An Institutional Theory Analysis of Charter Schools: Addressing Institutional Challenges to Scale

Huerta, Luis; Zuckerman, Andrew

doi:10.1080/01619560902973621

Cited by 33 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Education management organizations (EMOs) are generally for-profit companies, designed to provide educational services to schools in a manner that leverages economies of scale to yield fiscal profits for shareholders (National Charter School Research Project, 2007). As Huerta and Zuckerman (2009) As Huerta and Zuckerman (2009) …”

Section: Theory Of Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Charter Management Organizations

2012

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Policymakers have shown increasing interest in replicating high-quality education models as a way to improve chronically underperforming schools. Charter management organizations (CMOs) have been touted as one organizational model poised to be such a vehicle for reform. CMOs are nonprofit organizations that operate a network of charter schools with a common mission or instructional design and shared central office support. In this article, the authors describe the theory of action behind CMOs and their emergence onto the education reform scene, finding promising signs that, as a network of schools, CMOs have more leverage than individual charter schools, and yet more nimbleness than traditional school districts, to replicate "what works." Using data collected from a national study of 25 CMOs engaging in scale-up, the authors investigate the essential elements for CMO growth, identifying the influences of federal, state, and local policies, as well as internal organizational capacities, that either restrict or facilitate CMO expansion.

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Section: Theory Of Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Charter Management Organizations

2012

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“…which are independent of the success of their graduates. Accordingly, not only the function of a school within a society, but also the consequences of educational activities, procedures and structural properties established to produce these consequences must also be legitimated through the institutional environment (Huerta & Zuckerman, 2009;Meyer & Rowan, 2008). Moreover, legitimation is a social process; however, the proportion of society that must approve the organization or its practices is not clear.…”

Section: Institutional Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite schools' role of producing legitimacy for the general society, only a few of studies have to date examined the link between legitimacy management strategies used by administrators and school stakeholders' legitimacy perceptions regarding organizational practices (Huerta & Zuckerman, 2009;Mampaey & Zanoni, 2014). This study aims to address this issue by using the empirical approach, since legitimacy, as a generalized perception, can be empirically tested and only the empirical approach can avoid a tautological circle which often traps legitimacy debates (Dogan, 2009).…”

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confidence: 99%

School Administrators as Legitimation Agents: Linking Perceived Organizational Legitimacy and Legitimation Strategies

2018

EDUC SCI-THEOR PRACT

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Schools operate in an environment heavily influenced by institutional and political factors. While standardizing effects of strict legal regulations and the public education system impose certain structural and professional limitations on schools, political pressures from various interest groups may create gaps between rules and school practices. It can be suggested that school administrators can benefit from these gaps to legitimize school level practices. In this study, we examined the effects of proactive, protective and reactive legitimation strategies used by administrators on legitimacy perceptions of internal stakeholders. Using a prediction research design, the study was conducted with 365 administrators and 426 teachers working in 94 schools. The researchers developed a "Perceived Organizational Legitimacy Scale" and a "Legitimacy Management Strategies Scale" to gather data. Findings showed that proactive and protective strategies had positive effects on all types of legitimacy perceptions whereas reactive strategies had positive effects only on taken-for-grantedness. Moreover, reactive strategies mostly had negative effects on pragmatic legitimacy and comprehensibility, but no significant relationship was found between these strategies and moral legitimacy.

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“…(e.g.,McShane and Hatfield 2015;Renzulli et al 2015) forestall attempts to capture both isomorphism and differentiation in charter school identities(Huerta and Zuckerman 2009). I overcome this limitation through fine-grained, culturally embedded linguistic measures of how schools signal their identities and appeal to specific sociodemographic niches.…”

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confidence: 99%

Sorting schools: A computational analysis of charter school identities and stratification

Haber¹

2020

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Research shows that charter schools are more segregated by race and class than traditional public schools. I investigate an under-examined mechanism for this segregation: Charter schools project identities corresponding to parents’ race- and class-specific parenting styles and educational values. I use computational text analysis to detect the emphasis on inquiry-based learning in the websites of all charter schools operating in the 2015-16 school year. I then estimate mixed linear regression models to test the relationships between ideological emphasis and school- and district-level poverty and ethnicity. I thereby transcend methodological problems in scholarship on charter school identities by collecting contemporary, valid, population-wide data, as well as by blending text analysis with hypothesis testing. Findings suggest that charter school identities are both race- and class-specific, lending weight to arguments for further regulating charter school enrollments. This project contributes to literatures on school choice, educational stratification, and organizational identity.

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An Institutional Theory Analysis of Charter Schools: Addressing Institutional Challenges to Scale

Cited by 33 publications

References 24 publications

Charter Management Organizations

Charter Management Organizations

School Administrators as Legitimation Agents: Linking Perceived Organizational Legitimacy and Legitimation Strategies

Sorting schools: A computational analysis of charter school identities and stratification

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