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Moving Forward or Sliding Backward

The Evolution of Charter School Policies in Michigan and the District of Columbia

University of Massachusetts Boston

Thomas T. Holyoke

California State University, Fresno

What is the fate of charter school policy in the American states? The authors argue that dramatic new policies brought about by a radical reconfiguration of interests and politics are frequently short lived, though new policies are rarely erased; instead, they reach a compromise between competing sets of interests. The authors test this notion in a study of the evolution of charter school policy in Michigan and the District of Columbia. They find in Michigan that the original law, dramatic in the breadth of its change to public education, has slowly reverted to reflect a balance of power between the ideal positions preferred by pro- and anti-charter school interests. But in the District of Columbia, the innovativeness of the new law has largely been sustained, mainly because organized opposing interests largely failed to emerge.

Key Words: charter schools • politics • punctuated equilibrium • advocacy • policy reversion

Educational Policy, Vol. 21, No. 1, 185-214 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0895904806296903


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