The Relationship Between Policy Talk and Implementation

Abstract

In this chapter I look at charter school implementation nationally using the 1999–2000 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). I focus on a key component of the policy talk related to charter school reform, accountability. As the analysis of the statements of legislative intent in chapter 1 illustrated, while many policymakers saw charter schools as a method of increasing accountability in public education, they rarely specified (1) who schools should be accountable to and (2) how schools should be held accountable (see also Bulkley, 2001; Fusarelli, 2001; Wells et al., 2002). I begin by first considering how researchers have understood charter school accountability, and how these conceptualizations of charter school accountability overlap with a framework for analyzing performance accountability.