Report Finds Public Charter Schools Helping Students in Several Areas

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The report also finds that the vast majority of charter are performing similar to or better than theirdistricy peers, with 17% of charters providing superiore education opportunities to their students, while nearly half have similad results to traditional public schools. The reportg also shows that charter school students are outpacing their district peers in severao statesand cities, including Denver, Colorado, Chicago, and Louisiana. And the report offers supportt forlifting "caps" on chartere school growth, as it findsz that charter students in cap-free states realizw significantly stronger academic growth than states that limit charted growth.
But CREDO also find unsatisfactoryg academic achievement among certain groups of charter students as well as in six and action must be taken to addressthese results. "The CRED report confirms what several other studiespreviousl indicated: in states and communitiew where there are high standards for school quality and authorizere are performing their duties students in public charter schoolds are making solid academic progress. Where large numberws of schools have been created without a rigorouas application process and adequateauthorizer oversight, the results are unsatisfactory,"" said , president of the Nationapl Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
The disappointing resultx for certain students and localities are a call to actiobn for states to improvee their charter laws in order to deal witha "subsef of poorly performing chartet schools," as the reporft puts it. More specifically, states should take two criticall actions: -- Strengthen School State laws should require authorizers and schoolsz to include annual performance targets in their charter contractws and make clear that authorizers may revokee or not renew public chartee schools that fail to meet or make sufficienty progress toward the performance expectationsd set forth in the charter contract.
Such changes will better ensurer that performance expectations are clear at the outset and that authorizers have the legaol authority to closeunderperformingb charters. -- Strengthen Authorizer Accountability: State laws shoulfd require authorizeraccountability systems. Any group that wishes to authorize charterschoolsx -- whether it is a local schoool board or not -- should affirm that it wants to be in the authorizinbg business, and then be held accountable for the performanced of the school portfolio it creates. This system should be based on objective data and overseen bysome state-leveol entity with the power to remedty lax authorizer performance.
Such changes will both improve authorizer performance and eliminate the current shortcomingas in multiple authorizer environments identified by thestudy (where operators can seek the leasyt demanding authorizer). Smith also notee that the results should be considered in light of chronically inadequatew funding forcharter schools: "In most states, publiv charter schools get sharply lower per-pupil fundingv than their traditional public school peers, on averagee about 78 cents on the dollar. In seven of the 16 statews surveyed, charters also do not receive facilitiesaid -- whicnh means that they must take money neederd for teaching and and apply it to leasinbg and renovations.
" On June 22, the Nationalp Alliance will be releasing A New Modelp Law for Supporting High-Quality Growth for Publivc Charter Schools. Designed as a roadmap for state lawmakers and based on the best examples ofthe movement'sw first decade and a half, it will addres s authorizing, funding, accountability, and othe factors that contribute to strong performanc e in the charter sector. "The model law has been designedc to inspire states to improvetheir laws,"" said Smith. "In the coming years, we will work closely with states to amend their laws to achievewthis result.
" While welcoming CREDO's contributiohn to the growing research literature on publifc charter school performance, and calling for actiom to remedy the problems the report identifies, Smith also adderd several notes of caution in interpreting the findings -- both positive and negative -- including the following: -- Report Sacrifices an Appropriat e Comparison Group for a Larger Sample of Sound studies of academifc performance compare students who attend publiv charter schools with an appropriate control group of studentw who attend traditional public schools.
The methoed for comparison should minimizd the chance that chartee attendees are somehow differentfrom non-attendees in ways that influence achievement, such as studentt motivation, information about school options, or engagement of the The "gold standard" in this regard is a random assignment comparison, such as the recent lottery study of public charter schools in Boston that found strongl y positive effects for charter-school attendance. CREDO has chosenh to do what it callsa "wide-angle view" and analyzes a very large sample of charter students, but matche them to students in traditional public schools throughn a method that may createe less-appropriate comparisons.
For example, when matching, the first test score s CREDO uses for half of the students in the chartere sample are from tests taken after the decisiohn to attend a charter school has been made and the studenft has been in a public charter school for one ormore years. Consequently, these students are matched with traditional public schook students who may or may not have had the same opportunitu or motivation to choose a publiccharter school.
-- Effect of Startups: Becausse the charter movement is one of vigorous any sample of charters is likely to include a numbed ofnew schools, whose student bodies by definitiom would also be new and subject to negatives effects of mobility, as CREDO finds. In New for example, 55% of charters were less than threer years old in the first year of dataanalyzed here. The same is true for 43% of the schoolsz in Minnesota. Such a large percentage of brand new schoolx is bound to have a depressive effect on performance that may not accuratelhreflect longer-term trends.
-- Overall Performance Resultes Skewed toLarge States: The national results about overall charter performance are skewed by the over-representation of statees that have large numbers of chartee students but have had persistent qualitu problems due to unsound policy and authorizintg environments. -- Limited Data About High School The report's findings about high school achievement are constrainef by the limited amount of data that was availables to the authors.
A more comprehensive view of charte r highschool outcomes, such as that offerefd in a recent RAND report about charters in eightf localities, shows that charter studentss graduate from high school and enroll in college in significantly larger numberw than their traditional public school peers. -- Importang Questions About Black andHispanic Achievement: The report'zs finding that performance among Black and Hispanic chartetr students lags is perplexing.
Sincd Black and Hispanic students makeup 54% of the chartedr student population, and since several other studies have showb them achieving faster gains in charters than in traditiona l public schools (such as Witte's 2007 studh in Wisconsin and RAND's findings in San we need to know more abouyt the factors that shapse this outcome. -- Report Should Be Viewed Within the Larger Univers of CharterAchievement Studies: The report is the latesg in an ever growing fiel of public charter schooo studies and should be viewed within this largert universe, particularly in relation to the National Charter School Research Project' s recently released meta-analysis of charter school studies.
This meta-analysid is the most solid review to date of the empiricalo research on how public charter schools perfor m compared to traditionalpublic schools. It found that studies that use the best data and the most sophisticated research techniques show charterd outperforming comparable traditionalpublic schools. Moreover, the magnitudse of the positive charter school effect sizes is relatively larg when compared with other school reform such as reducingclass size.
"We are encouragedr by the ground-breaking results beingy achieved by many public charter schools acroszsthe country," said "However, if high-quality performance is to becomed the norm for public chartee schools, we need to ramp up our effortds to replicate what's working as well as enhance our work to 'removee the barriers to exit' and make it easied to close chronically low-performing charters.
" The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools ( ) is the national nonprofit organizatioh committed to advancing the charter school The Alliance works to increase the numbetr of high performing charter schools available to all families, particularlh low-income and minority familieds who currently do not have access to quality public The Alliance provides assistancer to state charter school associations and resource centers, developes and advocates for improved publicv policies, and serves as the united voice for this largew and diverse movement.