Seven

Despite federal initiatives encouraging the expansion of charter schools, there remains a limited understanding of the empirical relationship between state charter school laws and charter performance. In this study, I categorize state legislation across three dimensions – permissibility, autonomy, and accountability – and investigate each dimension’s statistical relationship with the number of schools as well as NAEP performance. Results suggest that a state’s legal environment may play a large and significant role in charter school students ’ academic outcomes. Permissibility and autonomy are associated with a greater number of charter schools, while higher accountability standards may restrict and reverse growth. Although greater autonomy has some positive correlation with academic outcomes, the negative correlations of increased permissibility and increased accountability with student outcomes are greater in magnitude. These findings suggest that policymakers may want to consider tightening permissive charter laws and overhauling current accountability frameworks while encouraging a reasonable degree of autonomy. Furthermore, expanding charter school programs through permissive laws may adversely affect academic outcomes. Accountability standards seem to restrict charter school growth without necessarily improving student performance. Audrye Wong received her bachelor’s degree in public and international affairs at Princeton University and is startin