Legislative Activities on Charter Schools: The Beginning of Policy Change

Despite the recent enthusiasm for charter schools as a policy alternative for improving student learning, studies indicate that they are not increasing student achievement over traditional public schools (Bettinger 2005; Crew & Anderson 2003). Nevertheless, legislative activity in the states suggests that charter schools as a policy alternative is gaining support on the public agenda. Agenda setting theory suggests that interest groups, state and citizen ideology, political context, policy entrepreneurs, focusing events and state resources influence the ability of issues to reach the institutional agenda (Baumgartner and Jones 1993; Kingdon 1995). This study uses panel corrected cross-sectional time series analysis to explore which of these factors are motivating increased interest in charter school legislative activities at the state level from 2003-2006. The number of charter school bills proposed in state legislatures is the dependent variable (National Council of State Legislatures).