Charters and School Choice SIG 142
Charters and School Choice SIG 142
 
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Welcome to AERA's Charters & School Choice SIG. Our SIG provides a nonpartisan, multidisciplinary forum for research and dialogue on charter schools and the full range of public and private school-choice policies and practices. We seek to build a community connecting research, policy, and practice.

This is a consequential moment for the field. Charter schools remain central to debates about educational opportunity, governance, innovation, accountability, and access. At the same time, the landscape is rapidly expanding to include education savings accounts (ESAs), microschools, scholarship granting organizations (SGOs), tax-credit scholarships, and a new federal scholarship tax credit scheduled to take effect in 2027. These developments raise urgent questions about access, implementation, institutional design, public finance, family decision-making, student outcomes, and the changing relationship between public and private education. 
Our SIG aims to lead these conversations. We welcome scholars and practitioners approaching these issues from different disciplines, theoretical traditions, methodological perspectives, and philosophical positions. We value quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, legal, historical, comparative, and policy-oriented research. We also welcome implementation studies, program evaluations, innovative pilot projects, research-practice partnerships, and work that challenges established assumptions.
Our goal is not to promote a single position. Instead, we aim to create an intellectually serious community where researchers can examine evidence, debate competing ideas, test claims, identify unanswered questions, and pursue collaborative projects. Healthy disagreement strengthens the field when it is grounded in rigorous inquiry, mutual respect, and a shared commitment to understanding how policies affect students, families, schools, educators, and communities.
The Charters & School Choice SIG emerged from the merger of the School Choice SIG and the Charter School Research & Evaluation SIG following two years of work led by Robert A. Fox and Penny Wohlstetter. Building on that foundation, we invite established scholars, early-career researchers, graduate students, policymakers, practitioners, evaluators, and research partners to help shape the SIG’s next chapter. The current leadership team includes Chair Charisse Gulosino, Program Chair Adam Kho, and Secretary/Treasurer Brian Beabout.
Upcoming SIG Initiatives
In 2027, we plan to offer three $500 Graduate Student Travel Awards, totaling $1,500. We also intend to petition AERA to establish Early Career and Dissertation Awards for 2028.
We are also planning three webinars:
  • December 2026: The federal scholarship tax credit and its approaching implementation in 2027
  • January 2027: The expansion of private-school-choice policies, including education savings accounts and scholarship-granting organizations
  • February 2027: Doctoral student research presentations, providing a forum for students to share dissertations, working papers, and emerging projects that were not included in our AERA SIG sessions
These initiatives are only a beginning. We want the SIG to become a year-round intellectual home where members can develop projects, form research teams, share emerging work, engage practitioners, mentor new scholars, and participate in substantive conversations about the direction of the field.
We invite you to join or renew your membership in the AERA Charters & School Choice SIG. We need your scholarship, experience, questions, and perspective. Whether your work supports, critiques, evaluates, or reimagines school choice policies, this community has a place for you.
Charisse Gulosino
Chair, AERA Charters & School Choice SIG