Do Charter schools outperform traditional schools?

Why is this question important? Over the past decade, charter schools have been increasingly and enthusiastically adopted as a solution to poorly performing schools. The National Center for Education Statistics states, Charter schools enrolled larger percentages of black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaska native students and lower percentages of white and Asian/Pacific Islander students than conventional public schools. Because these schools have been actively employed in urban areas to remedy the lagging performance of lower socio-economic status (SES) children, it is important that the model be rigorously studied to ensure the intervention is effective.

See further discussion below.

Source(s): Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States, 2009

Result(s): The study found no significant differences between math (–.03) and reading (–.01) scores of students assigned to charter schools and those of students in traditional public schools. The aggregate representation revealed wide variation in performance. The study found 17% of the charter schools provided superior education opportunities for students. About 50% of the charter schools revealed results that were no different from the traditional public school, and 37% delivered learning results that were significantly worse than their students would have realized had they remained in traditional public schools. The study also found significant differences in effectiveness across states in charter school performance.

Implication(s): The growth of charter schools to over 1.4 million students across 40 states in just 15 years is showing no sign of waning, as each year hundreds of new charter schools open and waiting lists grow to more than 300,000. Not surprisingly, charter schools continue to attract the attention of reformers and are likely to remain in the forefront of improvement efforts for years to come, despite individual charter schools having little in common. The study reveals a great variance in the performance of charter schools. Schools in some states performed well, and those in other states performed worse than traditional public schools. This is not a surprising result, as charter schools do not represent a common approach, practices, or teaching methods. Charter schools are a prime example of the tendency for education reformers to focus on policy solutions as a quick fix as opposed to implementing evidence-based education practices. Research tells us effective education reform is complex, requiring complex solutions to how we instruct children. What charters schools do share is local governance and the fact that parents have a choice to place a child in a charter school. Unfortunately, these traits are not in themselves enough to ensure improvements in student achievement sought by parents and reformers.

Author(s): Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) of Stanford University

Publisher(s): Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) of Stanford University, credo.stanford.edu

Study Description: The study looked at the effect of charter school attendance on student achievement growth in math and reading annual test scores. The study was a longitudinal, student-level data analysis that covered more than 70% of the nation’s students attending charter schools. The study created a pooled dataset and estimated a national effect of charter schools on student academic growth. In the pooled analysis, students attending charter schools were compared with students attending traditional public schools that had sent students to those charter schools. One of the challenges for the study was to compare the effects of charter schools across different states. States vary in the specific guidelines and supports provided charter schools. The study attempted to avoid this problem by focusing on common elements of charter school performance through standardizing test results derived from each state.
The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) determined this study to be consistent with WWC evidence standards with reservations. It found the study’s strength was in matching charter school and public school student demographic and academic characteristics. However, it cautioned that differences between the two groups that were not accounted for in the analysis could have influenced achievement growth.

Citation: Center for Research on Education Outcomes. (June 2009). Multiple choice: Charter school performance in 16 states. Stanford, CA: Author

Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO)

http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/MULTIPLE_CHOICE_CREDO.pdf