School Board Privatization: A Case Study of NYC Charter Schools

This article examines the rise of charter schools in New York City through the lens of representation of educators on school governing boards. During its inception in the early 1990s, the charter school movement garnered support from progressives and conservatives alike. Albert Shanker, longtime head of the American Federation of Teachers, initially endorsed charter schools as engines for experimentation to be carried out by educators with fresh and potentially radical theories of pedagogy. While the charter school movement has pushed full steam ahead over the past three decades, the role of teachers in this expansion remains unclear. I use publicly available data from the New York State Education Department to identify 268 authorized charter schools for the 2020-21 academic school year. I record data on charter school board membership made available by the New York City Department of Education and State University of New York and then scrape the web (school websites, LinkedIn profiles, online CVs) for board members' current and prior professional occupations. Descriptive results suggest that school board members are overrepresented by financiers and business managers while current and past educators are less represented. The lack of teacher representation on charter school boards suggests that the charter school movement has not followed through on its initial promise to help professionalize teaching and enhance the role of educators in school governance.