Visioning Hope: Embracing Higher Education’s Role With Urban Public Charter Schools

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to reflect on the evolution of a partnership between a university and urban charter high school serving a predominately African American population. Because of the author's embeddedness both as the researcher and participant member, this research assumes the paradigm of autoethnography. Reflections on key components of this evolution provide implications for teacher education, particularly in regard to a call for engagement between urban charter schools and educator preparation programs, and a challenge to higher education to analyze existing perceptions of public charter schools within a wider institutional mission to prepare educators for all children.

Higher education and the marketization of compulsory schooling: english universities and academy sponsorship

“…In fact, only 13 states allow university authorizers and few HEIs have come forward (Lindstrom, 2014) with the proportion doing so declining between 2010 and 2015 (NACSA, 2016). This perhaps reflects the risks identified by a number of authors (see for example, (Basinger, 1999;Bergeron, 2015;Plucker et al, 2004) which can be summarised as:…”

“…Notwithstanding the new opportunities for university involvement in public schooling, the phenomenon of university involvement in privately run/publicly funded schools has been little researched. Despite US Charter Schools' longer history, there has been little research undertaken (Bergeron, 2015;Eckes, 2013) and a search of the British Education Index yielded no peer reviewed articles with this focus. This article seeks to make an original contribution to this limited literature.…”