This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

OPINION: What Anti-Charter Activists Ignore in Charter School Studies

Let's look at what the CREDO study of charter schools REALLY says.

 

I recently posted a blog entitled “?”, and was asked about the widely-reported results in the 2009 CREDO(1) study that only 17% of charters out-perform traditional public schools (TPS). I tried to outline why those results are misleading. I’m going to expand on that now.

The problem with the methodology CREDO used was discussed as part of the 2011 meta-analysis of studies from the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE at UW Bothell)(2). CREDO employs a modification of the fixed-effect model. CRPE states “The two primary weaknesses of fixed-effect models stem from the fact that identification comes from students who switch between charter and traditional public schools. In elementary schools, many students start in charters and do not switch, so that it is hard to extrapolate fixed-effect results to such students. (In other studies) in some locales and subject areas test-score gains of charter school students who did not switch in or out during the sample period were higher than the test-score gains of those who switched.”  In plain English, this method UNDERESTIMATES the gains of charter school students by excluding students who spend their entire schooling in the charter.

Find out what's happening in Woodinvillewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Let’s put that criticism aside and really look at the results in the CREDO study. I will use complete quotes from the study so that you know I am not “spinning the results."

“Charter school performance is a complex and difficult matter to assess… The group portrait shows wide variation in performance. The study reveals that a decent fraction of charter schools, 17 percent, provide superior education opportunities for their students. Nearly half of the charter schools nationwide have results that are no different from the local public school options and over a third, 37 percent, deliver learning results that are significantly worse than their student would have realized had they remained in traditional public schools.  These findings underlie the parallel findings of significant state‐by‐state differences in charter school performance and in the national aggregate performance of charter schools.”

Find out what's happening in Woodinvillewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“Our findings show that the effectiveness of charter schools varies widely across the country, differing across states and even within states. Consistent with other research, we find that however valid the “simple story” about the average effect of charter schools is, it masks more insightful but also more subtle results.” (Emphasis added)

Now let’s look at those more insightful results. Disaggregation of their data shows that:

“Two subgroups fare better in charters than in the traditional system: students in poverty and ELL students. In these cases, our numbers indicate that charter students who fall into these categories are outperforming their TPS counterparts in both reading and math. These populations, then, have clearly been well served by the introduction of charters into the education landscape. These findings are particularly heartening for the charter advocates who target the most challenging educational populations or strive to improve education options in the most difficult communities. Charter schools that are organized around a mission to teach the most economically disadvantaged students in particular seem to have developed expertise in serving these communities.”

This is precisely what the legislation being proposed in WA would do – target the most challenging education populations. The study goes on to show that:

"The effectiveness of charter schools was found to vary widely by state. In five states ‐ Arkansas, Colorado (Denver), Illinois (Chicago), Louisiana, and Missouri  charter school students experienced significantly larger growth than would have occurred in TPS. In six states — Arizona, Florida, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, and Texas — charter school students experienced lower learning gains than would have occurred in TPS. In four states — California, District of Columbia, Georgia, and North Carolina — the results were mixed or no different from the gains for TPS.”

When you examine results by state, CREDO shows that “Black charter school students do better compared to their TPS peers in both math and reading in Louisiana, Minnesota and Missouri. In addition, Black charter school students do better in reading in California and better in math in Arkansas than their TPS peers.”

“Hispanic charter school students do better compared to their TPS peers in both math and reading in Missouri. In addition, Hispanic charter school students do better in math in Arkansas, Colorado and Louisiana than their TPS peers.”

Digging even deeper, CREDO found “Nationally, elementary and middle school charter students exhibited higher learning gains than equivalent students in the traditional public school system.” HS charters were the ones that generally performed worse than TPS.

Lastly, “Students do better in charter schools over time. First year charter students on average experience a decline in learning, which may reflect a combination of mobility effects and the experience of a charter school in its early years. Second and third years in charter schools see a significant reversal to positive gains.” 

So the very study that anti-charter activists and even WA legislators are quoting as showing charters don’t work actually shows the opposite. When the data are disaggregated (you focus your research question), charters in many states clearly are effective, esp for the populations of students that traditional public schools currently underserve: the poor, English Language Learners, blacks and Hispanics, and students do better the longer they stay in the charter. It is to help these children that the WA charter bills were written.

(1) CREDO: Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States

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


(2) CRPE: The Effect of Charter Schools on Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of the Literature

http://www.crpe.org/cs/crpe/download/csr_files/pub_NCSRP_BettsTang_Oct11.pdf

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

More from Woodinville