This panel on charter schools is unusual in that it includes two empirical papers that examine the evolution of charter schools in two states and one conceptual paper designed to provide a new framework for making policy decisions about charter schools. The first empirical paper examines the evolution of charter schools in Texas from 2001 to 2011, with attention to how the average quality and its distribution has changed over time relative to traditional public schools. The other empirical paper examines the evolution of charter schools in North Carolina over a comparable time period, using a similar methodology for much of the analysis. The conceptual paper is part of a larger book project by two social scientists and two philosophers designed to help both policy makers and researchers incorporate values more explicitly into education decision making n general, and, specifically for this session, for decisions about the size and nature of the charter school sector. Our goal is to shift the research and policy focus away from whether individual charter schools are more effective than comparable traditional schools to broader policy questions related to the charter school sector