Abstract: This article explores how the media places stories about charter schools into two types of frameworks: competition or complementary. News stories that treat charter schools as complementary to public education emphasize how they enrich the public education system. Stories that treat charter schools as competitive with regular public schools emphasize what makes them different from traditional public schools and how those differences put pressure on the rest of the public school systems. Most articles fail to address the dual aspects of the charter schooling movement and the author finds that "using only a single frame, and describing charter schools in language only in terms of conflict and competition or, conversely, only about small public schools serving children with unique needs, fails to describe what is really going on."
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