Overview

In 2011, Bellwether Education Partners published “Location, Location, Location,” a paper that analyzed the finances of a large, high-performing charter school management organization, and compared how that network’s model would perform financially under cost and funding conditions in different states. This report provided a critical empirical lens on the debate about the long-term sustainability of CMO models, by demonstrating that a particular model’s financial viability varies considerably with state policy and funding context. It also clearly demonstrated the radical variation in state policy contexts and highlighted states that create both particularly favorable and particularly unfavorable funding climates for charter schools.