, op. cit*.*