Navigating Politically Muddy Waters: Charter Management Organizations and Their Efforts to Craft a Counternarrative

In the face of growing critiques, charter management organizations (CMOs) increasingly contend with criticism as they maintain their presence in districts, particularly with school board members who often serve as gatekeepers for charter authorization. Yet, little is known about how CMOs navigate these politically muddy waters in local settings. The localized political maneuvers of CMOs are the central focus of this case study, which demonstrates how CMOs in one city deployed strategic discourse to buffer anticipated critiques and assuage concerns though questions as to the equitable and democratic character of their actions and rhetoric remain.

Over the past decades, charter schools have become institutional fixtures of many school systems ([77]). Yet, their normalization has not been without controversy. Critics often cite the inconclusive research on charter effectiveness ([15]; [42]), the evidence of selective enrollment practices ([36]; [74]), and the budgetary challenges they pose to traditional public schools ([7]; [9]) in their opposition. Opponents also allude to the coalitions that have enabled charter proliferation, pointing to evidence that private interests have promoted charters to advance market-oriented educational approaches ([14]; [57]). The racialized dimensions of charter proliferation are also central in these critiques. Opponents point to the demographic mismatch between charter practitioners and the communities they serve ([75]) and the ways that deficit-laden characterizations of students of color have undergirded some charters' philosophies and programming ([24]; [29]).

While these critiques are articulated in broader debates, they are particularly acute in discussing charter management organizations (CMOs)—nonprofits that manage a network of charters in line with the organization's philosophy, school model, and branding. While policymakers and reformers have lauded CMOs as organizations that can effectively re-create charter schools, their prominence in the sector has made them susceptible to scrutiny—a scrutiny spurred by evidence of the sociopolitical dimensions of CMO expansion ([3]; [56]) and the use of problematic pedagogies in some CMO-affiliated schools ([25]; [40]; [61]).

With these growing critiques, CMO leaders inevitably contend with criticisms as they maintain their institutional presence, particularly with school board members who often serve as gatekeepers for charter authorization. Yet, little is known about how CMOs navigate these politically muddy waters. To date, scholarship on CMOs has tended to advance broad and often decontextualized assessments of their political behaviors. While instrumental to understanding CMOs, their microlevel political tactics—those deployed in communities where they operate and interact with local stakeholders—remain underexamined. Understanding how CMOs engage politically at the local level can advance insights into the equitable character of their political strategies and how they sustain their organizations in relation to communities and local values.

These political maneuvers are the focus of this investigation. This case study examines how CMO leaders in one city in Northern California seek to articulate their organizational import amid local sociopolitical dynamics. It does so through an examination of qualitative data sources that both illuminated the sociopolitical factors prevalent in the educational landscape and the discursive strategies CMOs use to engage school board members—local policymakers and community members who likely maintain a sensitivity to political dynamics and issues. This study finds that CMOs contended with discrete political and racialized dynamics in the local setting, which held implications for perceptions of CMO-affiliated schools. The discourse CMOs used conveyed their understanding of these dynamics and the need to craft a counternarrative that could buffer emerging critiques and align their organizations with local values and orientations. Though some may interpret the use of contextually responsive discourse as politically savvy, I argue that these maneuvers carry equitable and democratic implications, including the minimization of the concerns and perspectives of local citizens and the reification of color-evasive racial ideology.

This study contributes to the growing research on CMOs and their politics. This review provides a synopsis of the empirical base on these prominent actors, describing what is known about their historical rise, institutional features, and political and racialized practices.

In the earliest years of the movement, many types of charters populated the landscape, including education alternatives created by educators and local organizations and those that were entrepreneur-initiated ([72]). While diverse and independent charters remained, corporate-like charters gained momentum in the mid-1990s, laying the foundation for CMOs to emerge. Proponents suggested that corporate-like charters could introduce market principles into school systems, propelling the decades-old ideas of [22] and other economists ([17]; [20]) that argued that schools were higher-quality and more responsive when they faced competition and operated outside the constraints of democratic control. With these aims, early market-oriented charters where primarily supported by for-profit companies ([59]), also called educational management organizations (EMOs), that sustained networks of charters by lending capacity and resources, which could alleviate challenges in managing newly acquired autonomies ([21]). Yet, growing skepticism around EMOs and their poor performance led many to promote CMOs as alternatives ([77]).

CMOs share structural features and orientations with their for-profit predecessors without having to attend to shareholder demands with their nonprofit status ([21]). CMOs similarly maintain central offices that support school replication and sustainability and have dedicated staff that secure facilities, authorization, and additional funding. CMOs also employ a similar theory of action, which holds that a networked approach—rather than standalone or independent operations—can generate greater capacity and effectiveness within and among charter schools and ultimately drive systemic change through competitive processes ([26]). Finally, while CMO-affiliated schools receive public dollars, they maintain autonomies that allow them to operate without adhering to select policies beyond those associated with accountability and antidiscrimination mandates. Thus, while shedding the for-profit stigma, CMOs have continued to facilitate the transfer of private-sector practices into schools and educational systems ([59]). With their more favorable status, CMOs have proliferated with the support of legislation, media attention, and federal and private investment ([51]; [59]). As almost 50 percent of charters across the U.S. have come under the purview of a management organization, CMOs operate the majority, serving over 70 percent of students in managed schools ([44]).

With their growing presence, scholars have investigated CMOs' institutional features. Researchers have shown that while CMOs share a theory of change, their networks are diverse. For example, CMOs vary in the number of schools they support. Some are small or medium networks that support between three or nine schools while others are extra-large, like the Knowledge is Power Program and IDEA Public Schools, and lend their capacity to the operation of 30 or more sites ([44]). CMOs also vary in geographic span, with some maintaining schools in a given city or state, such as Success Academy in New York City or Yes Prep in Texas, while others (e.g., Uncommon Schools, Rocketship Education) maintain a multistate presence ([43]). Finally, though CMOs typically offer more instructional time and curricular autonomy ([23]), they re-create different programmatic models. CMOs range from those that focus on college preparation or inquiry-based learning to more controversial approaches—often called "no excuses" models—that emphasize strict discipline and regimentation ([24]).

While diverse in these aspects, researchers have shown that CMOs have common demographic characteristics. Notably, studies have shown that CMOs are disproportionately situated and often operate the market share of charters in urban areas ([37]) and serve a greater number of low-income, Black and Latinx students when compared to their host districts ([23]). This pattern is complicated by the demographic mismatches between students and practitioners in many CMO schools. While charters have higher proportions of teachers of color when compared to their host districts nationwide, those in urban settings with a large concentration of CMOs, like Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New Orleans, have representation gaps that are double or more of those in local district schools ([13]; [75]). With these findings, these scholars suggest that differences in demography may affect the cultural responsiveness of CMO schools and ultimately exacerbate racialized power differentials.

As scholars have elucidated CMOs' institutional features, others have investigated their political dimensions. Notably, scholars have demonstrated that CMO growth has been bolstered by financial networks, which often demand growth and brand fidelity as a parameter for investment ([2]; [76]) even in the face of community resistance ([57]). Studies have shed particular light on the role of venture philanthropy, delineating how CMOs have not only benefitted fiscally from philanthropic investment but also politically as this donor base leverages social and professional networks to agitate for favorable policies ([52]; [56]; [62]; [66]). With the sector's diversity, CMOs necessarily hold differential ties to corporate or philanthropic groups, though scholars have noted that larger CMOs have deep connections to corporations, foundations, and other reform networks ([35]; [56]). Despite this variability, evidence suggests that private enterprise has lent key fiscal and political resources to support CMO expansion—a pattern that has also been found among global networks who seek to restructure school systems in the likeness of the market through privatization and the creation of quasi-markets ([4]; [71]).

A subset of CMO research has also focused on the racial politics that have circumscribed their proliferation. Scholars have typically explored how nondominant racial groups are included or excluded from their political processes. For example, [11] and [19] demonstrated how charter reformers in New Orleans—where CMOs operate the majority of charters—dispossessed the city's Black community from power and redistributed resources to mostly white, elite outsiders to rebuild the city and its schools after Hurricane Katrina. Others, too, have highlighted the racialized gatekeeping practices of charter authorizing bodies. In a study of authorization in Louisiana, researchers found that authorizers engaged in colorblind assessments of charter petitions, yielding a paucity of petitions granted to community-based and Black-led schools in favor of those that reified marketized, racialized logics, which are often espoused by prominent CMOs ([30]). A recent study found similar findings in comparing authorization processes and application outcomes among states with stricter or more lenient regulation, noting how greater regulatory measures negatively affected Black and Latinx applicants as well as those from independent charters ([34]).

Other scholars have also elucidated the racialized messages that CMOs deploy in political efforts. For instance, some studies have examined how equity has been conceptualized in the rhetoric of charter and CMO advocates, often interrogating the individualistic conceptualization of empowerment embedded in their discourse and its implications for nondominant racial groups ([31]; [58]). Others, too, have investigated the racial messaging that CMOs use to describe their work in marketing materials, demonstrating how CMOs can pathologize communities of color and advance paternalistic tropes as they seek to demonstrate their impact for general audiences via web-based platforms ([32]).

Taken collectively, studies of CMO politics point to key strategies these organizations use to secure support while surfacing questions as to the equitable and democratic character of their tactics. While this scholarship advances our knowledge, it has tended to advance sector-level assessments of their behaviors, often leaving CMOs' microlevel political behaviors and their interplay with sociopolitical climates underexamined. These localized political dynamics are the focus of this study. This investigation examines the tactics CMOs use to engage elected school board members—local policymakers and community members who typically determine if CMOs can sustain their schools through charter authorization processes. Examining how CMOs secure board support can provide insights into the localized political strategies they use to navigate settings and how they may impede or enhance equity advancement.

To investigate CMOs, this study uses an interdisciplinary framework that synthesizes tenets from political science and sociology. This approach enables an analysis of the tactics used to secure board member support as part of a localized coalition-building process, shedding light on the strategies that CMO leaders use to secure the conditions for reform and more comprehensively assessing how their tactics are influenced by place, history, and race.

Early studies in political science typically examined macrolevel politics, which focused on the state, the shifting composition of leadership and resources, and changes in constitutionally guaranteed practices ([18]; [45]). Over time, scholars questioned the explanatory power of macrolevel analyses in understanding urban politics and pointed to the importance of localized interactions and power exchanges that were central to political inquiry ([63]). In doing so, these scholars pushed the discipline to expand its understanding of what constitutes politics and where they occur.

Urban regime theory is one framework that emerged in this disciplinary evolution. At its foundation, the theory suggests that local politics be analyzed through the lens of coalitions. It posits that leaders must secure relatively stable arrangements (i.e., coalitions) with various actors to cultivate the resources and conditions needed to advance reform ([64]). Conceptualizing governance in this way enables an analysis of coalition actors and the resources they contribute to a policy effort. [60] pivotal investigation of Chicago's educational politics illustrated this conceptual approach, revealing how coalition composition was greatly determined by the importance of actors' resources to the reform's objectives. Of the many coalitions she identified, "entrepreneurial regimes," or the alliances necessary to restructure schools in the market's image, is of particular relevance to this study. She found that in addition to business elites and families, political allies were essential to sustaining entrepreneurial regimes because of the legitimacy they afforded and the resources they provided to secure a deregulated policy context. Given the power that political allies like school board members have in creating in the conditions that support market-oriented reforms—coupled with growing research denoting how sociopolitical forces can affect school board members' understanding and orientations toward charters ([53]; [73])—this study puts a spotlight on how CMO leaders engage and seek to persuade this stakeholder group.

In addition to elucidating coalition actors, urban regime theory attends to the conditions and interactions that surround reform efforts. For example, regime scholars examine instances of conflict that arise in coalition building, including changes in the sociopolitical environment and fluctuating support and opposition, to investigate how leaders manage challenges to maintain their initiatives ([64]). In addition, regime theory considers the impact of local histories on coalitions and reform ([28]; [64]). [60] explains that regime theory:

[A]ssumes that every city has a historically contingent set of institutional structures, resource inequalities, group interests, and political alliances that explain variations in the broader patterns of economic, cultural, and social forces at work in the region, the nation, and the international context. Such local variations account for differences in the ways that reform is manifested. (pp. 842)

As Shipps' explanation suggests, regime theorists seek to understand local histories, since they inform how alliances evolve and how willing stakeholders will be to support a given reform. To illustrate, in cities like Philadelphia and Newark, state politicians have intervened in local reforms, generating conflict with local leaders and affecting how reformers engage in coalition-building efforts ([10]; [12]). With its sensitivity to context, regime theory considers how leaders secure cooperation from actors who may hold distinct values and experiences in local settings. To this end, this theory allows researchers to capture the engagement strategies that leaders use to secure support. In this study, I use these regime tenets to examine the strategies CMO leaders employ to engage school members and consider how local histories influence the messages they elevate in the pursuit of political support.

Some regime scholars have interrogated the role of race in coalition building ([28]; [48]; [64]). For example, scholars have demonstrated how interracial distrust, typically resulting from decades-long tensions, affects the receptiveness of stakeholders of color to proposed reforms ([65]; [67]). Others, too, have considered how the interests of marginalized racial groups are foregrounded or subsumed in reform outreach. [28] explored this phenomenon by examining how mayors in four cities sought to advance education reforms that were intended to further opportunities for low-income minoritized groups. They found that leaders strategically considered racial group interest as they garnered support for their initiatives but were often reluctant to elevate the priorities of communities of color for fear that this could stoke anxiety among white, wealthy elites. In this study, I investigate if or how these race-related, coalition-building dynamics are present in the strategies that CMO leaders use to secure board member support, with an analytic eye to their interplay with local and racialized climates and histories.

While regime scholars have exposed how race can affect coalitions in these ways, some suggest that their racial analyses remain limited. [33] articulated this critique by noting how regime scholars have focused on "the behaviors or attitudes of racially identified political actors" (p. 20) without attending to other significant factors, including political discourses, that make race a power relationship. To address this limitation, I synthesize regime concepts with sociological research on policy networks and the sociology of race ([47]) to more comprehensively grasp how discourse and its racial subtexts are mobilized in CMO efforts.

Researchers have demonstrated that leaders craft messages around populations to legitimate their reforms and to appeal to disparate audiences ([38]; [54]). Studies of policy networks advancing market reforms have illustrated this in their investigations of the exchanges that leaders use to spread their proposed policies in coordinated global and national alliances ([5]; [50]). Specifically, scholars have demonstrated how policy network leaders craft resonant messages with appeals to market logics and meritocracy to convince actors to support their proposals in ways that presumably align with their values and interests ([4]; [6]; [70]). While some may dismiss these tactics as politically savvy, these discursive practices have, at times, had problematic underpinnings, particularly as leaders have used racist and other discriminatory appeals to convince audiences of their import and potential ([27]; [55]). Thus, this study considers if and how messages CMOs deploy in board outreach carry racial subtexts that can exacerbate inequitable power dynamics.

Understanding the racial subtexts conveyed in coalition building is particularly relevant given the rise of color-evasiveness—the ideology characterized by the avoidance of explicit racial references in policy and language ([1]). In an effort to minimize the salience and attention to race-based inequities in U.S. systems, this ideology has begotten changes in discourse, which include the increasing use of euphemisms (e.g., low-income, urban) or imagery to allude to racial groups ([8]; [69]). While changes in word choice and syntax may appear benign, those espousing color-evasive discourse often articulate harmful narratives that reify racial hierarchies in the midst of this language ([8]). For instance, scholars have demonstrated how many who espouse color-evasive discourse lay implicit blame for disadvantage with those in marginalized positions—either by naturalizing patterns of inequity by omitting references to the structural forces that create them or by elevating "beating-the-odds" narratives to suggest that any individual can succeed. Overall, color-evasiveness has obscured the ways race is discussed and acknowledged, making it important to surface the nuanced ways that characterizations of racial groups may be circulated. In this study, I examined the discursive and racial appeals that CMO leaders used to engage school board members and their racial subtexts to understand how discourse is deployed to maintain their institutional positions in local settings.

This study answered the following questions: 1) What are the salient sociopolitical factors with which CMOs contend in maintaining their organizations?; 2) What persuasive strategies and messages do CMOs employ to garner support from school board members? and 3) How, if at all, do their tactics respond to political and racial climates and histories?

To answer these questions, this research followed a case study design ([78]), which enables researchers to investigate real-life phenomenon within its context ([78]). Case studies allow for an examination of process, which often requires an analysis of multiple data sources over which a researcher has little or no control ([78]). With its sensitivity to context and its ability to capture multiple processes, case studies are the preferred method for regime theorists who explore coalitions and reform dynamics within urban areas ([45]). Given this study's focus on how CMO leaders navigate and respond to sociopolitical dynamics, a case study approach is an ideal research design, as it allowed me to gain a holistic understanding of the context and its interplay with CMO political tactics.

I conducted research on the CMOs operating in one mid-sized city[5] in Northern California. The city was selected for examination as it represents an exemplar case ([49]) that can generate descriptive and theoretical insights into education politics and policymaker engagement. It has a storied history of community activism intended to mitigate against socioeconomic shifts that have been acutely felt along race and class lines, thus providing insights into the racial and political dynamics explored in this study. In addition to city politics, the urban setting is charter rich. Charter enrollment has grown exponentially in the city over the past two decades, with charters serving over 35 percent of the city's school-aged youth. CMOs operate the market share (i.e., 60 percent) of the city's charters, making them prominent institutional actors in the local landscape. With these features, the city represents an exemplar case, as it can illuminate the dynamics of engagement that may occur amid an active political environment and the onset of CMO reform.

The ten CMOs operating in this context—all of which were included in this study—also represent an exemplar case, as the population shares significant features identified in CMO research. First, like the CMO sector writ large, the city's CMOs overwhelmingly served low-income students of color, with over 80 percent of their students qualifying for free and reduced lunch and over 90 percent identifying as Black, Latinx, or Asian. (See Table 1.) Their demographic composition also aligned with another trend in the research base: the predominance of white practitioners. To illustrate, of the 63 CMO administrators, over half identified as white, with African-American leaders representing the second largest group at about 20 percent. Finally, the city's CMOs were also diverse organizations, reflecting the institutional variation identified in research studies. Not only did the organizations range in programmatic vision (i.e., "no excuses" models, deeper learning), they also varied in size and geographic reach. The CMO population was primarily composed of small or medium-sized charter networks that exclusively operated schools in the city and/or its surrounding counties. Six of the ten organizations were founded in the urban locale, and five of these organizations continued to exclusively operate schools within the city boundaries. Two of the organizations maintained a national presence and operated schools in multiple states or across the various regions of California.

Graph

Table 1. An Overview of the City's CMO Population (2016-2017).

1 *Enrollment Abbreviation Key: FRL = Free & Reduced Lunch; AA = African American; L = Latinx; A = Asian; W = White; ELL = English learner

Overall, several factors suggest that the city and the focal CMO population represent exemplar cases. With this, this study can generate insights for the field and yield analytic generalizations ([78]) that can help scholars further investigate CMOs' localized political tactics and their interplay with sociopolitical climates and dynamics.

This research used a subset of data from a larger, individually executed study that was conducted from 2015 to 2017, which examined CMOs' racial politics and compared their stakeholder engagement practices. It drew upon multiple data sources including interviews that were conducted in two phases. The first were 38 interviews with individuals who were positioned differently within the city's educational and sociopolitical landscape, including charter advocates (e.g., philanthropists, nonprofit leaders), district and school personnel, union officials, and community members. These semi-structured interviews attended to the respondent's experiences and perspectives on the city's education reform efforts, which contributed to the study's discussion of the city's local dynamics and politics. Participants were identified via snowball strategy to secure information-rich sources ([41]). Fifteen semi-structured interviews were then conducted with one or two representatives from each CMO, who were purposively identified ([49]) because of the organizational roles. These interviews garnered their assessments of the local political culture and the general strategies they used to engage stakeholders to manage or grow their organizations. Interviews ranged from 45-90 min in length and were audio-recorded for transcription.

Interviews with CMO leaders pointed to additional data sources and forums that were used in this study to examine the contours of board member engagement. Specifically, CMO leaders indicated that charter petition hearings were important arenas for board outreach. With this, this study drew upon a total of 47 organizational documents generated for school board members (e.g., charter petitions, PowerPoint slides), which included documents from each CMO, to examine their messages and tactics when engaging these stakeholders. In addition, I composed low-inference field notes based on 55 hours of observations at charter hearings at school board sessions to directly observe CMO outreach.

To analyze the data, I engaged in a multi-step qualitative coding process. I first analyzed interviews, using hybrid coding ([41]) to understand the local context and its sociopolitical and educational dynamics. Deductive codes deriving from urban regime theory (e.g., local history, interracial dynamics, engagement strategies) were applied, and inductive codes related to salient local factors (e.g., local activism, state takeover, distrust of outsiders) were generated during an initial review. All codes were then applied during a second round of interview coding to increase the precision of code applications.

To understand the persuasive tactics and messaging patterns in CMO outreach, I leveraged the tools of critical discourse analysis (CDA) to analyze board-facing documents and field notes. CDA allows researchers to analyze microlevel exchanges or texts as well as assess the overall messages constructed in their messaging to elucidate the connections between discursive exchanges and broader societal factors ([68]). To do this, I again engaged in hybrid coding of these additional data sources. Deductive codes included those derived from color-evasive discourse patterns, such as deracialized euphemisms (e.g., urban, underserved, low-income) and the visual presence of racial groups. I also generated inductive codes related to CMOs' additional discursive tropes (e.g., explicit racial references, diversity, restorative justice, partnership, community-based) that frequently emerged in the data. All codes were then applied during a second round of document and field note coding to increase the reliability of code applications.

Since an individually executed study can affect a study's internal and external validity and the perceived trustworthiness of its findings ([46]), I took additional steps to increase intra-rater reliability as I coded the study's data. To counteract potential challenges, I minimized inconsistency in code applications and the analytic drift that may occur by check coding throughout the analysis process ([41]). Initially, this process entailed coding the first dozen pages of select data sources and re-coding a clean version of the same data a few days later to assess internal consistency. About two-thirds of the way through data analysis, I reexamined data coded early in the analytic process to ensure that I was applying codes in a consistent manner.

As a final analytic step, I created three data matrices to surface key patterns. One matrix focused on the city's sociopolitical context, wherein I organized and reduced data into cells to note both convergent and deviating themes in local culture, characteristics, and political issues. I followed a similar pattern in creating a matrix for CMO engagement tactics, where I delineated themes in CMO board outreach. The final data display was a descriptive conceptually-clustered matrix ([41]) to consider CMO outreach patterns and their interplay with salient local dynamics and culture. I first identified findings by using counts to check for representativeness ([41]), noting the number of instances across the data supporting a pattern and the proportion of convergent to deviating information. In drawing conclusions, I considered something a finding if there was more convergent than deviating evidence and if the finding triangulated across data sources.

Data suggests that CMOs engaged school board members in a locale characterized by distinct political and racial dynamics with which CMOs contended. These include the city's activist legacy, its general distrust of outsiders, and sentiments surrounding the marginalization of the city's Black community from education reform benefits. After describing these salient local factors and how they affected local perceptions of charters, I delineate the persuasive messages and discursive subtexts that CMOs used to convince school board members of their organizational import.

Activist Past and Present. Interviewees frequently alluded to the city's role in the Civil Rights Movement to describe the political culture and its implications for education. For example, a former city official stated, "People are conscious, they have a history. You can't find anybody here who doesn't know about the history of the Civil Rights Movement that was founded here. They know people have a right to be engaged." Similarly, a community organizer in a historically Black neighborhood described how the legacy of social activism generated an expectation for community involvement: "I think it really comes down to the civil rights and protest movements ...You'll find that there is this intense feeling of ownership around the streets." In these statements, the stakeholders suggested that the city' activist legacy and culture generated an environment in which citizens remained socially conscious and demanded a voice in governance.

Several interviewees described the impact of the city's activist culture on education, often noting the community's aversion to top-down decision-making. For instance, a community organizer critiqued the district superintendent for his orientation to policy change: "He thinks there's a one-size-fits-all. Here, you can't ever come around like that because of our history with civil rights...People are used to getting up and being heard." A school board member shared a similar assessment of the superintendent's efforts: "The superintendent didn't think that he needed to talk to the community. He learned fast that he could not do those kinds of things here." Through these statements, the interviewees described how community input and engagement—including on educational matters—was a local expectation that grew out of the city's activist culture and legacy.

Distrust of Outsiders. Interviewees also discussed the general distrust of outsiders many in the city maintained as a salient political factor in the landscape. Individuals pointed to the almost decade-long state takeover of the district as the precipitating reform that cultivated this widely held sentiment. While some cited improved achievement data and the influx of reform-minded individuals into the district as evidence of the era's positive impact, others described a more negative legacy. Some discussed its impact on civic engagement. A school board member stated, "Activism dissipated because the elected school board had no power. What's the point of being mobilized when the school board doesn't have any impact on the decisions made in the district?" Another school board member said that state administration generated a "major trauma" that not only decreased community engagement but also resulted in a "history of mistrust about how the city's been governed." Echoing these sentiments, an education reformer explained: "It was a more authoritarian system that shaped perceptions about outsiders coming in doing unto us." Overall, stakeholders noted how state receivership fostered a distrust of outsiders while temporarily stunting community engagement.

Disproportionate Reform Benefits. Other education reforms enacted during state receivership generated a lasting impact on local sentiments, particularly since they had disproportionate effects on the city's most marginalized racial groups. Prominent and often controversial among these was the creation of small schools, which had been concentrated in Latinx neighborhoods. A community organizer in a historically Black neighborhood acknowledged that the educational benefits fueled by small schools had not been equally felt: "The reform was heavy in Latino communities, but it didn't touch the traditionally Black communities." A CMO senior leader described the history of the city's small schools to explain this imbalance. She explained that Community Alliance, a local organization, had mobilized small schools in an area where many Latinx families resided, which in turn, exacerbated the "perception that African-American families' needs weren't being met." Overall, interviewees suggested that keyreforms instituted under state administration had disproportionately benefited the city's Latinx base and thus fueled the racialized critique that local educational efforts had tended to neglect the Black community.

Charters as Continuing an Inequitable Legacy? In discussing the salient sociopolitical dynamics in the city, interviewees acknowledged that many perceived local charters as perpetuating inequitable and undemocratic tendencies of earlier reforms. Some held this sentiment because of their proliferation under state administration. While charters had been in the city since the 1990s, a former superintendent stated that the state takeover coincided with a "flood of charter schools," with about 30 opening their doors during this period. Beyond a temporal association, interviewees also mentioned the low number of Black students in charters to illustrate how they had perpetuated interracial inequities. While many cited early charter recruitment in Latinx neighborhoods as a contributing factor to low Black student enrollment, others attributed this phenomenon to strategy. A leader of an independent charter with a large Black student population stated, "I think frankly, there's some strategy involved...I think some of the bigger operators, especially, have shied away from going more heavily into areas that have an African-American population because they are afraid they are not going to be successful." A CEO of a leadership development nonprofit made a similar argument, stating: "Because Black children have been difficult to reach, the charter sector has forsaken them because they can't operate without proof points."

With the minimal presence of Black students in local charters, interviewees noted that Black residents were generally distrustful of charters and CMOs—a sentiment exacerbated by their predominantly white leadership. A community organizer explained, "There's just mistrust in charters because they are seen as white-ran...It's almost another attempt at oppression for you to bring a school into my community, and we didn't ask for it." Interviewees also suggested that charters' white leadership fueled the perception of them as culturally unresponsive environments. For example, a district official stated that charters created unwelcoming settings for Black families, particularly since they "want to see some people who are teaching their kids who look like them. They want to see some cultural acknowledgement." A founder of a community-based organization shared similar sentiments:

It's not a culturally competent space. It's not open to the depth of dialogue that's necessary to hash out what you have to do to serve children of color in the way they deserve to be served and honors their heritage, their people, and their very being.

Through their comments, these stakeholders suggested that the underrepresentation of Black practitioners in charters fostered the perception of them as culturally unresponsive and exclusionary spaces, particularly among Black residents. Yet, some noted that this sentiment was not equally held among Latinx residents. An organizer offered one explanation:

Many African-American parents were born and raised here and went to the local public schools. Latino parents don't have that connection with local schools, so they don't mind sending kids to charter schools as long as they get what they need.

The executive director of the CMO B7 shared a similar explanation, noting that many Latinx residents were recent immigrants that didn't carry "the inherent mistrust" that the Black community understandably held after being underserved by charters and other reform waves.

In addition to perceptions of charters as culturally unresponsive spaces, interviewees noted that many residents perceived them as community outsiders. An independent charter leader articulated this sentiment as he contemplated if the city's charters could be characterized as "homegrown" or community-based:

To me, homegrown means that you can walk through my hood at night, walk up to people, and talk to them. I don't know how many CMO leaders could do that. What I do know is, is that when I look at who they are and aren't serving, I have a lot of questions. Homegrown people find out who needs the most and then actively recruits them.

Overall, evidence suggests that charters faced criticisms related to their low numbers of Black students, their culturally responsive orientation, and their community rootedness. In seeking board member support, CMO leaders would contend with these critiques.

In this context, CMOs emphasized particular discursive themes in engaging school board members during their petition hearings. Some key messages attended to details required of charter applications by California's Education Code (Charter School Act, 1992), including descriptions of a school's mission, goals, and programming. In one representative example, a B5 leader stated, "Our mission is to provide a high-quality education that equips students to thrive in school, career, and community by fueling their capacity to transform their lives and communities, becoming 21st century leaders in the global economy." The B5 spokesperson then described the CMO's school model, which included cradle-to-career supports and blended learning, to illustrate how their pedagogy brought their stated mission to life and followed these descriptions with performance data to demonstrate program effectiveness. Each CMO in this study included these ideas in their hearings and followed a similar narrative arc when beginning their presentations.

As CMOs elevated details that conformed with legislative mandates, they also used discursive strategies throughout their presentations that seemingly acknowledged and attended to critiques waged at charters in the local landscape. The primary messages included attention to racial equity, their cultivation of holistic learning settings, and their connections with the local community. Each of these is discussed in turn below, with an eye to how race was invoked in the process.

Attention to Racial Equity. Each CMO implicitly and explicitly indicated how their schools worked to advance equity for minoritized racial groups as a central message in their board member engagement. On one level, this message was consistently conveyed through visual imagery in charter hearing presentations. Of the 16 PowerPoints analyzed, 14 contained prominently displayed images of students or parents of color on one or more slides. Visual racial representation was also accomplished through student and parent testimonials during presentations or public comment, which was a strategy deployed in each of the 16 observed presentations. Thus, as CMO leaders provided the legislatively mandated overviews of their school program, culture, and impact during hearings, visual racial cues allowed them to discuss their work as in service of minoritized groups even when racial groups remained unnamed.

In addition to this visual racial innuendo, CMO leaders explicitly discussed how their schools worked to support communities of color in some instances. For example, in their slide presentations, CMOs made a total of 89 references to specific racial groups (e.g., Black, Latinx), communities of color, or "minorities." Sixty-six percent of these references were made in describing their student populations while an additional 16 percent were made in describing academic performance by subgroups. These demographic and outcome-related references helped CMO leaders emphasize that their schools primarily served students of color and when applicable, pointed to the academic progress they had supported.

On fewer occasions, CMOs made explicit racial references to underscore the educational interventions needed in communities, which they suggested their schools have or could provide. For instance, a B7 leader stated the following during a charter hearing:

Since 2002, the number of African-American men killed on our city streets has nearly matched the number who graduated from high school. Seven hundred eight-seven Black boys and men in this city were victims of homicide. During that same time, just 802 graduated ready to attend the state university.

In this example, the B7 leader used explicit racial language (i.e., Black males) and tied race to the concepts of crime, life expectancy, and grim educational prospects to suggest the need for educational alternatives that could mitigate this statistical pattern. In another example, leaders at B4 named the community's racial composition and subsequently described its high levels of poverty, incarceration, gang activity, and television consumption—features depicted in a collage that projected during the proceeding—to delineate the circumstances communities faced and the interventions their school could facilitate. In these instances, CMOs made explicit references to race as they articulated an argument for their organizations that simultaneously suggested their awareness of racial inequities.

Responsive School Environments. In addition to conveying their attention to racial equity in engaging board members, CMOs characterized their schools as responsive learning environments that attended to students' holistic well-being. Seven of the ten CMOs explicitly did so by describing their work as "serving the whole child." For example, the B10 school leader stated, "We teach the whole child. We are implementing social-emotional learning." Others alluded to specific socioemotional supports, including representatives from B4 who described how its behavior toolkit gave "children tools to resolve problems and manage emotions." Notably, these descriptions were presented alongside the visual racial references characteristic of board member engagement, thus underscoring how these holistic approaches worked in the service of minoritized racial groups.

CMOs also made several references to restorative justice in board engagement as part of their efforts to characterize their schools as whole child environments. Like many urban districts, restorative justice was promoted as a management approach in response to disproportionate and exclusionary discipline experienced by Black, Latinx, and Indigenous youth in local schools. Within this context, five CMOs discussed their adoption of restorative practices. For instance, during B10's hearing, the dean of culture stated that B10 staff had "combined high expectations with nurturing support through character development, social and emotional learning, and restorative justice practices." In another example, the B5 principal stated the following in discussing how the CMO served its Black students: "In the past couple of years, we have adopted restorative justice with our students, staff, and families so that everyone is involved in collective decision making." Given the local context, allusions to restorative justice likely indexed race for board members while suggesting that CMOs had adoptedthis locally embraced and culturally responsive whole child practice.

In fewer instances, CMO leaders discussed their diversification efforts to convey their commitment to creating responsive environments. To illustrate, a staff member at B10 offered this race-explicit description of the school's faculty: "We have a diversified staff. It's a staff that reflects the students of this city. This enables us to better serve all our students." In another example, board members questioned those at B5 on their lack of student and teacher diversity. In response, a B5 leader stated that the organization "had hired community organizers who are going to focus on the African American community" while calling attention to progress B5 had made in hiring diverse leaders. In these comments, CMO leaders sought to convey their awareness of the importance of diversity in nurturing responsive learning environments and the efforts they had underway to make this a reality.

Community Connections. While racial equity and holistic learning environments were primary themes in CMO discourse, some leaders also emphasized their community connections in board outreach. One way CMOs did this was by describing their collaborations. For example, five CMOs highlighted partnerships with external organizations, other charters, or the district to demonstrate how they worked with others in the educational ecosystem. In one representative example, B4's CEO described the CMO's partnerships with community-based organizations and health clinics to show how the organization worked "with the community in partnership to make a quality preK-12 pipeline."

Characterizations of CMOs as community-based organizations also accompanied their claims of maintaining local connections. For instance, in one public hearing for a new charter, a B2 leader argued, "We are local...We are not a faceless, huge corporation. We are a local group growing." Similarly, B4 presented themselves as a community organization in their hearing by stating that they held "deep existing relationships with community partners and an established reputation in the neighborhood." Overall, half of the CMOs discursively elevated their local connections in board outreach, often emphasizing how they worked with the community to improve outcomes and student well-being.

This study illustrates how CMOs persisted in building support for their organization in a contentious urban context. Guided by tenets of urban regime theory, it elucidated the city's distinct political and racial dynamics, including its activist culture, distrust of outsiders, and selective attentiveness to some racial groups, that circumscribed perceptions of CMOs.

With the framework's integration of sociological concepts, this investigation also shed light on the tactics CMOs used to secure support from school board members—political authorities who were gatekeepers for charter authorization and who themselves were immersed community members—amid these sociopolitical dynamics.

Findings suggest that the focal CMOs used discourse that sought to craft a counternarrative that would align with local values and buffer anticipated critiques. CMOs explicitly and implicitly emphasized that they advanced racial equity—a widely held value in the city with its history of activism and commitments to social justice. To do this, CMOs often grounded their work in their commitment to and record of improving outcomes for students of color. They also proactively and reactively addressed racialized critiques of their practices, at times noting how their diversification efforts could mitigate the racial imbalances among their teachers and students. Discursive attention to restorative justice and other whole-child approaches also aimed to elevate their racial equity orientation while depicting CMO-affiliated schools as culturally responsive. While these characterizations may have indeed captured CMO efforts, they may also be understood as attempts to address prominent, racialized critiques regarding their culturally unresponsive character and the lack of diversity at their schools. Finally, some CMO representatives emphasized their local connections and collaborative orientations. With the city's history and skepticism of interlopers, this tactic may be understood as a way that CMOs sought to counteract the perception of their organizations as outsiders, even though some local stakeholders perceived them to be. Furthermore, this characterization harkened to the early years of the charter movement and the often-homegrown character of charters—a move that distanced CMOs from the powerful networks that have bolstered their proliferation.

Overall, rather than relying on the presentation of legislatively mandated details or other tactics that illustrated their impact and organizational features, CMOs articulated additional messages that conveyed their understanding of the city's political and racial dynamics. With this, they seemingly sought to re-frame the narratives surrounding their schools through language that would likely resonate with school board members—discourse that reflected local values and political leanings to convey their effectiveness, legitimacy, and community membership. While the precise impact of these tactics on board perceptions was beyond this study's scope, they can be broadly interpreted as successful, as 27 of the 29 charter petitions presented to the school board during the study's duration were approved,[6] thus allowing the majority of CMOs to operate despite any hesitations board members may have held.

Though some may interpret the use of political tactics that are responsive to local sentiments and contexts as politically savvy, these maneuvers have equitable and democratic implications. As CMOs portrayed themselves as value-aligned, some of their characterizations (e.g., community-based) were contested, thus minimizing the concerns of some local citizens. Moreover, some CMO discourse subtly derogated the communities of color they served—particularly as they named race alongside statistics related to crime and poverty to justify educational intervention. While these statistics and community depictions may capture some of the realities that minoritized groups face in the wake of centuries of systemic oppression, they nonetheless tap into public imaginaries of urban spaces as those characterized by criminality, damage, and depravity ([39]). Circulating deficit-laden characterizations of people of color like these in any context reifies negative understandings of minoritized groups, which affects how the U.S. grapples with race collectively. In addition, this racial discourse naturalizes lines of inequity, reifying color-evasiveness and leaving the root causes of oppression under-acknowledged. With these dimensions, this investigation begets questions as to if discourse may operate as rhetorical cover—language that assuages critiques while deflecting nuanced discussions as to if substantive change has been advanced.

In addition to these insights, this study enhances the empirical base on CMOs with its attention to localized political processes, suggesting how their political behaviors may be replicated or adapted in communities. Evidence suggests that CMOs may discursively distance themselves from the powerful networks that have bolstered the sector to align with local preferences and culture. While the city's CMOs likely held variable connections to reform coalitions, this tactic could be viewed by some as opportunistic in light of the documented connections between these organizations and powerful corporate and reformist networks. Moreover, findings suggest that CMOs used racialized rhetoric in their localized outreach to build the case for their institutions. While their discourse, at times, contained positive connotations related to racial equity, the CMOs selectively and strategically used deficit-laden characterizations of minoritized groups, which conforms with empirical patterns in the literature. Finally, findings provide new insights into how CMOs may include and exclude minoritized groups in their operations. While the CMOs celebrated their impact in working with nondominant racial groups, this claim was complicated by the disproportionate exclusion of Black youth from CMO schools and their locally disputed claims of being community rooted. Overall, this examination suggests that CMOs' broader political behavior may manifest in local contexts in disparate and nuanced ways, though questions as to the equitable and democratic character of CMO efforts remain.

In addition to enhancing the CMO empirical base, the study's interdisciplinary approach provides a critical window into how discourse can be mobilized in educational, political processes. Urban regime analyses of education reform have demonstrated how leaders have sought to garner support, often through tactics like coalition representation and agenda setting. Yet, the strategic messages used to legitimate reform and to convince actors of its import have rarely been centered in these examinations. This study suggests that CMO discourse often reified lines of power, as CMOs selectively circulated disparaging narratives about minoritized groups and ascribed characteristics to their organizations which were locally contested. This central finding underscores why investigating discourse in political analyses is important for surfacing equity and democratic implications, and this study advances methodological and conceptual tools that scholars may use in future studies to investigate this phenomenon.

U.S. politics and racial climates are poised to become increasingly volatile in this era of ideological polarization, COVID-19, and publicized displays of racial violence. These realities will undoubtedly affect urban centers and their schools, propelling them into debates on their role in exacerbating inequities and how they intend to reverse harm. As institutional fixtures in many urban settings, CMOs are likely to remain central in these debates, compelling CMOs to further justify and demonstrate their contributions to advancing equity.

This investigation into CMOs' localized political behaviors and their interplay with the sociopolitical climate provides important insight into how these organizations respond when confronted with opposition. In shedding light on the tactics that CMOs use in one setting, this study provides a nuanced depiction of how they act nimbly and strategically to maintain their organization despite ongoing questions as to their equitable and democratic character. While making important contributions, this study suggests directions for future research. First, to build a more robust empirical base, future research should compare CMOs' localized political behaviors in various geographic regions. Examining the similarities and differences that exist among CMOs in different regions can generate stronger analytic conclusions about the distinct political and racialized behaviors of these actors and their interplay with local and national sociopolitical climates. Furthermore, this study provided a holistic assessment of the tactics used by a CMO population, but research tells us that CMOs are diverse organizations, ranging in mission, program, and size. Future studies should compare political behaviors among CMOs along their organizational features to provide further insights that advance the field. In addition, future investigations may consider the impact of these strategies on their intended audiences. While researchers may infer the resonance of CMO tactics by considering enrollment figures, fiscal solvency, or charter approvals or denials, future case studies may include the perspectives from school board members or other stakeholder groups that CMOs engage to ascertain how their messaging and persuasive tactics influence their assessments of these organizations. Finally, CMOs are one of many institutional vehicles and mechanisms being advanced by market reformers across the globe that hold implications for the democratic and equitable character of schooling systems. Investigating how reformers navigate critiques to advance policies can shed light on how power is negotiated and exercised in political processes in ways that maintain or alleviate inequities.

• Tell me about your background.
• How long have you been living/working in the Bay Area? The city?
• Tell me about your professional experiences.
• What are your connections to city schools?
• Possible rephrase: How did you come to be involved in city schools?
• When you think about city schools over the past few decades (OR since you've been here), what have been the major highs and lows?
• Tell me about (major reform-list of policies). What did this policy mean for city schools and the community? [Repeat for each policy if not mentioned in original response]
• What has the expansion of charter schools meant for the city? For the community?
• How, if at all, have charter schools (and/or CMOs) helped the city?
• How, if at all, have charter schools (and/or CMOs) negatively affected the city?
• Possible rephrase/probe: What disadvantages or problems have you perceived from charter school growth? CMO growth?
• What about charter networks?
• What differences, if any, do you see between stand-alone charters and charter networks?
• What in your opinion are barriers for progress in city public schools?
• Who are the major movers and shakers in city schools? Who gets things done or makes things happen?
• Probe to discuss particular groups (i.e. school board, city officials, teachers' unions, advocacy groups)
• What influence do XX have?
• Who's left out of the major decision-making in city schools? Why do you think that is?
• I want to talk a bit about community engagement around education and educational reform. What does community engagement around education look like in the city?
• Who initiates it? Who is the most active?
• What issues are at the center of engagement efforts?
• How effective are community engagement efforts in your opinion? What makes them effective? Ineffective?
• What message(s) do community engagement efforts send?
• Describe an example of how the community was engaged around education.
• The city is one of the most ethnically and socioeconomically diverse cities in the country. In what ways have you seen class be an issue in schools or educational reform?
• In what ways have you seen race be an issue in the city schools?
• What do the relations between the African-American and Latino communities look like, from your standpoint?
• [If relevant] From where do you think the Black/Brown tensions stem?
• How have schools/district served the city's more racially or socioeconomically marginalized groups?
• What has been the response of these groups to the school reforms? Why?
• How democratic have city schools been in times past? How so?
• How equitable have city schools been in times past? How so?
• What would a democratic, equitable school district in the city look like for you?

• I'd like to start to out by hearing a bit about you and how you became part of (CMO).
• What is your role?
• Tell me about (CMO) and how it got established and how it's grown over the years.
• How long has (CMO) been in the city?
• How do/did you decide where to open your schools?
• Are you planning on expanding? If so, how? When? Where?
• If not, why not?
• What communities do you serve (geographic, socioeconomic)?
• How would you describe them?
• Why this particular community rather than others?
• In growing and/or sustaining your network, who are the key players within the organization that make this happen?
• What do they do? (OR What role do they play in growing or maintaining your organization?)
• How do they foster support for your organization?
• Possible probe: Whose support do they solicit?
• Who are the key groups or individuals outside the organization that play an important role in sustaining and/or growing your organization?
• How do they support the process?
• Why is their support necessary?
• I want to talk a bit more about these groups of individuals outside of your CMO that you mentioned play a role. [Mention those stated]
• Address each group mentioned with the following questions:
• Describe some of the things you do to reach out to (group/individual).
• Possible Rephrase: What do you do to bring XX on board?
• What do you do to convince them that your CMO is the right place to XX (e.g. send their children, invest in, support politically)?
• What messages do convey to them?
• Describe some of the events or strategies you use to reach out to (group/individual).
• How do these events/strategies get developed?
• Ask the above question about the following groups if not already mentioned:
• Donors/funders
• Policymakers (i.e. city council, school board members)
• Community members and/or community organizations
• School district officials (i.e. superintendent, charter authorization staff, etc.)

• Parents

• Business partners (i.e. contractors, real estate agencies, other)
• How successful have you been in generating support from all of these groups and individuals?
• How effective have you events/strategies/approaches been?
• Describe some of the challenges you and your organization have faced as you've grown and/or sustained your network.
• How do you think (CMO) is doing right now?
• What is your sense of how others view (CMO) and the work you do? Why?
• Probe: How do you think other charter networks operating schools in the city are perceived? Why?
• What would you like to improve? Why?