Charter Schools

A Quick Study

My Objectives (besides confusing you)

• Provide a short history of charter schools• Provide a description of charter schools and

traditional arguments for and against them• Provide information related to the controversy

surrounding charter schools• Provide some of the latest research related to

charter schools• Inspire you to stay current on charter school

issues

Very Short History of Charter Schools

• Idea born in 1988 as a way to reform schools by establishing charter schools or schools of choice (reaction to A Nation at Risk - 1983)

• Supported by Al Shanker, President of AFT• Minnesota establish first charter law, followed

by California• About 40 states allow charter schools• Big initiative of the Bush and Obama

Administrations

Description of Charter Schools• Guided by two principles

1. Operate as autonomous public schools• Not exempt from state requirements• Most have unique qualities• Provide staff more flexibility and control over work rules

2. Accountable for student achievement

• Generally, charters are authorized by various organizations for a period to time– Local school districts– Colleges/universities– Non-profits– For-profits

Description of Charter Schools, cont• Number of schools are generally capped • They generally exist in cities• Are generally smaller than than regular public

schools• They tend to enroll fewer special needs or limited

English proficient students• Charter school students tend to be slightly less poor

than the regular public schools• Parent(s) must want to send a child to the school

Arguments For and Against Charter Schools

For• Allows individuals or groups with

innovative educational ideas to put them into practice without being unduly hampered by local or state bureaucracy

• Provides school choice• Schools may have

unconventional hours• Experiment with curricula• Specialize in certain types of

teaching or design programs tailored to a particular audience or community

• Can provide competition to the public schools to promote reform

• May provide more accountability; successful schools will be rewarded and the unsuccessful will be changed or even closed

• Can avoid unionization

Against• Schools may not be equally

available to all students• Regular public schools could

become "dumping grounds" • Loss of funds from public

schools cause financial hardship; no economy-of-scale

• Charters schools have access to private funds

• May not be held accountable fiscally or programmatically

• There doesn’t appear to be any conclusive evidence, students perform any better than if they remained in their regular public schools

• Lots of teacher turnover

Funding of Charter Schools

• Funding is generally decided at the state level• Per student funding varies and is somewhat

misleading due to fewer students with special needs in charter schools

• Charter schools generally receive less per-pupil funding than the regular public schools

• Charter schools may receive funding from private donors including foundations

The Charter School Controversy

“Achievement”

Center for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO) Study - Stanford University 2009

• Largest current study of national charter schools (Dr. Margaret Raymond, Director)

– Study found students in charter schools not faring as well as students in traditional public schools (used virtual twins for analysis)

– Found charter schools on average perform the same or worse compared to regular public schools

– Out of 2,403 charter schools in 15 states and DC, 50% had no change in achievement, 17% better, 36% worse

– “Two subgroups fare better in charters than in the traditional system, students in poverty and ELL students”

– “Students not in poverty and students who are not English language learners on average do notably worse than the same students who remain in the traditional public school system” 

• The report found the academic success of students in charter schools was affected by individual state policy

– States with caps limiting the number of charter schools reported significantly lower academic results than states without caps limiting charter growth.

– States having the presence of multiple charter school authorizers also reported lower academic results than states with fewer authorizers in place

– Finally, states with charter legislation allowing for appeals of previously denied charter school applications saw a small but significant increase in student performance

Caroline Hoxby, Stanford Economist, CREDO Critic

• Hoxby is a strong supporter of charter schools; she is currently a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute

• Claimed CREDO made statistical errors, CREDO responded, Hoxby revised her criticism, CREDO then refuted all of Hoxby’s criticism, information is on CREDO website

• Hoxby released another charter school study in 2009, called The New York City Charter Schools Evaluation Project as a follow-up to a 2007 study of the same name, and found charter school students outperformed their public school peers and were closing the “Scarsdale-Harlem” achievement gap

• Her study found students who entered lotteries and won spots in New York City charter schools performed better on state exams than students who entered the same lotteries but did not secure charter school seats

• A Hoxby colleague at Stanford, Sean Reardon, noted serious methodological issues with Hoxby’s research design by finding the design of her study “destroyed the way in which the lottery randomly separated students into charter schools and traditional schools…”

• Despite the limitations, the study provided evidence students in “oversubscribed” NYC charter schools outperformed their regular public school peers in math and reading. A subsequent review by Stanford University researchers, found significant, but lower, relative gains.

• As for the “Scarsdale-Harlem” extrapolation; it is a massive stretch, according to Matthew Di Carlo is a senior fellow at the non-profit Albert Shanker Institute in Washington, D.C

Other Studies by CREDO(After original study) and a Rand Corp. Study

• March 2011 - Charter students in Indiana doing better than peers in regular public schools– Building on the methodology used for the national report, CREDO at Stanford found overall, charter

school performance in Indiana and Indianapolis outpaced the traditional public schools in learning gains. Looking at the distribution of school performance, 98% of the charter schools had similar or superior academic growth than the traditional public schools in reading and 100% of charter schools had similar or superior academic growth in math compared to traditional public schools. Charter schools of all ages in Indiana on average grow at better rates than traditional public schools and charter school students grow at higher rates compared to their traditional public school peers in their first 2 years of enrollment in charter schools.

• April 6 2011 - Mixed results in Pennsylvania – Building on the methodology used for the national report, CREDO at Stanford found overall, charter

school performance Pennsylvania lagged in growth compared to traditional public schools. However, there was substantial variation in quality across individual schools.There were a handful of outstanding charter schools in each subject. More than one quarter of the charter schools have significantly more positive learning gains than their traditional public school counterparts in reading, but their performance is eclipsed by the nearly half of charter schools that have significantly lower learning gains.

• January 2010 - Charter students in NYC doing better than peers in regular public schools– On a school-by-school comparison, the report found that 51 percent of New York City charter schools

are showing academic growth in math that is statistically larger than students would have achieved in regular public schools, with 33 percent with no significant difference and 16 percent with significantly lower learning. In reading, the report found that 29 percent of charter schools are showing statistically better gains, with 59 percent with no significant difference and only 12 percent significantly lower.

• The Rand Corporation report - 2009 Charters no better than regular public schools– It studied students who transferred in or out of charter schools in Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee,

Philadelphia, San Diego, Ohio and Texas, comparing the progress of students in charters to the progress of the same students in regular public schools. It found that charter schools in Ohio and four of the cities produced the same achievement gains in math and reading as regular public schools. In Chicago and Texas, gains in charters fell short of those in regular public schools.

Diane Ravitch, former assistant secretary of education under former President George H.W. Bush

• From WSJ article Why I Changed My Mind About School Reform (March 9, 2010)

– When charter schools started in the early 1990s, their supporters promised that they would unleash a new era of innovation and effectiveness. Now there are some 5,000 charter schools, which serve about 3% of the nation's students, and the Obama administration is pushing for many more.

– But the promise has not been fulfilled. Most studies of charter schools acknowledge that they vary widely in quality. The only major national evaluation of charter schools was carried out by Stanford economist Margaret Raymond (CREDO Study) and funded by pro-charter foundations. Her group found that compared to regular public schools, 17% of charters got higher test scores, 46% had gains that were no different than their public counterparts, and 37% were significantly worse.

– Charter evaluations frequently note that as compared to neighboring public schools, charters enroll smaller proportions of students whose English is limited and students with disabilities. The students who are hardest to educate are left to regular public schools, which makes comparisons between the two sectors unfair. The higher graduation rate posted by charters often reflects the fact that they are able to "counsel out" the lowest performing students; many charters have very high attrition rates (in some, 50%-60% of those who start fall away). Those who survive do well, but this is not a model for public education, which must educate all children.

Method: The assessment used was the Mathematics Assessment.

Rochester City School DistrictTotal Students Gen Ed. St. with Dis. Eng. Prof. LEP % 3/4

Grade 3 Math 2488 2058 430 2171 317 79% OKGrade 4 Math 2361 1916 445 2051 310 65% OKGrade 5 Math 2244 1778 466 1981 263 68% OKGrade 6 Math 2276 1795 481 2058 218 65% OK

9369 7547 1822 8261 110819.45% 11.83%

Grade 7 Math 2180 1711 469 1936 244 58% OKGrade 8 Math 2257 1816 441 2054 203 43% OK

4437 3527 910 3990 44720.51% 10.07%

Genesee Community CharterGrade 3 Math 32 29 3 32 0 97% OKGrade 4 Math 30 27 3 30 0 97% OKGrade 5 Math 30 24 6 30 0 93% OKGade 6 Math 24 20 4 24 0 96% OK

116 100 16 116 013.79% 0.00%

Urban Choice Charter SchoolGrade 3 Math 45 41 4 45 0 87% OKGrade 4 Math 45 42 3 45 0 91% OKGrade 5 Math 43 40 3 43 0 77% OKGrade 6 Math 49 44 5 49 0 86% OK

182 167 15 182 08.24% 0.00%

True North Rochester Preparatory Charter SchoolGrade 5 Math 83 77 5 82 0 91% OKGrade 6 Math 79 73 6 79 0 100% OKGrade 7 Math 50 47 3 50 0 100% OK

212 197 14 211 06.60% 0.00%

Rochester Academy Charter SchoolGrade 7 Math 63 59 4 60 3 83% OKGrade 8 Math 44 43 1 43 1 64% OK

107 102 5 103 4 1.472.27% 1.30%

617 566 50 612 4Total in All Charters: 8.10% 0.65%

Demographic Comparison of the RCSD and City Charter Schools2008-2009

Charter Schools… A Local Example… I was curious…

A Possible Conclusion?

This was written by Matthew Di Carlo, senior fellow at the non-profit Albert Shanker Institute, located in Washington, D.C. This post originally appeared on the institute’s blog.

The only thing everyone agrees on is that charter school performance – relative to comparable regular public schools – varies widely. So does the effectiveness of charters compared with other charters, and regular public schools compared with other public schools. The performance of schools – at least as measured by their students’ test score gains – varies.

So, my point here is: The CREDO report does not support the expansion or selective closing of charter schools, any more than it supports converting them back into regular public schools. There are good and bad schools of both types. This is an unsatisfying conclusion – after all, how could such a huge study provide no guidance as to how we should proceed on the charter school front?

I would suggest, once again, that we aren’t getting good answers because we’re not asking the right questions. It’s not whether some charters seem to do better or worse, but rather why (CREDO does provide some state-level results addressing this – they’re worth checking out, but very limited).

That is, how can we explain the performance of any “good” or “bad” school and, in so doing, hopefully identify specific policies and practices that can be used to improve all schools? Until we start focusing on that question, the charter school “debate” will continue to be trench warfare, in which even huge, well-done studies settle nothing.

Questions and Discussion