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A-Snapshot-of-Public-Charter-Schools-Waiting-List-Numbers-by-Region

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Yesterday, we discussed waiting list trends across the country, including the findings from a national survey of public charter schools conducted we conducted in the spring of 2012 that estimates that there were 610,000 students on waiting lists to attend public charter schools before the beginning of the 2011-2012 academic year.

While the national picture of demand for public charter schools remains strong, let’s look at the findings more closely. Many states and jurisdictions reported large numbers of students on waiting lists to attend public charter schools in the 2011-12 school year:

New York City: 52,900
Massachusetts: 45,000
North Carolina: 29,000
New Jersey: 27,000
District of Columbia: 15,000
Chicago, IL: 10,000
Los Angeles, CA: 10,000
Idaho: 8,000
Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC: 8,000
Connecticut: 7,000

The fact that New York City, D.C., Chicago, and Los Angeles have high waiting list numbers is no surprise. They are all “Top 10” Districts in terms of serving the highest numbers of public charter school students according to our annual market share report. But despite the high concentration of public charter schools and students in these urban centers, parent demand for charter schools continues to outpace supply.

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Are-Newer-Studies-Finding-Greater-Charter-School-Performance-Effects003F

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The recent CREDO study of New Jersey charter schools showed positive results for charter schools across the state, and really quite remarkable results for charter schools in Newark (read more about the study here, here, and here). The findings come on the heels of a couple of additional reports from CREDO since the large study in 2009 that showed positive results for charter schools in Indiana/Indianapolis and New York City.

Here’s our prediction: studies that show positive results for charter schools may be foreshadowing positive results to come. And we make this prediction based on evidence from studies over the past decade. Take a look at the figure below.

The figure plots out the impact from charter school studies released, by year, that qualified for the Betts & Tang meta-analysis, with the addition of significant studies released in 2011 and 2012. All of the studies used student-level, longitudinal data to compare the performance of students enrolled in charter schools with their counterparts in traditional public schools. The large circles indicate results from studies that used randomized field trial lottery designs and the smaller circles are results from studies that used other quasi-experimental research designs (e.g., student fixed-effects, student matching). The triangles represent results that were not statistically significant, but are included to demonstrate the direction of results. The dotted lines represent the overall effect sizes (ES) from the meta-analysis, by grade level and subject area.

The distribution of effect sizes indicates that findings from high-quality studies on charter school performance are trending positive, and getting bigger in more recent years. The dotted lines, which show the overall effect sizes from the meta-analysis, confirm this trend. In general, the meta-analysis found positive and statistically significant results from charter school studies for elementary and middle school grades. So it would not be a surprise if future studies show a similar pattern.

What could explain the upward trajectory in charter school performance effects in newer studies? There are a lot of possible explanations—here are just a few:

The charter school sector is maturing. While making sure that low-performing charter schools are closed is a priority (see NACSA’s One Million Lives Campaign), authorizers, charter support organizations, up-and-coming school leaders, and charter schools that want to replicate are getting better at identifying the charter schools that will result in high quality learning environments. In other words, the charter sector is learning how to replicate success and take it to scale.

Other explanations are aligned with the research itself:

Newer studies are using better data. The data in the more recent studies include longer spans of academic years, as well as data from more recent years. And the studies include data from more states. Up to early 2009 when NAPCS released this charter school research synthesis, the years covered in studies only went through 2006-07 and 14 states out of 40 with charter schools had been examined. Now, the newer studies are examining charter schools through the most recent year of available data (2010-11) and including more states (up to 23 states at last count). The possible implication of this is twofold: 1) studies that use more years of data are able to capture charter schools operating longer, and as charter schools are around longer, they get better; 2) the inclusion of more states (with newer data) means that the early results from just a handful of states don’t outweigh the impact of charter schools in more locations.
Studies have become more sophisticated, using research designs that control for selection bias and student demographics.

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Bridging-Differences,-Fudging-Facts

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Diane Ravitch has finally hit bottom in her bout with OCD (Obsessive Charter Disorder). In her current Education Week blog she grumps at “Waiting for Superman” for failing to feature successful public (sic) schools and schoolteachers, and then responds by listing six bad things she’s learned recently about charter schools. Her argument is basically that of Pee-Wee Herman: "I know you are, but what am I?”

I can no longer tell whether Ravitch’s distortions are willful or whether she’s just too busy Tweeting to check facts. She trots out news about Inner City Education Foundation being rescued by major donors, not mentioning the schools’ superior academic performance, or the abysmal charter funding in California (see Eduwonk on that). She gloats that a Los Angeles charter operator was accused of embezzling more than $1 million in school funds, without noting that Ray Cortines, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), is taking steps to shut down the school (or, ahem, mentioning the $578 million LAUSD just spent on RFK High School).

She writes that the New York State Charter Schools Association “sued to block any public audits” of charters, when their suit actually contended (and the Court agreed) that the State Comptroller's Office lacked jurisdiction to audit charters. However, they also argued that the Board of Regents and charter authorizers do have authority to conduct financial and program audits -- which they do conduct, and vigorously. (More on NYCSA’a rationale here.) And she positively lights up at the news that Ross Global Academy in New York is in “a heap of trouble.” With 100 NYC charters generally doing terrific work, why single this one out? Because it was founded by a wealthy person, and we know what DR thinks of “the Billionaires Boys Club” and the Hedge Fund Mob, and anyone else who’s made a few bucks. File under “Schadenfreude.”

And then the finale: “Those promoting the privatization of American public education are blinded by free-market ideology. They refuse to pay attention to evidence, whether it be research or the accumulating anecdotal evidence of misbehavior, incompetence, fraud, greed, and chicanery that the free market facilitates.” So...the thousands of charter parents and teachers are really just stooges of the Robber Barons? Puh-leeeze.

BTW –Make sure to check out the comments after the blog. “Bridging Differences” usually draws a flock of fawning admirers; this time it also includes some folks who, in the most thoughtful and temperate language, rake Ravitch over the coals for the her reductionist and ill-grounded tirade.

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Charter-School-"Hopes,-Fears,-0024-Reality"-in-2011

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) released its 6th edition of Hopes, Fears, & Reality, an annual compilation of interesting articles on timely issues in the charter sector. (The 2008 article on special education in charter schools is a definite go-to for great information on how charters can offer unique delivery models.) This year’s report focuses on relationships between charter schools and school districts. Again, a well-timed topic given the District-Charter Collaboration Compact initiative supported by the Gates Foundation. And don’t miss the Assessing the Charter School Landscape chapter—it is full of great statistics on the charter sector from NAPCS’ dashboard and reports!
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Charter-School-Research:-What-Do-We-Know,-Where-Are-the-Gaps,-and-What-Should-Be-the-Focus003F

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

While the emerging story from recent research on student outcomes in public charter schools indicates largely positive impacts on students, there are many areas of further research needed to better understand the instructional, governance, operational , and policy conditions that contribute to why some public charters create better opportunities for learning than others. To inspire new research, NAPCS organized a session at the recent American Educational Research Association (AERA) conference to review the empirical research on public charter schools, identify gaps in the research base that warrant further investigation, discuss available data resources for pursuing new strands of charter school research, and propose priority areas for new research. The session brought together prominent researchers with diverse perspectives in the field of charter school research.

Penny Wohlstetter, Joanna Smith, and Caitlin Farrell kicked of the session by presenting central findings from their new book, Choices & Challenges, a comprehensive review of charter school research. The table below summarizes the focus of existing research and shows that several of the most critical areas for evaluating charter success (governance, school leadership, authorizing, and charter school finances) have received less attention from researchers.

Source: Wohlstetter, Priscilla, Joanna Smith, & Caitlin C. Farrell. (2013). Choices & Challenges: Charter School Performance in Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

After discussing the holes in existing research, the session shifted to several publicly available data resources that researchers could use to expand the scope of research on charter schools. Jack Buckley, Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, presented data available from the U.S. Department of Education, including EdFacts, NAEP, the Common Core of Data, the Schools and Staffing Survey, Civil Rights Data Collection, and several longitudinal surveys (ELS, HSLS, ECLS, and NHES). Joni Pearlman discussed the National Charter School Resource Center’s National Authorizer - Charter School Catalog. I presented on NAPCS’ Public Charter School Dashboard and the Model Law Rankings Database. And finally, Gary Miron presented information on his annual report, Profiles of For-Profit and Nonprofit Education Management Organizations.

Tricia Maas (Center for Reinventing Public Education) concluded the conversation by presenting a proposed research agenda with suggestions for prioritizing new research on charter schools based on the identified gaps and available resources.

Overall, the session had great attendance and a healthy question and answer portion at the end. I am hopeful that the session will inspire researchers to tackle pending research questions and present at next year’s AERA conference.

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Charter-Schools:-Do-Right-by-Your-Irreplaceable-Teachers

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Charter school leaders: what would you do if you had a teacher who consistently produced student learning gains of a half a school year more than other teachers in the building? You would do everything in your capacity to keep that teacher, right? Would you also make use of the teacher as a mentor for struggling or new teachers, encourage teachers to visit his/her classroom to observe, try to find a way to compensate the teacher for outstanding performance? Perhaps you would provide career opportunities such as becoming a lead teacher, coach, or part of the leadership team at the school? Fortunately for public charter schools, each of these strategies is doable right now because charters have the autonomy and flexibility to identify, reward, and retain good teachers.

A new report by The New Teacher Project (TNTP) suggests that many traditional school districts are unable and/or unwilling to identify and do what it takes to hold on to teachers they call “Irreplaceable.” Irreplaceable teachers are defined as those who “help students learn two to three additional months worth of math and reading compared with the average teacher, and five to six months more compared to low-performing teachers” (p. 2). Irreplaceable teachers generate bigger student learning gains and provide a more engaging learning experience for students, yet the report estimates that nearly 10,000 Irreplaceable teachers will leave the largest school districts each school year. Nearly half of the Irreplaceable teachers surveyed said that their schools made no effort to retain them.

The report calls out the usual culprits that help to explain why traditional districts and schools neglect their Irreplaceable teachers and have such a hard time getting rid of low-performing teachers: policy barriers (e.g., tenure, meaningless evaluation systems, lock-step compensation, the dance of the lemons), school culture and working conditions (e.g., low morale and teachers aren’t treated as professionals), and the lack of training among traditional school principals to retain the best teachers.

Charter schools are free from many of these barriers. So here is the big question for charter school leaders: are you taking advantage of your ability to identify and retain high quality teachers?

Here are a few resources to make sure you’re finding and retaining the best possible teachers:
• NAPCS Issue Brief on recruiting and selecting teachers
• The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Project
• Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE): Managing Human Capital Project
• New Leaders for New Schools
• TNTP Teacher Talent Toolbox

Graphic via Google Images

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Chartering-The-Course:--California-Charter-Schools-Show-Narrowing-of-African-American-Student-Achievement-Gap

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT

One of the most pressing issues of our time is the achievement gap between African American students and their White and Asian peers. There is hope however for African American families in California that their children can find quality educational options to meet their needs.

This week, the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) released the Chartering and Choice as an Achievement Gap-Closing Reform research report, which details the performance and enrollment trends of African American students in both charter public and traditional public schools. The results show that African American students are enrolled at higher rates in charter public than traditional public schools at all grade levels, in some cases at close to twice the rate, and are experiencing better outcomes, in spite of having the same rates of parent education and student retention as their traditional public school peers.

In fact, charter public schools are effectively accelerating the performance of African American public school students, consistently earning higher Academic Performance Index (API) scores and proficiency rates statewide across subjects in many urban districts.

When using CCSA’s own performance metric, the Similar Students Measure (SSM), which eliminates the impact of student background on performance, charter public schools serving African American students were more than three times as likely as traditional public schools to consistently outperform their predicted performance in a single year and over time.

And, while charters make up only 9% of schools statewide, they represent 39% of highly effective schools for African American students.

The report also features case studies of highly effective charter schools in three major areas: Watts Learning Center in Los Angeles, KIPP Bridge in Oakland, and PS7 in Sacramento. While different, their methodology and approach to serving their students had common denominators from which all public schools can learn. In fact, most of the best practices implemented at these three charter schools have been well documented in scholarly literature, and are readily available.

As laboratories of innovation, California’s highly effective charter schools can demonstrate proven paths to success that should be replicated in all public schools, and at a national level.

To read the report, please visit www.calcharters.org/africanamericanreport.

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Charters-can-‘TUDA’-their-own-horns

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT

The recently released NAEP Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) includes breakouts for charter public schools and traditional public schools in six out of 21 districts assessed. The table below shows that charter schools outperformed traditional public schools in the majority of districts in both subject areas and grade levels. In all of the other instances, charter schools performed as well as traditional public schools (e.g., the differences in scores were not statistically significant). In both the 2009 and 2011 NAEP TUDA, charter schools never underperformed against traditional public schools.

Others have pointed to the limited number of districts in NAEP with both charter and traditional public school data to compare. A larger sampling of charter schools in big districts like DC, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, and San Diego could allow for further analyses of NAEP performance trends at the district level.

The NAEP assessment does have limitations, as we have discussed in previous blogs. Moreover, comparing a snapshot of student performance between charters and traditional public schools does not control for the potential bias of students selecting to attend charter schools. However, the large differences below deserve attention and further analysis.

2011 NAEP, Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) for Charter and Traditional Public Schools

		4^th Grade Math		4^th Grade Reading		8^th Grade Math		8^th Grade Reading
		NAEP Score	Diff	NAEP Score	Diff	NAEP Score	Diff	NAEP Score	Diff
Atlanta	CPS	233	+5	216	↔	274	+9	264	+12
Atlanta	TPS	228		211		265		252
Baltimore City	CPS	242	+18	218	+19	265	↔	253	+8
Baltimore City	TPS	224		199		261		245
Chicago	CPS	235	+12	214	+12	269	↔	254	↔
Chicago	TPS	223		202		270		253
Houston	CPS	N/A		N/A		288	↔	256	↔
Houston	TPS	N/A		N/A		279		252
Miami-Dade	CPS	N/A		N/A		282	+12	271	+13
Miami-Dade	TPS	N/A		N/A		270		258
Milwaukee	CPS	233	+15	214	+21	257	↔	237	↔
Milwaukee	TPS	218		193		254		238

Data compiled by NAPCS from: http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/naepdata/dataset.aspx
Note: CPS – Charter Public School; TPS – Traditional Public School; N/A – insufficient data to compare CPS and TPS; ↔ – no statistically significant difference in the scores

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Charters-Lagging-on-NAEP003F--NOPE!

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

There has been a fair amount written about the recently released NAEP results for 4th and 8th graders in math and reading, and most of the discussion has focused on the minimal overall gains from 2009 to 2011. But a closer look at charter schools compared with traditional public schools demonstrates that students in charter schools made some very large gains (see table below).

In nearly every category that we examined, students in charter schools made larger gains than students in traditional public schools. And these gains are substantial. At the overall level, charter school gains decreased the gap between students in charters and traditional public schools. In many of the breakouts by student and school categories, charter schools exceeded traditional public schools and the gains charters made are quite large.

Take a look at the gains ELL students attending charter schools made—a 15 point gain in 4th grade reading, a 10 point gain in 8th grade reading, and a 7 point gain in 4th grade math. In every assessment, ELL students who attended charter schools scored higher than ELL students in traditional public schools. Charter schools still have work to do to close achievement gaps between subgroups, but with these kind of gains charter schools are making good progress.

NAEP certainly has its limitations—the assessment is administered every two years to different students, and only to a sample of schools nationwide. However, NAEP has value as a national indicator of achievement trends. And the trend for charter schools appears to be on the rise. These NAEP results are consistent with the findings from the UCSD meta-analysis that showed positive results for elementary and middle school students who attend charter schools.

NAEP Gains between 2009 & 2011, Charter and Traditional Public Schools

Overall

Black

White

Hispanic

FRL

ELL

City

Suburb

Town

Rural

4^th Grade Math

CPS

(237)

(224)

(251)

(234)

(229)

(222)

(233)

(241)

(247)

(248)

TPS

(240)

(224)

(249)

(229)

(219)

(235)

(244)

(237)

(242)

4^th Grade Reading

CPS

(218)

(206)

(232)

(212)

(208)

+15

(195)

(213)

(223)

+12

(232)

+10

(232)

TPS

(220)

(205)

(229)

(205)

(207)

(188)

(214)

(225)

(217)

(223)

8^th Grade Math

CPS

(281)

(266)

(296)

(277)

(271)

(254)

(275)

(287)

-6

(289)

(290)

TPS

(283)

(262)

(293)

(269)

(243)

(277)

(286)

(281)

(285)

8^th Grade Reading

CPS

(261)

(251)

-1

(274)

(255)

(253)

+10

(231)

(256)

(264)

-3

(270)

(271)

TPS

(264)

(247)

(272)

(251)

(223)

(257)

(267)

(263)

(266)

Data compiled by NAPCS from: http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/naepdata/dataset.aspx
Note: 2011 NAEP Average Scores in parenthesis; CPS - Charter Public School; TPS -Traditional Public School; FRL - Students Eligible for Free or Reduced Price Lunch; ELL - English Language Learners

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Conference-Countdown:-Quality-Authorizing

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 00:00:00 GMT

National Charter School Conference (NCSC) attendees are just five days away from an informative session on the importance of quality authorizing. Join Charter School Hall of Fame Inductees Josephine Baker (DC Charter Public School Board) and Jim Goenner (National Charter Schools Institute) for a discussion about the ways authorizing can be a catalyst for getting more great schools for our children through encouraging promising start-ups, supporting growth and replication, and ensuring schools that fail to perform get turned around or closed to protect the integrity of the charter model. This featured session, which will take place at 3:45 pm on June 22^nd, will highlight the importance of the relationship between authorizers and school operators through the incubation and oversight of charter schools.
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Conference-Countdown:-Qualms-about-the-Common-Core

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Have you heard talk in recent months about how the push for Common Core adoption might result in assessment or curricular requirements that will stifle charter school autonomy over academic decisions? Are you wondering if these concerns are valid and how they might be addressed? In a mere four days, Rick Hess, Resident Scholar and Director of Education Policy Studies for the American Enterprise Institute, will moderate a discussion featuring representatives of both the Common Core and charter school communities. Additionally, Hess will add his own take on the implications (here’s a short preview of his perspective). This featured session, which will commence at 9:00 am on June 23^rd, will be of interest to policy wonks and practitioners alike.

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CREDO-Reconsidered

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

See the attached memo from Alliance President and CEO Nelson Smith explaining how methodological shortcomings in the recent CREDO Report covered up the positive performances of charter schools.

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CREDO-Releases-New-Study-Finding-Positive-Performance-of-New-York-City-Charter-Schools

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 00:00:00 GMT

CREDO released an updated study of public charter schools in New York City today. The new study adds two years of performance data to the study released in 2010, and finds that on average public charter schools in NYC continue to outperform traditional public schools (TPS). The study presents data for all public charter schools in NYC, and then a separate set of analyses for public charter schools in Harlem where 23 percent of charter school students attend school. According to the study:

Based on the findings presented here, the typical student in New York City charter schools gains more learning in a year than his TPS counterparts, amounting to one month of additional gains in reading and five months in math. The learning advantage in Harlem equates to less than a full month of additional learning in reading but an additional seven months of progress in math.

The research on the performance of charter schools by CREDO has been on a roll of late, with a new and largely positive study being released nearly every month. These latest findings for NYC are consistent with positive overall results reported in Indiana, New Jersey, Michigan, and for charter school management organizations.

The figure below presents math and reading results from the NYC study for some of the relevant school breakouts. In general, the effect sizes for math are larger than effect sizes for reading in each of the categories. Compared with traditional public schools, students in public charter schools experience larger effect sizes in nearly every category, except for reading in the first year of a charter school and charter schools with multi-level grade configurations.

Source: CREDO. (2013). Charter school performance in New York City. Stanford, CA: Author.

While the overall results in NYC are promising, the study found that the distribution of public charter schools that perform better than traditional public schools looks better in math than in reading, as demonstrated in the figure below. Over 60 percent of NYC charter schools perform significantly better in math than matched traditional public schools, whereas only 20 percent of charter schools perform better in reading. Over 50 percent of charter schools perform as well as traditional public schools in reading, but there is room for improvement in these schools.

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CREDO-Releases-New-Study-on-Michigan-Public-Charter-Schools

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

CREDO released a new study on Michigan public charter schools today – and the research shows that public charter school students perform better than those in traditional public schools.

Beyond the big takeaway message, there are a lot of interesting breakouts of the data beyond the overall impact of charter schools on student performance at the state level. Look at the graph below, which includes all of the school-level data points from the study. The results are presented such that the effect sizes are compared to traditional public schools. For example, the overall Michigan results show that students in public charter schools scored roughly .06 standard deviations higher than traditional public schools in both math and reading. Each of the symbols represents a separate breakout of the data, plotting math results against reading results. Because the effect sizes are standardized, the results from different breakouts can be compared.

First of all, it should be noted that all of the effect sizes across the school characteristics are positive and statistically significant, compared with traditional public schools. Compared with the overall results for Michigan charter school students, students attending charter schools in Detroit are scoring about 50 percent higher in reading and 33 percent higher in math than the state charter average. As we’ve discussed recently, there has been a decidedly upward trend in research on charter school performance. Additionally, the results from Michigan are consistent with recent results CREDO released for Indiana and New Jersey.

CREDO’s study also shows higher effect sizes than the statewide results for students attending charter schools for two or more years, rural charter schools, elementary charter schools, and charter schools operated by for-profit management organizations (EMOs).

Source: CREDO. (2013). Charter school performance in Michigan. Stanford, CA: Author.

The results for student demographic breakouts show that African-American, Hispanic, and high-poverty students enrolled in charter schools perform better than similar students attending traditional public schools. Students categorized as English language learners (ELL) and special education perform about as well in charter schools as similar students in traditional public schools. Unfortunately, the analyses show that large achievement gaps remain for minority, poverty, ELL, and special education students in both charter and traditional public schools. Overall, charter schools are outperforming traditional public schools, but all public schools have work to do to decrease achievement gaps for all students.

Click here for more information.

CRPE-Releases-New-Report-on-Emerging-Topics-in-Public-Charter-School-Sector

Thu, 09 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Today, the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) released the seventh edition of Hopes, Fears, & Reality: A Balanced Look at American Charter Schools (HFR). The HFR report series consistently provides interesting research and commentary on emerging topics in the public charter school sector. Past HFR reports have focused on collaboration efforts between traditional school districts and charter schools (2011) and lessons that can be learned from high-performing charter schools (2009). Framed within the context of the public charter sector at 20 years, growing political support for public charter schools, and tight fiscal conditions, this year’s HFR explores the themes of growth and innovation.

The report includes four essays on the following topics:

Suburban Charter Schools | Jeffrey Henig (Teachers College): “Despite highly publicized instances of inroads into more affluent communities, the center of gravity in the charter school movement remains with minority and low-income populations. Although there are no signs that the center of gravity will move significantly, it is good to be alert to the possibility and begin considering what the implications might be if this were to occur. Market demand is subject to shifts as charters become more familiar and information about them becomes more detailed and better understood. Big changes have already occurred on the supply side, and the growth of larger networks of providers is likely to introduce a range of other changes, including in target audiences. But the greatest volatility may come from the interaction between market forces and the political and policy parameters within which markets operate. These have the potential to shift demand and supply, as well as how they are expressed. And they are susceptible to sharp change.”
Charter School Incubators | Ethan Gray (CEE-Trust): “Those who frequent education reform conferences often hear how much leaders in city X want to recruit KIPP to their city or funders in city Y want to invest in a replication of YES Prep (in Houston) in their city. But the reality is that for most cities, a CMO replication strategy is unlikely to either be successful or meet the demand in their communities for high-quality seats. Simply put, it is challenging to recruit national CMOs to new markets, and there are far too few CMOs to meet the growing demand. As a result, some enterprising cities have embraced a new strategy for intentionally building the supply of high-quality new schools: charter school incubation.”
Blended Learning | Michael Horn (Innosight Institute) & Tricia Maas (CRPE): “For years, technology was largely missing from charter schools.... In the last few years, however, that has begun to change. New entrants in the charter school scene are pioneering blended-learning solutions, producing great student results, and looking to scale.”
Staffing Models and Budget Implications for Blended Learning | Suzanne Simburg (CRPE) & Marguerite Roza (CRPE): “Some new school designs suggest that we can fundamentally alter the basic schooling model so that a given number of students can be taught—and taught well—by fewer teachers, who are leveraged in new ways. Although some tasks require new technology and thus new technology staff, these new school designs are just as much staffing innovations as technological innovations.”

Collectively, the essays touch on the fact that the public charter sector is both maturing and constantly changing as schools determine the most effective strategies to offer quality educational learning opportunities for students.

Click here for more information.

Details-from-the-Dashboard

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Do you find yourself lying awake at night wondering about specific indicators of charter school growth? No? Well lucky for you, we do. The Public Charter School Dashboard (Dashboard) contains statistics and indicators about the growth and quality of public charter schools at the national, state, district, and school levels. To make good on our midnight musings—and to help paint a dynamic picture of charter schools across the nation—we’ve created reports on specific indicators pulled from the most current data housed within the Dashboard. These “Details from the Dashboard” provide analysis and context for emerging trends in the national charter school sector. You can spend your waking hours checking out our concise reposts on charter schools managed by non-profit charter management organizations (CMOs) and for-profit education management organizations (EMOs), charter school openings and closures during school year 2011-2012, and unionized charter schools. With the most pertinent data pertaining to “hot button” charter school policy issues, and the regular addition of new content, these Details from the Dashboard are reports that won’t put you to sleep!
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Detroit-Families-Shopping-for-Schools-En-Masse

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

A new report from Michigan Future Schools, a non-profit committed to opening small high schools in Detroit, confirms what many of us in the charter sector knew: families in Detroit are choosing alternatives to their zoned schools en masse. Detroit ranks #3 in our annual market share report, with 37 percent of students attending charter schools in the 2010-2011 academic year. The Michigan Future Schools report indicates that 71 percent of Detroit families have “shopped” for a school for their children and 45 percent of families have selected an alternative school to the Detroit public school they are assigned to attend (more info about the study can be found here).

While we support families researching and selecting schools that are the best fit for their students, one finding in the study should give pause. Only 35 percent of families ranked academic performance as the most important factor when considering alternative schools. Research has shown that students who select higher performing schools, rather than choosing schools based on location, safety, or demographic make-up, experience higher academic gains. Policymakers in Detroit may want to consider efforts to increase the type of information parents receive about the school performance of all options in the city. School choice for choice’s sake is not likely to lead to higher levels of student performance, unless the school choice options are high quality options.

Fortunately there are some good charter options in Detroit. This past fall five Detroit charter schools were identified as Schools of Excellence. Check out the feature on Detroit Edison Public School Academy (DEPSA) in this article. And here’s an article about a college trip that students at University Prep Science and Math High School will be taking to visit Ivy League universities.

Click here for more information.

Districts-with-the-Highest-Growth-of-Public-Charter-School-Students

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Here’s the list of districts with the highest growth of students attending public charter schools between the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 school years, from our annual market share report. (We calculated growth for the 50 school districts with the largest number of students attending charter schools.)

Strong Charter School Growth in Districts with Large Numbers of Public Charter School Students: Among the 50 districts with the largest charter school student enrollments, 29 districts had growth in the number of students enrolled in public charters by 10 percent or more between the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 school years. The Clark County School district experienced the largest growth (64 percent) in the number of charter school students enrolled, primarily due to four new charter schools opening there in the 2011-2012 school year.
Three School Districts Repeat Top Growth Two Years in a Row. Three school districts made the list for highest percentage growth in public charter school students for two consecutive years: Los Angeles, Memphis, and New York City. Enrollment in public charter schools in these three school districts grew by 52,502 students between 2009-2010 and 2011-2012, a two year growth rate of 52 percent.

Click here for more information.

Districts-with-the-Highest-Number-of-Public-Charter-School-Students

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Here’s the list of districts with the highest number of students attending public charter schools, from our annual market share report. The top 10 districts remained the same between the 2012 and 2011 reports, but there was a little bit of movement among the districts. New York City experienced the biggest change, moving from #4 to #2 between 2010-2011 and 2011-2012.

Los Angeles Again Tops the List in Number of Public Charter School Students: Nearly 100,000 students attended public charter schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District during the 2011-2012 school year, the highest number for any school district in the country. The number of students enrolled in public charter schools in Los Angeles, alone, would place the Los Angeles charter schools in the top 30 of the 100 largest school districts in the United States. Public charter schools in Los Angeles enrolled 19,191 more students in 2011-2012 than in 2010-2011, a growth rate of 24 percent. Charter school growth is likely to continue in Los Angeles with the board voting against a moratorium on charter schools.
Ten School Districts with Largest Number of Students Enroll Significant Percentage of Charter School Sector. The 10 districts with the largest number of students in public charter schools represent 22.9 percent of the total public charter school population nationwide—a total of 458,215 students out of roughly 2 million. Between the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 school years, the top ten districts increased public charter school enrollment by over 62,000 students, a growth rate of 16 percent.

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Districts-with-the-Highest-Percentage-of-Public-Charter-School-Students

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Yesterday we released our annual market share report. To compile the list of school districts with the highest market share, we collected public school enrollment data to find districts where the largest proportions of students are attending public charter schools.

New Orleans Remains Number One in Market Share: An astounding 76 percent of public school students in New Orleans attended public charter schools in the 2011-2012 school year. Not only are charters in New Orleans serving a higher percentage of public school students than anywhere else in the nation, they are also the highest performing sector of public schools in the city. Even more impressive, New Orleans charter schools are approaching the average state achievement levels in Louisiana, an accomplishment rarely achieved by urban public schools.
District of Columbia and Detroit Tied for Second in Market Share: For the past four years, charter schools in the District of Columbia held the second spot for largest charter school market share nationwide. In the 2011-2012 school year, D.C. shared that spot with Detroit Public Schools. However, D.C. may pull ahead again in 2012-2013, with early indicators of charter enrollment rising to 35,000 students.
Eight New School Districts Join the Ranks of Top Market Share: Eight school districts that were not on the list for top market share percentage in the last report made it onto the list for 2011-2012. The districts included: San Antonio, Indianapolis, Roosevelt, Ariz., Adams County 50, Colo., Grand Rapids, Mich., Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Phoenix Union High, Ariz.
Seven School Districts Reach at Least 30 Percent Market Share: For the 2011-2012 academic year, St. Louis (31 percent) joined New Orleans (76 percent), Detroit (41 percent), District of Columbia (41 percent), Kansas City, Mo. (37 percent), Flint, Mich., (33 percent) and Gary, Ind. (31 percent) with at least 30 percent of public school students enrolled in public charter schools. However, with the closure of the Imagine charter schools in St. Louis after the 2011-2012 school year, it is unlikely that St. Louis will stay on the list in the next report.

Click here for more information.

Don’t-Underestimate-the-Intellectual-Capacity-of-Students

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 00:00:00 GMT

This week I attended a talk with Eva Moskowitz, the founder of Success Academies. The public charter schools in the Success Academies network, like many New York City charter schools, just posted great performance results for the 2011-2012 school year. At the talk, Eva made a statement that stuck with me: educators, policymakers, and the education system fail when they underestimate the intellectual capacity of students.

It’s a similar mantra that “no-excuses” schools uphold all across the country, and it’s a hard statement to argue with. But what does the claim mean when you get down to the day-to-day functioning of a school? How does a school make sure that it not only presents rigorous content knowledge, but also maximizes the intellectual capacity of students?

The University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research recently released a report synthesizing research on noncognitive factors, defined as “behaviors, skills, attitudes, and strategies that are crucial to academic performance in [students’] classes, but that may not be reflected in [student] scores on cognitive tests” (cognitive factors, on the other hand, are content knowledge and academic skills). The report provides a wealth of empirical research indicating that noncognitive factors matter (see the figure below for their theory of action). Specifically, the report claims that “there is little to no rigorous evidence that efforts to increase standards and require higher-level coursework—in and of themselves—are likely to lead many more students to complete high school and attain college degrees.”

What this means, is that a school could have the most rigorous and challenging set of academic content expectations, but if the adults in the building aren’t thinking about the instructional context for engaging and connecting with students to support academic mindsets, perseverance, and behaviors, the school may not see significant improvements in performance. Or worse, the school may blame students, as the report states: “Unfortunately, teachers often misdiagnose poor academic behaviors and lack of perseverance not as a lack of strategies or a problem with mindsets but as indications that students are not motivated or do not care.”

The report is dense, but it provides a lot of good information for educators, policymakers, and researchers to use when thinking about how to dramatically improve educational outcomes. And aren’t the summer months perfect for catching up on the research base?

Source: Farrington, C.A., Roderick, M., Allensworth, E., Nagaoka, J., Keyes, T.S., Johnson, D.W., & Beechum, N.O. (2012). Teaching adolescents to become learners. The role of noncognitive factors in shaping school performance: A critical literature review. Chicago: University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research.

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Dr.-Tell003F-Don't-Ask!

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 00:00:00 GMT

One of the advantages of reading the news online is that you get reader comments too. That helps when a curious piece appears – as in the case of one Shawgi Tell, Ph.D., who reminded Rochester readers of some “overlooked facts” about charter schools in a Saturday op-ed. Facts such as “Many principals at charter schools lack the same credentials as their counterparts in traditional public schools” and “Charter schools siphon away millions of dollars from school systems in segregated and impoverished urban communities.” (And so on…)

Hold your cards and letters, folks; readers have already done a job on Dr. Tell’s thesis. (Was it below the belt to include students’ reviews of the good Dr.’s classes from Ratemyprofessors.com? You decide.)

Click here for more information.

Education-Reform,-Clint-Eastwood-Style

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Are you sick of policy rankings that bury their comparisons in endless text? Well this interactive map from the Institute for a Competitive Workforce (ICW) is about as straightforward as they come. It sorts nine reform categories, including standards, data systems and student achievement into three tiers: the good, the bad and the ugly.

Charter school laws are one of the categories, and the ICW uses the NAPCS annual ranking of state charter laws against our model law as the baseline for comparison. The 11 states without a charter law are “ugly,” while the top 20 strongest charter laws are “good.” You can click on your state at either the ICW or the NAPCS site (we have an interactive map too!) to see how it measures up nationally. And for those who still crave some additional text, you can find the policy brief explaining the NAPCS Model Charter School Law components and rationale here.

Click here for more information.

Emerging-Themes-from-2012-Charter-School-Authorizing-Conference

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) just wrapped up its annual leadership conference in Memphis, Tennessee. At the conference, NACSA announced a “One Million Lives” campaign that will focus on working with authorizers to close failing charters and open twice as many high quality schools to provide one million students higher quality school options over the next five years. So it is no surprise that the major areas of discussion at the conference were around the nuances of charter school closures and the strategies for identifying and supporting good, new charter schools.

School Closures: There is general consensus that closing failing charter schools is critical—no one is arguing to change the charter bargain of autonomy in exchange for accountability. But in reality, not enough under-performing charter schools have been shut down (NACSA reports that the closure rate for charters up for renewal in 2010-11 was 6.2 percent, down from 8.8 percent in 2009-10 and 12.6 percent in 2008-09). As one panelist put it, “If [the charter sector] doesn’t deal with the closure issue, we’ll become the same blob we’re trying to replace.” So, what ideas are percolating?

Automatic or default closure mandates. Change state laws or authorizing practices to establish firm cutoffs (e.g.,priority schools as defined by ESEA) where a charter school is not granted additional time to attempt a turn-around. (Addressed in NAPCS’ Fulfilling the Compact report.)
Develop and implement performance frameworks to monitor charter achievement. And even better, use the same performance framework to make tough decisions about both charters and traditional public schools (e.g., Denver Public Schools).
Differentiated charter renewal contracts. Rather than giving charter schools 5, 10, or 15 year contracts, authorizers can develop short term contracts for schools that need to improve to fulfill the goals outlined in their charters.
Find ways to get authorizers and charter support organizations to work together to ensure that necessary closures happen.

Of course, the closure conversation involves caveats. Closure decisions have to take into account context, such as schools with high percentages of alternative education students.

Opening and Replicating High Quality Charters: There has been a good amount of talk among authorizers about dealing with the quality issue by just approving good schools on the front end. Easier said than done, right? Here are some of the ideas discussed:

Charter school incubators allow more time for structured and thoughtful new school development (for example, The Mind Trust, New Schools for New Orleans, and Tennessee Charter School Incubator).
Authorizers are concerned about performing their due diligence when it comes to replicating networks or schools operated by management organizations. Moreover, there appears to be a realization that the authorizer becomes a partner of sorts when approving significant numbers of campuses from one network, because there is more to lose if the schools do not perform well.

Relevant to both of these themes, CREDO presented new data suggesting that charter school performance in the first two years of existence is a very good predictor of future performance. While the details of the analyses need to be ironed out, the study has practical implications for authorizers. Specifically, charter schools that do not show evidence that they can produce substantive levels of positive growth in student performance within two years are unlikely to make significant improvements in future years. Authorizers can use this body of evidence to support tough closure decisions.

Click here for more information.

Estimated-Number-of-Public-Charter-Schools-and-Students,-2012-2013

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

This past fall, over 500 new public charter schools opened their doors and an additional 270,000 students enrolled in public charter schools compared with enrollment numbers from the 2011-2012 school year. With the addition of new charter schools and students, there are approximately 6,000 public charter schools enrolling over 2.3 million students across the country in the 2012-2013 school year. The 7 percent growth in the number of operating public charter schools and 13 percent growth in public charter school student enrollment are demonstrations of parents’ demand for high quality educational options.

All of these figures are available in the new Details from the Dashboard report released today. The data for the current school year are estimates until official fall enrollment counts are available through state departments of education. Data can also be found on the Public Charter Schools Dashboard.

Check out the infographic below that shows the growth in public charter schools and students enrolled over time. The number of students attending public charter schools has increased by 1 million students over the past five years, or 80 percent growth. In that same amount of time, over 1,500 additional public charter schools became available to students, representing 40 percent growth in public charter school options. Ten year growth was 240 percent for students and 135 percent for schools.

Highlights from the graphic:

Up until five years ago, the average number of additional students who enrolled in public charter schools annually was less than 150,000 students. For the past two years, the additional number of students enrolling in public charter schools has been over 220,000.
For each of the past three years, over 500 new public charter schools have opened their doors to students (531 in 2012-2013, 547 in 2011-2012, and 518 in 2010-2011). The number of new schools has been 400 or more for the past six years.
For each of the past six years, between 100 and 200 public charter schools have closed annually. The charter schools closed for a variety of reasons, including low enrollment, financial concerns, and low academic performance. The closures provide evidence that the charter school bargain works; schools that do not meet the needs of their students should be closed.

Click below for a larger version.

Click here for more information.

Finding-Best-Practices-Among-Charter-Schools-Serving-Native-Students

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Results from the Nation’s Report card (NAEP) indicate that there is a widening achievement gap between Native American students and their non-Native American peers. Specifically, the report finds that American Indian and Alaska Native students, regardless of whether they attend traditional public schools or those under the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education, are lagging behind in reading and math.

In states where demographic enrollment data are available, there were 48 public charter schools in 12 states in the 2011-2012 academic year enrolling a majority of Native American and Alaska Native students. While the numbers are not large (less than one percent of all charter schools), these charter schools present alternative educational opportunities for students.

The National Indian Education Association (NIEA) released a new report conducted on its behalf by Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education on the work of public charter schools serving Native communities. The goal of the report was to find the qualities and practices of charter schools that have a demonstrated track record of successfully educating Native students. Research has shown that cultural programming can help Native students improve their achievement. However, little is known about what charters serving Native students are doing in terms of developing best practices in teaching Native students.

The authors choose three charter schools specifically geared toward serving American Indian and Alaska Native students for further site visits and interviews. The schools—Klamath River Early College of the Redwoods in Klamath, Calif.; Pemayetv Emahakv in Okeechobee, Fla.; and Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Immersion School in Hayward, Wisc.—were selected based on their successes in improving student achievement on standardized tests, providing culturally-based education to their students, and creating school climates that are respectful and reinforce Native traditions as well as instill self-pride. Among these schools, the authors found common traits including: extremely small, custom learning communities; strong, visionary leaders; political access and leverage in charter context; stability of tribal government; and alliances and relationships with the community.

One of the biggest challenges to replication the success of these schools, perhaps not surprisingly, is the human capital pipeline. While all charter schools struggle to find outstanding school leaders and teachers, schools that focus on Native culture face the additional hurdles of finding and developing teacher fluency in culture and language and tribe-specific context. Overcoming this challenge will impact the sustainability and success of charter schools serving majority Native American students.

The report concludes by recommending schools develop instructional delivery for Native students by:

Creating a forum for schools to share ideas and collaborate
Providing accessible research and information
Conducting more research into effective practices
Advocating for tribal control over charter law

For more resources on Native education, check out the National Charter School Resource Center eNewsletter. We encourage more studies like the NIEA report to shed more light on this critically understudied topic in the public charter school sector.

Click here for more information.

Florida-Charter-School-Students-Outperform-Traditional-Public-School-Counterparts

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 00:00:00 GMT

A new report released by the Florida Department of Education this week shows charter schools are providing high-quality education options to families. Student Achievement in Florida's Charter Schools: A Comparison of the Performance of Charter School Students with Traditional Public School Students shows charter school children outperform their traditional public school counterparts in math, science and reading on state assessments.

Last year, Florida had a total of 518 charter schools serving 183,000 Florida students–more than seven percent of the state’s total public school population. According to our annual market share report, Miami-Dade and Broward County Public Schools ranked 6th and 10th, respectively, for the highest number of students enrolled in public charter schools. Hillsborough County Public Schools was 2nd in terms of the largest growth in the number of public charter school students enrolled.

According to the Florida Department of Education’s Achievement study:

Public charter schools had a higher percentage of students scoring at grade level or higher on the standardized FCAT 2.0 reading test than traditional schools at the elementary, middle and high school levels. Public charter school performance results were higher at the aggregated level and for each demographic subgroup breakout.
Public charter schools had a higher percentage of students scoring at grade level or higher on the FCAT 2.0 math test than traditional schools in elementary and middle school (high school was not tested). This held true for African-American, Hispanic and low-income students as well as those receiving Exceptional Student Education (ESE) and English Language Learners (ELL).
The achievement gap was smaller for charter school students in the 18 comparisons studied between white students and minority students in reading, math and science.

The report is part of a wave of recent studies showing positive public charter school performance, and it concludes “The ultimate proof of success for any charter school is the achievement of its students. The 2011-12 student achievement data demonstrate that charter schools offer parents and policy makers a viable option for improving education in the state.”

Click here for more information.

From-Las-Vegas-to-Philadelphia,-NAPCS-Report-on-Growing-Charter-School-Enrollment-Noted

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

News outlets across the country responded to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools’ report on rising enrollments in public charter schools nationwide. Dan Tafoya, director of the charter school office for Nevada’s Clark County School District, which saw a 64 percent increase in public charter school enrollment—the highest growth of any metropolitan area in the country—told the Las Vegas Sun his district sees charters as “incubators of innovation and pioneers in education.” In a press release, NAPCS President and CEO Nina Rees said: “The increase in public charter-school enrollment in all types of communities across America shows that parent demand for school options continues to grow. These numbers will continue to rise as teachers and parents work together to provide high-quality options in communities across America.” In the National Review, Jillian Kay Melchior said of the 13 percent increase in public charter school enrollment nationwide: “Sounds like a mandate to me.”

Additional coverage of the NAPCS report can be found in: New York Times, Huffington Post, Education Week, Boston Globe, Phoenix Business Journal, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Miami Herald, Minnesota Public Radio, EdSource, 8 News Now, Education Week, Philadelphia Public School Notebook, Youngstown Vindicator, Arizona Republic, Tucson Citizen, Kansas City Star, Boston Business Journal, Milwaukee Business Journal, FOX 59, Memphis Commercial Appeal, Memphis Daily, The Epoch Times, Detroit News, Plain Dealer, Herald-Sun, WEAU

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Funding-Disparity-Persists-for-Public-Charter-Schools-in-Five-Large-Cities

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Research on per pupil funding from 2002-2003 and 2006-2007 documented large disparities between public charter schools and traditional public schools. The 2002-2003 data showed public charter schools receiving 21.7 percent less per pupil funding than traditional public schools. The gap in 2006-2007 was slightly diminished to 19.2 percent. Unfortunately for five large cities, the funding gap in 2010-2011 remained.

In a new report, Education’s Fiscal Cliff: Real or Perceived, researchers find that public charter schools in Denver, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Newark, and Washington, D.C. received an average of one third less per pupil funding than traditional public schools, which equates to an average of $4,000 less per student (see the table below). The gap varies from $2,100 in Denver to nearly $13,000 in Washington, D.C. For three cities, Denver, Los Angeles, and Milwaukee, the gap in funding grew between 2006-2007 and 2010-2011. In Newark and Washington, D.C. the funding gap decreased. However, in these two cities, public charter schools received more than $10,000 less per student than traditional public schools.

City	Traditional Public School Per Pupil Funding	Public Charter School Per Pupil Funding	Funding Disparity	Funding Disparity as Percent of Traditional Public School Per Pupil Funding
Denver	$13,283	$11,139	$2,144	16.1%
Los Angeles	$13,446	$8,780	$4,666	34.7%
Milwaukee	$15,018	$10,298	$4,720	31.4%
Newark	$26,187	$15,973	$10,214	39.0%
Washington, D.C.	$29,145	$16,361	$12,784	43.9%

Source: Maloney, L, M. Batdorff, J. May, & M. Terrell. (2013). Education’s Fiscal Cliff, Real or Perceived?

The data serve as a reminder that in many states and cities, public charter schools operate under inequitable conditions, receiving less than traditional public schools while being held to the same measures of accountability.

Click here for more information.

Great-and-Still-Striving

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Yesterday we wrote about positive results from the UCSD meta analysis of charter schools research. The results deserve applause; there is no doubt about that. Further, the results charter schools are experiencing in big cities are truly remarkable. In areas like NYC, Boston, and Chicago that have been the focus of studies, public charter schools are producing very large positive results, results that skeptics thought were unlikely.

But are any of these findings enough?

A recent study of charter schools in Massachusettsshowed urban charter schools outperformed other urban traditional public schools, consistent with the findings of the meta-analysis. But a back of the napkin estimate (it wasn’t specifically reported in the study) suggests that the large positive results in urban charter schools don’t quite diminish the urban/non-urban achievement gap. Many high performing charter schools are at a turning point. They are exceeding expectations, receiving accolades, and providing good educational options to students. The next hurdle is making these great schools the best schools in the district, state, and nation to make inroads on persistent achievement gaps. And the charter school movement as a whole has work to do in order to make sure that quality is more widespread.

The leaders of “no excuses” schools, like KIPP who was featured in the meta analysis, would likely agree that the findings aren’t enough. By all measures in the meta-analysis, KIPP schools are doing phenomenally well on standardized assessments, and the majority of KIPP students graduate from high school and attend college. Except KIPP isn’t satisfied, yet, because many students have faltered when it comes to college completion. KIPP is not trying to keep these facts secret. Instead, KIPP has identified the challenge and is working to make sure that KIPP schools excel on all measures of student success.

The meta-analysis should certainly be embraced as it highlights the great work of many charter schools, but we should also take a lesson from great charter schools—even with great results, great charter schools buckle down and strive to ensure that they are the best schools in the nation.

Click here for more information.

Growth-in-Charter-Schools-Operated-by-Management-Organizations

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The table below is an update to our Details from the Dashboard report on CMOs and EMOs with data from the 2010-2011 academic year. Schools operated by non-profit charter management organizations (CMOs) continue to experience the highest levels of growth in terms of the number of schools and number of students enrolled. Of note, CMO charter schools accounted for 20 percent of the new charter schools that opened in 2010-2011. With growing interest in replication of existing models, it will be interesting to see if this percentage increases in future years. While the number of schools operated by for-profit charter management organizations (EMOs) appears to be slowing down, enrollment in existing EMOs continues to grow (likely due to a significant percentage of virtual EMO charter schools that can enroll large numbers of students).

Number of Charter Schools and Students Enrolled in Charter Schools

		2007-08	2008-09	2009-10	2010-11
Total number of charter schools
	CMO	494 (11.5%)	620 (13.4%)	775 (15.8%)	1,047 (19.9%)
	EMO	440 (10.2%)	639 (13.8%)	637 (12.9%)	650 (12.3%)
	Freestanding	3,363 (78.3%)	3,379 (72.8%)	3,507 (71.3%)	3,575 (67.8%)
Growth in the number of charter schools
	CMO		25.5%	25.0%	35.1%
	EMO		44.2%	-0.3%	2.0%
	Freestanding		0.5%	3.8%	1.9%
Number of new charter schools
	CMO	70 (16.0%)	80 (16.7%)	51 (11.6%)	106 (20.3%)
	EMO	36 (8.2%)	66 (13.8%)	18 (4.1%)	38 (7.3%)
	Freestanding	331 (75.7%)	332 (69.5%)	371 (84.3%)	378 (72.4%)
Total number of students enrolled in charter schools
	CMO	124,525 (9.6%)	168,596 (11.7%)	228,273 (14.0%)	331,438 (18.2%)
	EMO	205,042 (15.9%)	302,738 (20.9%)	334,945 (20.6%)	365,819 (20.0%)
	Freestanding	957,149 (74.0%)	966,738 (66.9%)	1,054,820 (64.8%)	1,107,095 (60.7%)
Growth in the number of students enrolled in charter schools
	CMO		35.4%	35.4%	45.2%
	EMO		47.6%	10.6%	9.2%
	Freestanding		1.0%	9.1%	5.0%

Source: Compiled by NAPCS using the Public Charter Schools Dashboard and reports on CMO and EMO management organizations from the National Education Policy Center.

Click here for more information.

Growth-in-Charter-Schools-Operated-by-Management-Organizations:-Interactive-Feature

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

We've posted a new interactive data tool (preview below) that lets you explore changes in the number of charter schools and students enrolled in charter schools.

Click here for more information.

High-Performing-CMOs-Reveal-Promising-Practices-for-All-Students-and-Teachers

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Last week, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) and Mathematica Policy Research released the final report in their series examining nonprofit charter management organization (CMO) effectiveness (see prior reports here and here). Over the course of four years, the two research organizations sought to determine whether CMOs have an impact on student achievement (some do), and to identify common elements among high performing CMOs.

This report gets under the hood of the previous report—providing details about what the practices associated with higher performance look like, as well as naming some of the top performing CMOs. Although we were curious about who was included in the prior studies, they didn’t name names. Now we know 5 out of the 10 top performing CMOs found in the study: Aspire Public Schools, Inner City Education Foundation (ICEF), KIPP DC, Uncommon Schools, and YES Prep Public Schools. We are excited that these great organizations are getting credit for the amazing work they do. They are dramatically improving the life opportunities for their students.

We are also excited that this and some other recent reports are exploring promising practices found in high performing charter schools. This report found that high expectations for student behavior and intensive teacher coaching and mentoring are common across these schools, and statistically correlate with higher achievement. These are high yield practices that could be applied in both charter and traditional public schools. Similarly, a research study conducted by the California Charter Schools Association highlighted practices common among California schools that are closing the achievement gap, including: results-focused instructional practices, data-driven curricular and instructional decisions, and making parents full partners in students' education. And, this article by Jim Peyser of New Schools Venture Fund (and National Charter School Hall of Famer) revealed operational practices common among high performing charter schools he has observed over many years.

While much more research needs to be done to uncover the most promising practices for all types of students, recent research has added to this discussion. We hope researchers continue their commitment to identifying and disseminating more information about effective practices.
Click here for more information.

Historic-Approval-Rating-for-Public-Charter-Schools

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:00:00 GMT

According to the Gallup/Phi Delta Kappa International Poll released today, public charter schools garnered a 70 percent approval rating—the highest recorded since the question was first asked 10 years ago.

Children across America are reaping the benefits of high-performing charter schools and are sharing their satisfaction with family and friends. Support for charter schools is especially strong among Americans under age 40, with 76 percent of Generation Y expressing support.

The poll also found that 70 percent of Americans believe in giving teachers more “flexibility to teach in ways they think best.” Public charter schools offer teachers the freedom to do just that, as long as they get results for their students. Innovative efforts to develop and implement next-generation learning models, like virtual and hybrid school models, that make Internet access and exposure to digital learning part of the classroom experience are especially promising.

Click here to read the report in its entirety and here to participate in our online discussion about this historic level of support.

Click here for more information.

Interview-with-CRPE's-Betheny-Gross-on-Blended-Learning-Model-Innovations

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Blended learning is an innovative education model that combines online and traditional instruction. The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to study the financial implications of a range of blended learning models. I caught up with Dr. Betheny Gross, CRPE's senior research analyst and research director, to talk about the study.

Q: What is the framework of the study?
A: There are two parts to the study. One is to continue to develop a classification of blended [learning]. People take different approaches to blended learning. Many of the approaches are similar, but with their own take depending on different theories of action about teaching and learning.

Some people go into blended thinking they need to radically personalize [education] for each student, and the best way we can do that is to harness technology. There are others that think about how best to optimize teachers by maximizing opportunities for kids to have in-depth discussions with teachers who are addressing their specific needs and goals. A way to do that is to have some of the instruction and curriculum happen over technology.

Part of the work we’re doing is thinking through theories of action…what type of school do they imply in terms of teachers and technology, and then costing it out. In our observation of schools that are implementing these models, we’re asking and commenting on questions such as: What does the resource allocation look like? What resources are needed for start-up and for continuation [schools]? How are resources distributed throughout the building? Do traditional revenue structures correspond or not to the way these schools need to structure their resources?

Q: What is the motivation of the study?
A: A lot of people are looking to blended as something that’s a new and a vital piece of our progress in education. They’re seeing it as an opportunity to expand the capacity and productivity of teachers in schools. There’s a lot of energy behind it right now, and a lot of development going on in the field to make sure that there’s good research to support that development.

Q: What do you hope to find out?
A: What we want to understand is how resources are used, and the extent that we see a new distribution of labor and technology for the delivery of instruction. We also want to understand how schools pursuing this work can do it in a sustainable way. This is a challenging question because so many of the schools engaging in blended learning received substantial start-up grants. And we know that there are and can be rather substantial startup or transition costs, especially if it requires a big investment in network and fiber.

Q: What role do public charter schools play in blended learning?
A: Public charter schools are called on to be our innovators, to be our incubators. They have both the incentive and opportunity to really explore these models because of their ability to optimize resources in schools.

I think there are a lot of incentives for charters. It’s not lost on anybody in the charter sector that they have to be very careful with budgets, which tend to be very tight. This is an opportunity to think through how technology can optimize their resources.

With the freedom public charter schools have around resource allocation, they really do have the opportunity to go out and rethink the whole school from top to bottom. They don’t need to have 15 classrooms with a teacher and 30 kids in them. They don’t need to think about [getting] into spend-it-or-lose-it arrangements. They can think about how to structure their spending; how to reconfigure their revenue and expenditure flows; and different ways to structure pay for teachers.

This is all within their reach–they don’t have many of the traditional revenue or expenditure constraints that district schools are now slowly unpacking. Charters can move very quickly. It’s not a surprise that a lot of the schools in our study are public charter schools.

Q: What role do you see blended learning playing in the future of public education?
A: I think it depends on what we find in these early studies, and there are also impact studies going on. I anticipate, although I don’t have any particular evidence to back this up, that we are going to see it more and more. I think that it’s an approach that addresses a lot of resource challenges that we are facing.

I think it’s also an approach that’s very respecting of the fact that kids are brought up interacting with information differently than we did when we were kids. It tries to take advantage of that, and meet kids where they are with how they work with and think through information. And in that sense, it has a lot of great potential.

Q: What is the timeline of the study?
A: The study is a 19 month study starting from last December. An interim report will come out sometime in the fall, and then the final will be out the following summer.

Photo: Dr. Betheny Gross, Senior Research Analyst and Research Director at the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE)

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Leveraging-Charter-School-Experiences-in-Traditional-Public-Schools

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Yesterday, the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution released a report titled "Learning from the Successes and Failures of Charter Schools" authored by Harvard economics professor Roland Fryer. The study built on Dr. Fryer’s earlier work in 35 New York City charter schools to identify common practices among high-performing schools. Five practices were identified from the NYC charters and then applied to low performing traditional schools in the Houston and Denver in hopes of raising student achievement. The Hamilton Project study reports “promising” results from the early data.

The five practices implemented in Houston and Denver are:

extended time at school,
strong administrators and teachers,
data-driven instruction,
small-group tutoring, and
creating a “culture of high expectations.”

According to Dr. Fryer, these elements explain roughly 50 percent of the variance between high and low performing schools. He emphasized that “you can’t cut your way to excellence,” since turnaround isn’t just about replacing the adults in the system, but giving them ample support and training.

Other panelists at the Hamilton Project event included Terry Grier, Superintendent of Houston Independent School District. He noted that the five practices identified by Dr. Fryer aren’t new or even surprising: “We know what works…why do we need so much political will to do it?” Seth Andrew, Superintendent and Founder of Democracy Prep Public Schools—a high performing charter network in New York City—noted that the charter model gave him the flexibility to allocate resources that impacted school culture and success, such as higher salary for teachers to attract and retain top talent. There were many other interesting data points and experiences shared during the session, which can be viewed on C-SPAN.

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Lifting-the-Public-Charter-Cap-in-Massachusetts:-Will-It-Reduce-Achievement-Gaps003F-Research-Says-Yes.

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

In January 2010, the Massachusetts legislature raised the cap on public charter schools in the state’s lowest-performing school districts. This opened the way for 20 new charter schools state-wide, with 11 slotted for Boston. As the Massachusetts Public Charter School Association (MPCSA) points out, the state legislature recognized the tremendous impact public charter schools have on student performance, and eased the cap with the specific goal of using high-quality charter schools to tackle persistent racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps.

Public charter schools in Boston have demonstrated large increases in achievement (see the 2009 Harvard/MIT study). Specifically, the study found very large gains in both math and reading for middle and high school students attending charter schools in Boston. Further, MPCSA reports that “the five highest performing public high schools are all charters and seven of the eight highest performing public middle schools are charters (based on 2010 MCAS scores comparing open admission public schools).”

Any curious person would ask: Did the policymakers’ decision to lift the cap on the number of charter schools in Massachusetts actually lead to better student outcomes?

As luck would have it, a new working paper by a researcher at MIT takes a very thorough and innovative look at the projected impact of opening new charter schools in Boston and reports: “[S]imulations show that Boston's proposed expansion, which raises the share of middle schoolers attending charters from 9 percent to 15 percent, is expected to reduce the gap in math scores between Boston and the rest of Massachusetts by 10 percent, and reduce citywide achievement gaps by roughly 5 percent.”

Take a look at two of the graphics presented in the paper (see below). Figure 8 shows the projected average test scores of all students in Boston as the number of charter schools increases. The vertical black dotted line indicates the number of charter middle schools as of the 2010-11 school year, and the red dotted line indicates the number of charter middle schools after the proposed number of new schools open. Figure 9 shows the projected achievement gap among all students in Boston as the number of charter schools increases.

Source: Walters, C. (2012). “Predicting the effects of charter school expansion.” MIT working paper, http://economics.mit.edu/files/8138.

The big take away: The presence of more high-quality charter schools leads to higher citywide test scores and smaller achievement gaps throughout the city.

The simulations in the study indicate that there may be a limit in terms of demand to enroll in charter schools at about 24 percent of district market share. However, with 20,000 students on waiting lists to attend the roughly 7,000 seats currently available in charter schools in Boston, and a total of roughly 60,000 students in the district, it is feasible that charter schools could enroll between 40-50 percent of all public school students before demand would taper off. Moreover, if public charter schools produce the type of performance increases (and reductions in the achievement gap) that the simulations project, Boston could see parental demand for access to high-quality charter schools increase as the public sees significant results.

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Measuring-the-Impact-of-School-Closures-on-Student-Performance

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The public charter school sector is coalescing around school quality. The goal is to support the growth of new, high-quality charter schools and close low-performing charter schools (see NAPCS’ response to NACSA’s One Million Lives Campaign).

What is striking is that the public charter sector is reaching a consensus around the need for strategic charter school closures. Conversely, you don’t often hear clamoring for closure of low-performing traditional public schools from district school supporters—whether it’s community nonprofits or teachers unions. Closures of traditional public schools have typically been proposed by local school districts or called for by the U.S. Department of Education, and public responses verge on outrage (see examples from Philadelphia, D.C., Chicago, and NYC).

School closures are upsetting for students, parents, teachers, school staff, and the community. However, recent research on the DC Closure Initiative, which closed or consolidated 32 elementary and middle traditional public schools the summer before the 2008-2009 school year, may provide some comfort to policymakers and educators contemplating school closures. The researchers found that student performance dipped in the first year after school closures, but rebounded by the second year. Moreover, students affected by school closures did not demonstrate higher rates of subsequent mobility. The study builds on previous research on the impact of school closures by RAND and the Consortium on Chicago School Research.

The findings from the study support the notion that making tough but necessary decisions to close chronically low-performing schools will ultimately ensure student access to better learning environments.

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NACSA’s-“Index-of-Essential-Practices”-Is-a-Roadmap-for-Good-Authorizing

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:00:00 GMT

The National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) released its 2012 edition of the Index of Essential Practices, a tool to guide authorizer practice and self-evaluation.

With more public focus and urgency around improving quality in charter schools, the quality of authorizing is increasingly in the spotlight. The 12 practices outlined in the Index give a baseline for good authorizing. NACSA surveyed 157 active authorizers to determine the number of essential practices public charter school authorizers have implemented. The report found that only a small percentage of respondents have all 12 practices in place, but most are using at least nine. Authorizers who implement these practices can improve their authorizing, and in turn the quality of the schools they oversee. To read more about the Index, see here and here.

Image via NACSA website
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NAGB-Again-Pursuing-Analysis-of-Public-Charter-Schools-on-NAEP

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

For almost a decade, there’s been a heated debate over what the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly referred to as the nation’s report card, tells us about student achievement in public charter schools.

A couple of items of consensus emerged from the debate:

NAEP data should be used and interpreted with caution. NAEP data present snapshot results of different students at different points in time. Moreover, comparing a snapshot of student performance between charters and traditional public schools does not control for the potential bias of students selecting to attend charter schools. (Check out this transcript of a 2004 PBS NewsHour interview with our President and CEO Nina Rees, who was then Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Innovation and Improvement at the U.S. Department of Education, commenting on the release of 2003 NAEP data.)
NAEP data may be used for descriptive analyses that can generate hypotheses for further study.

With that background, the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), the governing board of NAEP, commissioned a new study of NAEP data for charter schools this past summer. At their November board meeting, exploratory results were presented. The study addresses the following questions:

Who attends charter schools?
Does student achievement differ between charter schools and regular public school students?
How do student subgroups perform in charter schools?
How do charter schools compare with regular public schools in urban school systems?

While the study authors, Naomi Chudowsky and Alan Ginsburg, use caution about comparing public charter schools and traditional public schools with NAEP data, they report the following:

“There is a consistent pattern of higher average NAEP scores for regular public schools than for charter schools when we look at the nation as a whole. But public school advantage has diminished.”
“However, the closer we focus in on large cities, where most charter schools are located, the more the picture changes in favor of charter schools. In all large cities combined, student achievement is roughly even overall, but the black and Hispanic subgroups show higher scores in charter schools.”
“When we examined four urban areas specifically (DC, Atlanta, Chicago, Milwaukee), students in charter schools significantly outperformed their peers in regular public schools in almost all of the subjects/grades analyzed.”
“Charter school class sizes are smaller, and there is some evidence that charter school students receive more instructional time in some subjects.”

Last year we wrote about the most recent 2011 NAEP data (see here and here), pointing out the rise in NAEP test scores for public charter schools, especially among several subgroups and on the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA).

So what can NAEP data tell us about the performance of charter schools? In the best case scenario, the uptick in NAEP scores reflects the overall upward trend in charter student performance that more rigorous studies have been identifying over the past decade (see our write-up here). NAEP data on charter schools should be used in context and with caution. The higher NAEP test scores for charter schools may suggest that charter schools are getting better in comparison with traditional public schools, but the data cannot say this definitively. Fortunately, longitudinal studies using student-level data (and a meta-analysis of these studies) are pointing in the direction of increasing student performance of charter schools.

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NAPCS-Charter-School-Survey,-National-Waiting-List-Results

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Based on a national survey of public charter schools conducted in the spring of 2012, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) estimates that there were 610,000 students on waiting lists to attend public charter schools before the beginning of the 2011-2012 academic year.

NAPCS previously estimated 365,000 students on waiting lists for public charter schools in 2008-2009 and 420,000 students on waiting lists in 2009-2010. The waiting list for charter schools grew 67 percent between 2008-09 and 2011-12 and the waiting list grew 45 percent between 2009-10 and 2011-12.

Demand for public charter schools remains strong. The waiting lists for public charter schools continues to grow, even as new public charter schools open and existing public charter schools add seats through expansion. During the four academic years from 2008-09 through 2011-12, public charter schools added over 300,000 additional seats through the opening of new schools. Moreover, during the same four academic years period of time, existing public charter schools added over 350,000 additional seats. In other words, even though public charter schools added an additional 650,000 seats between 2008-09 and 2011-12, the waiting list grew to 610,000.

The NAPCS national survey of charter schools had an overall response rate of 31.6 percent. Of the schools that responded, 63.8 percent indicated that they had a waiting list to enroll students in the months leading up to the 2011-12 school year. The graph below presents the percentage of students on waiting lists by grade level (88.1 percent of the schools that responded that they had a waiting list reported data by grade level). The data indicate that traditional entry grade levels (i.e., Kindergarten, 6th grade, and 9th grade) had the highest percentage of students on waiting lists to attend charter schools.

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NAPCS-Research-Summary-on-Public-Charter-Schools’-Academic-Performance-Shows-Positive-Trends

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMT

We've released a new report summarizing the prominent research studies published over the past four years that compared the academic performance of students who attended public charter schools and traditional public schools. The quick takeaway: the gold standard research since 2010 shows public charter school students are outperforming their traditional school peers.

Of the 14 studies published since 2010, three national studies and 10 regional studies from across the country found positive academic performance results for students in charter schools compared to their traditional school peers. One Utah-based regional study found mixed to negative results. The research studies that were included in this report—from organizations including the Center on Reinventing Public Education, CREDO and Mathematica Policy Research—used longitudinal student-level data and robust analysis to examine the impact of public charter schools compared to district schools. The national studies looking at charter management organizations, single-site models and the KIPP model found that public charter schools have a positive impact on student achievement compared to traditional public schools. In Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York City, Washington, D.C. and Wisconsin, the regional studies also found that public charter schools have a positive impact on student achievement.

For a summary of studies prior to 2010, see the NAPCS report, Measuring Charter Performance: A Review of Public Charter School Achievement Studies. Also, check out a visual display of public charter school performance effects over time.

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NAPCS-Resource-Roundup

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Our new year has gotten off to a great start with many new resources on developments in the public charter school sector. Some focus areas from this month include:

Charter Schools in Rural America
Did you know that rural charters are the fastest growing segment of the public charter school sector? In response to this trend, we’ve created materials highlighting rural charter schools, including an issue brief, Details from the Dashboard report, blog, Dashboard data page, press release, and EdWeek article covering the issue brief.

Federal Policy
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools works with every branch of the federal government to ensure that issues around public charter schools in the nation’s capital receive the attention and respect they deserve. Recent federal activity we’ve monitored for impact on the charter sector include the Race to the Top Year One State Summaries, efforts by the Ed & Workforce Committee Passes Final Two ESEA Reauthorization Bills, the Administration's Budget Request for FY 2013, and Preserving Charter School Autonomy and Accountability in ESEA Flexibility (a guest blog by NACSA President and CEO, Greg Richmond).

Protecting Pension Benefits for Charter School Employees
The IRS recently issued Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would force states to prohibit charter school teachers from participating in state retirement plans. In total, NAPCS estimates more than 93% of our country's charter school workforce could potentially be effected. Learn more and take action.

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NAPCS-Resource-Roundup

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The upcoming months hold two of the most significant opportunities for the public charter school sector to collectively work to strengthen the quality of our sector and share its accomplishments – National Charter Schools Week and the National Charter Schools Conference. As we continue to gear up for these events, here are some of our focus areas over the past month:

Federal Advocacy
NAPCS continues to work with every branch of the federal government to increase public charter school support and statutory recognition. We produced an Annual Performance Report that provides year one Race to the Top state summaries, are working with Congress to secure favorable treatment of public charter schools within Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization, and are advocating for increased funding for the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP). We also regularly post advocacy updates on our efforts to work with the IRS to amend their recently issued Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would force states to prohibit charter school teachers from participating in state retirement plans. We’ve had tremendous response from the charter field as well as federal decision makers. For the most updated information on this issue and templates for state outreach, please visit our website.

State Policy Efforts
NAPCS continues to actively work with on-the-ground partners to advance public charter school policy environments in several states. We gained ground in Virginia and Kentucky during their legislative sessions, and partnerships with policy stakeholders in Alabama, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, and New Jersey remain active.

Data Dashboard Resources
We've posted a new interactive data tool that lets you explore changes in the number of charter schools and students enrolled in charter schools operated by management organizations. Our new data table is an update to our Details from the Dashboard report on CMOs and EMOs with data from the 2010-2011 academic year.

Click here for more information.

NAPCS-Updates-the-Public-Charter-Schools-Dashboard

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

For the fourth consecutive year, NAPCS has released the most comprehensive set of charter school data publicly available. The Public Charter School Dashboard contains statistics and indicators about the growth and quality of public charter schools at the national, state, district, and school levels. Notably, the Dashboard hosts detailed information on every charter school in operation across the country, including enrollment, student demographics, and school achievement data. The updated Dashboard now includes data for the 2011-2012 academic year.

Here are some facts from the updated Dashboard:

Over 2.0 million students attended public charter schools in the 2011-2012 academic year, representing a 12.6 percent growth from the prior school year.
As we reported last week, 610,000 students were placed on waiting lists to attend public charter schools before the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year.
538 new public charter schools opened for the 2011-2012 school year.
There are now 5,611 public charter schools across the country, representing growth of 7.0 percent from the prior school year.
The average public charter school has been open for 7.4 years. 25.5 percent of charter schools have been open for less than three years.
90 percent of public charter schools are start-ups.
As of the 2010-2011 school year, 67.7 percent of public charter schools were independent or freestanding (e.g., not operated by a management organization), while 20.0 percent were run by non-profit management organizations and 12.3 percent were run by for-profit management organizations.

There is a lot of data to explore. If you want to learn more about how to make use of the data in the Dashboard, come to our session on Wednesday.

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National-Charter-School-Resource-Center-Releases-“Charter-School-Authorizer-Catalog”-Data-Resource

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 00:00:00 GMT

In case you didn’t get to talk to them at the national charter schools conference, the National Charter Schools Resource Center (NCSRC) released their Charter School-Authorizer Catalog. This great data resource provides a comprehensive look at authorizing practices nationwide, such as the length of charter contracts, renewal processes, and the total number of charters that have applied to each authorizer. The catalog also provides data for specific charter school contract terms, including the dates of the initial charter contract, renewal terms, and closure dates. Once you find a charter school in their catalog, there is a link to our Public Charter School Dashboard to find out more information about the school. NCSRC’s charter school-authorizer catalog is up-to-date through the 2010-2011 school year, and NCSRC is currently in the process of surveying authorizers for the 2011-2012 school year.

A couple of interesting facts about authorizers and the number of charter schools in their portfolios:

The Texas Education Agency, a state education agency authorizer, is the largest authorizer in the country with 488 charter school campuses. The Arizona State Board for Charter Schools, an independent chartering board, comes in a close second with 460 charter schools.
Local school districts make up 86 percent of authorizers nationwide. The largest district authorizer is Los Angeles Unified with 181 charter schools. The top 10 authorizers in terms of the number of charter schools include three other school districts: Chicago Public Schools (111 charters), Miami Dade County Public Schools (89 charters), and Philadelphia School District (76 charters).
Even though there are school districts with large numbers of charter schools, the majority of local school districts (59 percent) contract only one charter school.
There are currently two municipalities that can authorize charter schools: the Indianapolis Mayor’s Office (22 charters) and Milwaukee Common Council (5 charters).

You can find more information on authorizers in the National Association for Charter School Authorizers’ (NACSA) annual report.

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National-Initiative-to-Assess-Access-to-Charter-Schools-Facilities-Underway

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The Colorado League of Charter Schools has undertaken a research and policy initiative focusing on the state of charter schools facilities. The Charter Schools Facilities Initiative is a nationwide effort to empirically assess charter school access to facilities and to use the data to impact policy and practice. To date, the CO League has completed four reports for Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, and Texas. There are two additional reports due in 2012 for New York and Tennessee, and Idaho, Michigan, and New Jersey are in the process of completing the survey. States interested in participating in the initiative can find information here.

What has been learned so far from the initiative? Some common themes emerged:

Charter schools are forced to spend significant operating dollars on buildings.
Fewer than half of charter schools have kitchen facilities compliant with National School Lunch Program NSLP guidelines.
Local and state capital funding programs are not a significant source of funding for charter school facilities.
Charter school access to empty or underutilized public school land or buildings is sporadic.
Common amenities such as libraries, sports fields, gymnasiums, lunch rooms, etc. are limited for charter school students.
Charter school facilities and classrooms are too small compared to industry standards.

Equitable access to capital funding and facilities remains a challenge for charter schools in many states. According to NAPCS’ Model Law:

Charter laws in four states (Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, and Nevada) do not include any provisions for equitable access.
The majority of state laws (26/42, or 62 percent) include only a small number of the model law's provisions for equitable access to capital funding and facilities.
Eight states include some of the provisions from the model law.
Three states (California, Colorado, and Indiana) include most of the provisions that provide equitable access.
But there isn’t a single state with legislation that includes all of the model law’s provisions for equitable access to capital funding and facilities.

There is some research indicating that school facilities impact student achievement outcomes (see here, here, and here). And check out this interesting read on innovative school facilities.

Image via Google Images

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NBER-Team-Disputes-Negative-CREDO-Study

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The exuberant new Hoxby study of NYC charters, reviewed here yesterday, came bundled with a surprise: a stinging “note” criticizing the methodology of CREDO’s downbeat 16-state charter study released in June – and affirming concerns the Alliance raised at that time.

A central issue was that CREDO’s student matching technique failed to adequately mitigate the effect of self-selection bias on the achievement outcomes. Self-selection bias is a fairly complicated statistical problem, but it can be explained in layman’s terms.

Parents voluntarily choose to enroll their children in charter schools. Parents choose charter schools for a variety of reasons. Self-selection bias arises because the motivation for selecting charter schools makes the students different than students who remain in traditional public schools, in ways that may impact student achievement. To attribute achievement differences to the time spent in charter schools rather than the motivation to attend charter schools, researchers must control for self-selection bias.

The most striking evidence that something was amiss with the CREDO study was that half of the charter school sample was matched after the decision to attend a charter school had been made. Specifically, half of the charter school students did not have test scores in traditional public schools so CREDO did not actually know which school the students would have attended if they had not attended the charter school.

Consequently, charter school students were matched with “virtual twins,” groups of traditional public school students who may or may not have had the same opportunity or motivation to choose a public charter school. The self-selection bias was not controlled for in the study.

Hoxby’s response on this point is technical but concise. She adds other criticisms on the assumptions necessary for matching that the CREDO study violates – but saves her strongest language for the sheer lack of analysis, making replication of the CREDO study impossible.

We look forward to CREDO’s response to Hoxby’s critique. Maybe CREDO will use this opportunity to present detailed analytic models, robustness tests, and descriptive data that were all missing from the June study.

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New-Analysis-Indicates-that-Public-Charter-Schools-Do-Not-Lead-to-Increased-Segregation

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

In a recent piece on the Brookings Institute blog, Matthew Chingos explored the question ‘Does Expanding School Choice Increase Segregation?’ Through analysis of nine years of data from the Common Core of Data (CCD), the federal government’s annual census of all public schools, Chingos delves into the demographic characteristics of charter school students and their counterparts in traditional public schools, which is often cited by public charter school critics as evidence that choice leads to segregation (even though previous research has indicated that public charter schools often match the demographics of the local traditional public schools).

For each of the more than 3,000 counties in the U.S., Chingos calculated an “exposure index” (measures the portion of non-minority students at the schools attended by the average under-represented minority student over time), “dissimilarity index” (an alternative measure of segregation), and panel data analysis that uses all nine years of CCD to estimate the relationship between charter enrollment and segregation using only the changes within counties over time. The results of all three measures consistently indicated no meaningful relationship between school choice and segregation. As Chingos summarizes, “the findings reported here indicate that it is unlikely that charter schools—a prominent effort to increase school choice, especially for students from disadvantaged backgrounds—are making the problem worse.”

NAPCS noted in an issue brief released last year that one of the most exceptional developments within the first two decades of the public charter school movement has been the rise of high performing public charter schools with missions intently focused on educating students from traditionally underserved communities. Given that the demographics of these communities are often homogenous, it is no surprise the demographics of these schools are that way as well. In fact, the student populations at these public charter schools usually mirror the populations in nearby district schools.

While much media attention rightly has been given to these schools, the past decade or so also has seen a noteworthy rise in high performing public charter schools with missions intentionally designed to serve racially and economically integrated student populations. These schools are utilizing their autonomy to achieve a diverse student population through location-based strategies, recruitment efforts and enrollment processes.

Perhaps most notably, a growing number of cities—and the parents and educators in them—are welcoming both types of public charter school models for their respective (and in some cases unprecedented) contributions to raising student achievement, particularly for students who have previously struggled in school. Chingos’s analyses add to the evidence that the public school choice allows parents of choose the school environment that suits their student’s needs and is not a primary contributing factor to school (re)segregation.
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New-Study-from-CREDO-on-Public-Charter-School-Growth,-Expansion,-and-Impact

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

CREDO released a new two volume study today titled Charter School Growth and Expansion. The title actually masks the ambitious range of research questions tackled and important findings presented. Though the study presents data on patterns of growth and expansion in the charter sector, with particular attention given to networks of schools, the report is solidly about public charter school quality. And the results suggest that what we thought about when quality determinations should be made within the life cycle of charter schools may have been wrong.

Before getting to what will likely be the most talked about aspect of the new CREDO study—the ranking of individual networks, specifically the (perhaps surprising) negative results for some well-known networks—I want to address the paradigm shift this study brings about in terms of thinking about charter school quality.

There has been a widely held belief that it could take several years for new charter schools to get their sea legs, and as a result we should not expect high levels of performance for the first couple of years of a charter school’s existence. In other words, if given time, charter school performance would increase, even for the low-performing or average school. Moreover, there is a body of research that confirmed this theory. These studies examined the question by comparing the performance of “mature” charter schools with “newer” charter schools, or even the same school at different points in time, and found that charter schools in later years performed better than new schools. However, what these studies overlooked, and what the CREDO study points out, is that the models did not control for schools closing due to low-performance (or the results of low-performance, such as low-enrollment) or more importantly, examine whether early performance predicted later performance.

The CREDO study shifts the research question from looking at average performance for charter schools based on the number of years open, to examining whether charter school performance in the first one or two years of operation predicts performance up to five years after opening. The short answer is that early performance of charter schools almost entirely predicts future performance. In other words, if a charter school starts out low-performing, it has a very slim chance of making improvements. This is sobering but important information about what we can expect from charter school performance.

Fortunately, there are bright sides to the initial quality story. There are public charter schools that hit the ground running and are top performers in their states in the first years of operation. Moreover, about two thirds of the schools that replicate are in the top 40 percent of school performance. So, in many cases, the right schools, in terms of performance outcomes, are being selected for replication.

And perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising, despite earlier research and what we may have wanted to believe about the unsteadiness of new schools. CREDO lays out a theory of action that suggests that school culture, norms, and behavior are set early, and not only are these school structures and processes indicative of school performance, they are really difficult to change. But if the norms and behaviors are good, the school will continue to have success.

Now to the flashier portion of the study—the performance of networks of charter schools. CREDO redefines how we understand networks of charter schools. They define CMOs as networks of three or more charter schools where the CMO holds the charter. Unlike previous definitions of CMOs and EMOs, CMOs in this study include both non-profit and for-profit management organizations. CREDO defines EMOs as organizations that secure contractual agreements from governing boards to operate schools, and they too can be non-profit or for-profit. By this definition, CMOs could contract with EMOs to operate schools, and several do. CREDO also creates a new category of network, the “super network,” to classify the unique structure of KIPP and a couple of other management organizations, which operate as a federation of independent networks under the umbrella of a larger national manager.

CREDO compares the results for CMOs and non-CMOs are to traditional public schools. Overall, the findings are mixed. In math, both CMOs and non-CMOs perform worse than traditional public schools. In reading, the two sets of charter schools perform better. In math, non-CMOs perform worse than CMOs, but in reading they perform better. The findings are much more varied by state, and the breakouts can be found in Table 1 of Volume II. And while CMO performance is close to non-CMO performance, over time CMOs demonstrate larger effect sizes (learning gains) compared with non-CMOs, in both math and reading.

While the overall results are mixed and small in size, the effects for subgroups of students are more promising for CMOs and non-CMOs. In nearly every category and subject area, CMOs and non-CMOs outperform traditional public schools for the following breakouts: Black, Hispanic, poverty, English language learners (ELL), and special education.

Among the four super networks mentioned in the report, KIPP and Uncommon Schools outperform non-CMOs and traditional public schools, while Responsive and White Hat experience negative and mixed findings, respectively. When networks are organized by whether they received investments from the Charter School Growth Fund (CSGF), the networks associated with CSGF are doing phenomenally well.

The tables below present networks with the top ten effect sizes for math and reading (from Appendix A in Volume II). It should be noted that the effect sizes do not represent overall performance levels, they are four year growth effects to show how the charter schools impact students who attend. What emerges from the two lists of top networks is that most are small CMOs in just a handful of states (AR, AZ, CA, DC, FL, NY, OH, PA, TX), many are on both lists, and a good portion of them serve at-risk student populations.

Top Networks: Growth in Reading

Network Name	State	Effect Size (4 Year Growth)	# Schools	Non-Profit?
PPEP & Affiliates*	AZ	0.60**	17	Yes
Intelli-School Charter High Schools*	AZ	0.28**	5	N/A
Rose Management Schools*	AZ	0.24**	3	No
Breakthrough Schools*	OH	0.19**	5	Yes
John H. Wood Jr. Public Charter District	TX	0.19**	8	N/A
American Indian Public Charter School*	CA	0.18**	3	Yes
Two Dimensions Preparatory Charter*	TX	0.17**	3	Yes
Archimedean Academy*	FL	0.15**	3	N/A
Mastery Charter Schools*	PA	0.14**	10	Yes
IDEA Public Schools	TX	0.13**	20	Yes
YES Prep Public Schools	TX	0.13**	10	Yes
DC Prep Charter Schools	DC	0.12**	3	Yes
Gulf Shores Academy	TX	0.12**	5	N/A
KIPP Delta	AR	0.12**	3	Yes
KIPP Houston	TX	0.12**	24	Yes
Neighborhood Centers, Inc. (Promise Community School)*	TX	0.12**	4	Yes
Rocklin Academies	CA	0.12**	3	N/A
Uncommon Schools Rochester	NY	0.12**	3	Yes

* In list of top networks for both math and reading

Top Networks: Growth in Math

Network Name	State	Effect Size (4 Year Growth)	# Schools	Non-Profit?
American Indian Public Charter School*	CA	0.33**	3	Yes
PPEP & Affiliates*	AZ	0.30**	17	Yes
Humanities and Sciences Academy of the United States, Inc.	AZ	0.26**	7	Yes
Rose Management Schools*	AZ	0.25**	3	No
Intelli-School Charter High Schools*	AZ	0.22**	5	N/A
Two Dimensions Preparatory Charter*	TX	0.21**	3	Yes
Mastery Charter Schools*	PA	0.20**	10	Yes
Breakthrough Schools*	OH	0.19**	5	Yes
YES Prep Public Schools*	TX	0.19**	10	Yes
Neighborhood Centers, Inc. (Promise Community School)*	TX	0.17**	4	Yes
Uncommon Schools New York City	NY	0.17**	12	Yes
Archimedean Academy*	FL	0.16**	3	N/A
Propel Schools	PA	0.16**	6	Yes

* In list of top networks for both math and reading

CREDO acknowledges that there is variation in performance among schools within the overall network effect. So networks that show large positive effects may have individual schools performing lower than the average, and conversely low-performing networks may have individual schools performing higher than the average. However, the overall results by network are quite interesting and will take some time to digest.

Charter school quality is an increasingly important topic, not only for closing low-performing schools but for identifying high impact school models and educational practices that can be replicated to serve more students. The new CREDO study provides a lot of information that will help the sector think about measuring performance and making decisions based on the data.

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New-Study-on-KIPP-Indicates-that-Student-Attrition-Does-Not-Eliminate-Large-Achievement-Effect

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Public charter schools, and KIPP in particular, have experienced persistent critiques that when charter schools produce positive performance outcomes, the results are driven by assumed charter school policies that counsel out low-performing students and restrict replacement enrollment (see Kahlenberg and Miron). This student attrition issue for charter schools is complicated. On the one hand, there are many charter school operators that strive to create schools that meet the needs of all students. From KIPP’s annual report: “At KIPP, we are committed to keeping our students with us because we believe that every student can thrive in our schools.” On the other hand, student mobility and the selection of schools based on personal preferences are inherent to school choice policies. Matt Di Carlo at the Shanker Blog (not the typical defender of charter schools) points this out: “Within-district attrition – students changing schools, often based on ‘fit’ or performance - is a defining feature of school choice, not an aberration.” And he questions why supporters of school choice are unable to clearly articulate and stand behind the fact that student mobility and non-random selection of schools will be a part of choice-based school systems.

Because KIPP is aiming to create an alternative educational model to the traditional public schools, a model that will serve any and all students—not just a small niche of students—it has been important for KIPP to show that its impact on student performance is not due to harder to educate students leaving for other schools.

Enter a new study by Mathematica that takes a very thorough look at attrition for 19 KIPP middle schools in nine states plus the District of Columbia and comparison middle schools in geographically relevant school districts (read more about the study here). There have been other studies that have taken a look at attrition in KIPP schools (San Francisco Bay Area KIPP schools, KIPP Lynn). However, the Mathematica study examines attrition exclusively and dives deep. Here are some of the findings:

Cumulative and grade level attrition rates were similar for KIPP middle schools and comparison traditional public middle schools.
The characteristics of students (i.e., race, FRL, baseline test scores) were the same for students who left KIPP as for students who left comparison traditional public middle schools.
In terms of late entry enrollment, traditional public schools admitted a higher average number of students than KIPP middle schools. However, when looked at in terms of proportionality to total enrollment by grade level, there were no differences between KIPP middle schools and traditional public schools in terms of late entry enrollment.
The demographics of late arrivers to KIPP did differ from students who entered traditional public schools after the middle school entry grade level. KIPP late arrivers were more likely to have higher baseline scores, less likely to qualify for FRL, and less likely to be male.

The study finds that there may be some selective replacement of students in KIPP middle schools. The question, then, is whether the demographic changes due to attrition and late entry explain the impact KIPP charter schools have on student performance. Based on the literature on the size of peer effects (i.e., did the change in peer demographics create a learning environment more conducive to student performance gains), the authors conclude that attrition and late entry of students explain no more than a quarter of the KIPP impact on test scores.

Let’s put that in perspective. The Betts and Tang meta-analysis of charter school effects found that KIPP schools had estimated effect sizes for reading and math at 0.096 and 0.223, respectively. This means that a student attending a KIPP charter school, compared with a traditional public school, would move from the 50th percentile to the 54th and 59th percentiles in a single year. If attrition accounts for roughly 25 percent of the effect, then the effect sizes for KIPP would drop to 0.072 for reading and 0.167 for math. The meta-analysis found that middle school charters (excluding KIPP schools) had effects sizes of 0.011 for reading and 0.055 for math. So, even when attrition is accounted for, KIPP middle schools outperform their traditional public school counterparts and have effect sizes three to seven times larger than other charter school middle schools.

Evidence is mounting for the scalability of the KIPP charter school model.

Image: A KIPP charter school in the Bronx (By Leila Haddouche, via Flickr Creative Commons)

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New-Study-on-Unionized-Charter-Schools

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT

As we have reported here and here, a relatively small proportion of charters are unionized—only about 12% of public charter schools. Over 60% of the unionized charter schools are bound by state law to the local school district’s collective bargaining agreement. But there are a number of charter schools that unionized by design or by a vote among teachers. A new study from CRPE digs into these union contracts to explore whether contracts designed by charter schools are more innovative than the local school district’s contracts. While union contracts developed from scratch have the potential to provide more flexibility to school leadership, the study finds only modest modifications in policies around teacher hiring, firing, layoffs, and basic work rules regarding the use of teacher time. However, the modest modifications do allow for union contracts that are more likely to reflect the charter school’s mission and vision. But this still begs the question, if collective bargaining agreements in charter schools reflect the school’s mission, does it provide a necessary protection or an impediment for innovation?
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New-Study-Shows-Positive-Performance-Results-for-KIPP-Middle-Schools

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:00:00 GMT

With the release of a new Mathematica study on KIPP middle schools today, there is even more evidence that KIPP middle schools are having a strong and meaningful impact on student performance. The new study builds on previous research commissioned by KIPP and conducted by Mathematica (see the studies released in 2010 and 2012) and finds positive and sizeable performance results in math, reading, science, and social studies. The table below shows results from the study. Effect sizes, comparing the performance of students in KIPP schools to matched students attending traditional public schools, range from 0.15 in the first year of a KIPP school to 0.31 by the school’s fourth year in math. In reading, the effect sizes range from 0.05 to 0.22. Compared with positive results from the 2010 Betts and Tang meta-analysis, KIPP middle schools in this study demonstrate even higher results in both math and reading. The science and social studies results are similarly large in magnitude, providing evidence that KIPP schools do not overlook other subject areas to focus on math and reading.

The Impact of KIPP Middle Schools on Student Performance

	Math	Reading	Science	Social Studies
KIPP Middle Schools
Effect Size in Year 1	0.15	0.05
Effect Size in Year 2	0.27	0.14
Effect Size in Year 3	0.36	0.21
Effect Size in Year 4	0.31	0.22
Effect Size in Highest Grade Tested	N/A	N/A	0.33	0.25
2010 Betts & Tang Meta-Analysis
Charter Middle School Effect Size	0.18	0.07
KIPP Effect Size	0.22	0.10

The effect sizes translate into real learning gains for students who attend KIPP middle schools. For example, the math effect size of 0.31 for students in their fourth year at a KIPP school is equivalent to those student receiving 11 additional months of learning compared to their peers attending traditional public schools. The math effect size is equivalent to a KIPP student moving from the 44th percentile to the 58th percentile. And perhaps most compelling, the math effect size means that KIPP schools reduced the achievement gap between white and black students by 40 percent.

How to Interpret the KIPP Middle School Effect Sizes?

	Math	Reading	Science	Social Studies
KIPP Effect Size	0.31	0.22	0.33	0.25
Additional months of learning in KIPP schools	11 months	8 months	14 months	11 months
KIPP Percentile Gain	44^th → 58^th percentile	46^th → 55^th percentile	36^th → 49^th percentile	39^th → 49^th percentile
KIPP % Reduction in White-Black Gap	40%	26%	33%	33%

The study examines the characteristics of students attending KIPP middle schools and finds little evidence that KIPP schools cream students based on performance, poverty, or race. And similar to results from the KIPP study on attrition, this study finds that attrition rates for KIPP schools are the same as comparison traditional public schools.

While the study shows positive impacts for KIPP schools, it also points to the need for further research. KIPP schools are demonstrating significant academic performance outcomes, but it is still an open question as to what operational factors make KIPP schools high performing, whether the substantial positive impacts can be sustained as KIPP schools expand, and whether the performance results will equate to long-term impacts for students as they enter college. Mathematica will continue to examine KIPP schools and address some of these issues in future reports. It is heartening to see an organization like KIPP invest in extensive and transparent research to better understand how the schools function and serve students. Knowing that KIPP schools outperform comparison traditional public schools is one thing. Understanding why KIPP schools outperform is critical to determining whether the model can lead to improvements throughout the public education system.

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NYC-Charter-School-Accountability-Made-Interactive

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:00:00 GMT

We mentioned that the New York State Education Department released the 2010-2011 school year Mathematics and English Language Arts test results for third through eighth graders. And now there are additional resources for charter school data enthusiasts. The NYC Charter School Center has released an analysis and interactive feature about the city’s charter schools’ performance. If you’re looking for weighted district comparisons, or breakdowns by management structure, school size, or location, these resources have you covered. You can find more news items about the test results here.

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Practice-Makes…Effective

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Charter management organizations (CMOs) are in the news. And we are going to hear a lot more about the impact of CMOs on student performance after tomorrow’s release of Mathematica/CRPE’s report that represents the most comprehensive look at CMO effectiveness to date.

But before the release of tomorrow’s report, let’s revisit the first report, which detailed the practices of CMOs, drawn from observations, interviews, surveys, and reviews of financial documents. The first report is packed with information about the national CMO landscape, CMO characteristics, how CMOs operate, and plans for growth. The report notes that, despite the relative newness of the CMO landscape, they are already a significant presence in the charter school movement. The report provides insight into the commonalities across CMOs—such as being highly concentrated in certain urban areas and having a mission to serve disadvantaged youth and reform large school systems, as well as hurdles many CMOs face—such as extending program design into new grade configurations, increasing the pool of talented teachers and school leaders, reducing staff burnout, and watching out for bureaucratic creep.

The first report is definitely worth a read as it gives context for the upcoming performance evaluation. Like the charter sector as a whole, there is a good deal of variation in terms of how CMOs operate. It will be interesting to see how the variation in practices translates into student performance. And while you’re waiting for tomorrow’s release, you can also get lots of facts about CMOs and EMOs here.

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Public-Charter-School-Enrollment-Matches-Catholic-School-Enrollment-in-2011-2012

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The decline in Catholic school enrollment has been a steady trend since the 1960s. The National Catholic Educational Association reports that enrollment dropped from roughly 2.3 million in 2006-2007 to a little over 2 million in 2011-2012, a drop of 12 percent. Over that same period of time, charter school enrollment grew from roughly 1.2 million in 2006-2007 to over 2 million in 2011-2012, an increase of 76 percent. The numbers indicate that for the first time, charter schools enrolled more students than Catholic schools during the 2011-2012 school year.

In some cities, charter schools enroll students who previously attended or would have attended Catholic schools had there not been the option to attend a public charter school (see here and here for examples). While some charter schools may have learned lessons on how to develop effective schools from the research on Catholic schools, Catholic schools are now scrambling to adopt best practices from charter schools to keep schools afloat.

Over the last several years, charter schools have been growing by adding close to 200,000 seats per year. The growth of charter schools is unlikely to decline much—if anything, the growth of charter schools is likely to increase. It will be interesting to see whether Catholic schools can slow the loss of students.

Photo Credit: Archdiocese of Boston Catholic Schools Office

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Public-Charter-School-Students-Outperforming-Peers-in-Massachusetts

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 00:00:00 GMT

It’s no surprise that there are 45,000 students on waiting lists to attend public charter schools in Massachusetts. Evidence of the positive impact of public charter schools in the state continues to grow. In a new study released by CREDO this week, public charter schools in Massachusetts demonstrated larger learning gains than similar traditional public schools in both math and reading. In reading, public charter students gained an additional one and half months per year over similar students in traditional public schools. In math, public charter students gained an additional two and a half months of additional learning per year over their peers. The results in Boston were even larger. Students attending public charter schools gained an entire additional year of learning for each year in a charter school in both math and reading, compared with similar students in traditional public schools. "The average growth rate of Boston charter students in math and reading is the largest CREDO has seen in any city or state thus far," said Edward Cremata, one of the study’s authors.

Results from the new study are consistent with previous research on public charter schools in Massachusetts and Boston (see the 2009 Harvard/MIT report, 2010 KIPP Lynn study, and 2011 urban vs. suburban study). Moreover, a working paper we wrote about last year showed that lifting the cap on charter schools in Boston would decrease achievement gaps. Overall, results from the body of research on public charter schools in Massachusetts support lifting the cap on charters in the state (see an argument for lifting the cap here).

Image via Massachusetts Charter Public School Association

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Public-Charter-Schools-and-Civics-Education

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 00:00:00 GMT

With the focus on mathematics and reading in the NCLB era of accountability, it may seem like other subject areas are overlooked. There’s particular concern about lack of attention to social studies, including civics, government, geography, economics, and history, and this assumption is not entirely wrong. Nationwide, one third or more of fourth and eighth graders were proficient in math and reading on the most recent NAEP, while only 27 percent of fourth graders and 22 percent of eighth graders were proficient in civics. And the Common Core State Standards may not improve the situation, since there are standards and skills for Language Arts literacy in history and social studies, but the standards do not apply to the social studies subject areas themselves. As one reporter put it, “Across the spectrum of corporate leaders, colleges, and education advocacy groups—those that have either built the accountability bandwagon, jumped aboard it, or criticized its dominance—the need to educate young people to become active participants in the nation’s political life is seldom mentioned.”

Over the last couple of years, a series of reports have focused attention on the teaching of civics education in public charter schools. The reports raise interesting questions about whether charter schools are doing anything different than traditional public schools, and whether charter schools can be laboratories of innovation for incorporating civics education back into schools. Two organizations have spearheaded the research on civics in charter schools: the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Center on Education Policy (CEP). Despite ideological differences between the two organizations, there is commonality in the belief that schools should teach civics in order to prepare students to be productive citizens:

AEI: “A resurgence in civics could stem—and perhaps even reverse… the polarization of U.S. politics and thus the paralysis of the government... If subpar academics in U.S. schools can cause economic problems, then couldn’t subpar civics education cause political problems?”
CEP: “It is often said that well-informed citizens are at the cornerstone of a strong democracy. Without even a basic knowledge of government, history and a citizen’s role in promoting and defending a robust democracy, individuals are hamstrung in understanding their own rights and the rights of others.”

So what did the studies find? In a January 2012 report, Strengthening the Civic Mission of Charter Schools, Robin Lake of the Center on Reinventing Public Education and AEI’s Cheryl Miller highlight the following:

There is not a common definition of civics education among public charter school leaders sampled; nor is there a common belief about why civics education and preparedness is important, the skills that need to be taught, or the teaching methods that work best. Charter leaders generally dislike traditional civics education resources, such as textbooks and curricula, and prefer to use civic activism to make civics education relevant to students.
The authors provide recommendations for charter school funders, authorizers, and advocacy groups that focus on ways that these groups can help charter schools improve civics education.

AEI followed-up the 2012 report with three case studies from public charter school networks that keep civics education at the heart of their educational practices:

Democracy Prep: The network’s motto is, “Work hard. Go to college. Change the world!” The network places civics education at the core of its mission by teaching students about the details of civics knowledge, as well as action-oriented civics skills.
National Heritage Academies: In National Heritage Academies, civics education is interpreted as moral and character education with the premise that good character leads to good citizens.
UNO Charter School Network: The UNO network of charter schools uses civics education to help with the assimilation and Americanization of the schools’ largely Latino and immigrant student population. UNO school leaders believe that the goal of the network is in creating “not just educated and engaged citizens, but educated and engaged American citizens.”

The recent CEP study, Civic Education and Charter Schools: Current Knowledge and Future Research Issues, examines the NAEP civics assessment to compare charter schools and traditional public schools on civics achievement and school instructional practices.

Overall, the study finds little difference in civics performance between students who attend charter schools and students who attend traditional public schools. There were a couple of differences, like 8th grade Hispanic students and male 12th graders in charter schools outperforming students in traditional public schools.
There were some differences in how civics education was taught in the two types of schools. A higher percentage of eighth grade charter students reported taking part in role play, mock trials, and dramas. Eighth graders and 12th graders in charter schools reported answering more questions daily about social studies than students in traditional public schools.
The study highlights the need for better data on student performance and the teaching of civics education.

Image via Google Images

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Public-Charter-Schools-Hold-Top-Rankings-on-Washington-Post’s-Challenge-Index

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Recently, the Washington Post released the results of its annual Challenge Index rankings. The index score is calculated by the number of college-level tests given at a school in 2012, divided by the number of graduates that year (education columnist Jay Mathews answers Challenge Index FAQs here). Also noted are the percentage of students who come from families that qualify for lunch subsidies and the percentage of graduates who passed at least one college-level test during their high school career, indicators called equity and excellence for the Challenge Index.

This year, 28 public charter schools are among the 2012-2013 Challenge Index top 100 schools—including the #1 American Indian Public Charter (Oakland, CA), #4 Corbett Charter (Corbett, OR), #8 Signature (Evansville, IN), and #10 Gwinnett School of Math, Science & Tech (Lawrenceville, GA).

Having a public charter school at the top of the Challenge Index is not a new occurrence. In last year’s 2011-2012 Challenge Index, BASIS Tucson held the top rank. A total of 25 public charter schools ranked among the top 100 schools—including three charter schools in the top 10.

In 2010-2011 (the last year that we have grade configuration information for traditional public schools), there were 2,186 public charter schools serving the high school grades and 25,513 traditional public schools with high school grades. So public charter schools were 8.6 percent of the total number of high schools, yet comprised 17 percent of the Challenge Index ranked schools in the top 100 schools.

In the past three years, public charter schools have grown from 17 percent, to 25 percent, and this year 28 percent of the schools in the top 100 Challenge Index high schools. Public charter schools are over-represented on this ranking list, and the percentage is growing. Congratulations to these public charter schools being recognized for providing a rigorous academic experience for their students.

Image via Washington Post
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Public-Charter-Schools-Rank-Among-Top-Public-High-Schools-in-the-Nation

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

The rankings are in! Every year, U.S. News & World Report, the Washington Post, and Newsweek rank public high schools across the nation. Despite public charter schools making up only 6 percent of public high schools nationwide, they have been historically well represented on these lists, and 2013 is no exception.

The table below presents the public charter schools that were ranked in the top 100 on at least one of the lists, as well as the public charter schools ranked in Newsweek’s top 25 Transformative Schools list. Five public charter schools were listed in the top 100 on the three major lists: Peak to Peak Charter School, Signature School Incorporated, Uplift Education – North Hills Preparatory High School, Westlake Academy, and the American Indian Public High School, which was also ranked as the second best Transformative School in the nation.

The U.S. News & World Report’s Best High Schools list had 28 public charter schools in the top 100, up from 17 last year. The report also ranked three public charters in the top 10. The Washington Post’s Most Challenging High Schools list also put 28 public charter schools in their top 100, and four in their top 10. In Newsweek’s America’s Best high Schools list, there were 13 public charter schools in the top 100, with two BASIS charter schools reaching their top 10.

Newsweek also came out with their Transformative High Schools list, which takes students’ socioeconomic status into account by looking at schools that serve a high percentage of students who receive free- or reduced-price lunches. Sixteen public charter schools were on the list, making up 64 percent of the nation’s top 25 Transformative schools. All top five schools were public charter schools.

School Name	State	U.S. News & World Report, Best High Schools	Washington Post, High School Challenge Index	Newsweek, America’s Best High Schools	Newsweek, 25 Transformative High Schools
Haas Hall Academy	AR			83
BASIS Scottsdale	AZ	5		3
BASIS Tucson	AZ	2
BASIS Tucson North	AZ			7
Northland Preparatory Academy	AZ	77
Sonoran Science Academy - Davis Monthan	AZ	53
Sonoran Science Academy - Tucson	AZ		96
Alliance Dr. Olga Mohan High	CA	95			4
Alliance Gertz-Ressler High	CA				6
Alliance Huntington Park College-Ready Academy High	CA				10
Alliance Marc & Eva Stern Math and Science	CA				23
American Indian Public High	CA	38	1	11	2
Animo Jackie Robinson High	CA				21
Animo Leadership High	CA				13
Animo Oscar De La Hoya Charter High	CA				11
Animo Pat Brown	CA				18
Hawthorne Math and Science Academy	CA	89
Lennox Mathematics, Science and Technology Academy	CA	39
Magnolia Science Academy	CA		45
Northcoast Preparatory and Performing Arts Academy	CA	72	25
Pacific Collegiate Charter	CA	11	56
Preuss School UCSD	CA	30	29		1
Summit Preparatory Charter High	CA	82
University High	CA	42
Peak to Peak Charter School	CO	58	70	49
Charter School of Wilmington	DE			62
Archimedean Upper Conservatory Charter School	FL		26	54
Doral Performing Arts and Entertainment Academy	FL		86
International Studies Charter High School	FL	15
Somerset Academy Charter High School	FL				7
Gwinnett Charter School of Advanced Mathematics, Science, & Technology	GA	3	10
Coeur D'Alene Charter Academy	ID		59	89
Noble Network of Charter Schools - Noble Street College Prep	IL				15
Signature School Inc	IN	23	8	12
Benjamin Franklin High School	LA	55
Sturgis Charter Public	MA	31	64
Raleigh Charter High School	NC		77	40
Albuquerque Institute of Math & Science	NM		42
Harding Charter Preparatory High School	OK		75
Corbett Charter School	OR	70	4
Early College H S	TX	97
Eastwood Academy	TX	56	50
Harmony Science Acad (El Paso)	TX		71
Harmony Science Academy - North Austin	TX		46
IDEA Frontier College Preparatory	TX	60
IDEA Quest College Preparatory	TX	83
KIPP Houston H S	TX	65
Uplift Education - North Hills Preparatory High School	TX	51	82	41
Uplift Education - Peak Preparatory High School	TX		24		5
Uplift Education - Summit International Preparatory	TX		23	51	14
Uplift Education - Williams Preparatory High School	TX		28		3
Westlake Academy	TX	41	20	52
YES Prep - East End Campus	TX		18
YES Prep - North Central Campus	TX	46	89		17
YES Prep - Southwest Campus	TX	66	83

Methodology

The U.S. News & World Report Best High Schools list evaluates over 21,000 public high schools in the country. Their ranking is based on students’ performance on state-mandated assessments, minority and economically disadvantaged student performance, and Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) exam results to determine preparedness for college-level work.

The Washington Post’s Challenge Index is calculated by the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Advanced International Certificate of Education (AICE) tests given at a school in 2012, divided by the number of graduates that year. Also included are the percentage of students who come from families that qualify for lunch subsidies and the percentage of graduates who passed at least one college-level test during their high school career, indicators called equity and excellence for the Challenge Index.

Newsweek's America’s Best High Schools ranks schools based on six components: graduation rate (25 percent), college acceptance rate (25 percent), AP/IB/AICE tests taken per student (25 percent), average SAT/ACT scores (10 percent), average AP/IB/AICE scores (10 percent), and percent of students enrolled in at least one AP/IB/AICE course (5 percent). Their ranking system focuses on high schools that have proven to be the most effective in turning out college-ready grads.

Newsweek’s Transformative Schools ranking used the Newsweek's America's Best High Schools score and multiplied it by the percentage of students who are eligible for free- or reduced-price lunches, a leading indicator of socioeconomic status. The overall ranking for each school is based on the graduation rate, college-bound rate of grads, AP participation, and test scores.

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Public-Charter-Schools-Represented-on-Newsweek's-Best-and-Transformative-High-School-Rankings

Thu, 09 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Newsweek has released its 2013 America’s Best High Schools rankings of the 2,000 best public high schools in the nation—and 13 public charter schools are among the top 100. Two BASIS schools are in the top 10 (BASIS Scottsdale #3 and BASIS Tucson North #7), which has been the trend.

Newsweek defines “Best” as high schools that have proven to be the most effective in turning out college-ready grads. The list is based on six components: graduation rate (25 percent), college acceptance rate (25 percent), AP/IB/AICE tests taken per student (25 percent), average SAT/ACT scores (10 percent), average AP/IB/AICE scores (10 percent), and percent of students enrolled in at least one AP/IB/AICE course (5 percent).

Newsweek conducts further breakouts of its Best High Schools, including the “Transformative High Schools” list that factors in the percentage of students who are eligible for free- or reduced-price lunches, a leading indicator of socioeconomic status. Sixteen public charter schools, which is 64 percent of the list, earned the “Transformative” distinction. Public charter schools also held all of the top 5 rankings, and were 80 percent of the top 10 Transformative schools.

The number of public charter schools among those named as the 25 “Transformative High Schools” has grown over the past several years:

2011: 5 public charter schools
2012: 15 public charter schools
2013: 16 public charter schools

Congratulations to these public charter schools, recognized as the best in the nation for college-readiness and closing the achievement gap.

Graduates of the Preuss School UCSD, the #1 ranked “Transformative High School.” Image via The Daily Beast website.

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Public-Charter-Schools-Top-U.S.-News-0024-World-Report-Best-High-Schools-Rankings

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Today, the U.S. News & World Report released its 2013 Best High Schools Rankings, and 28 public charter schools are among the top 100. Three public charter high schools are ranked in the top 10: BASIS Tucson (#2), Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology (#3), and BASIS Scottsdale (#5).

U.S. News teamed up with the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to produce the 2013 rankings. Public high schools were evaluated by their students’ performance on state-mandated assessments, minority and economically disadvantaged student performance, and Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate exam results to determine preparedness for college-level work.

Public charter school representation in the top 100 of the U.S. News Best High Schools Rankings has grown dramatically over the past five years:

10 public charter schools in 2009
18 public charter schools in 2010
18 public charter schools in 2011
17 public charter schools in 2012
28 public charter schools in 2013

Based on the two major rankings released this year, 28 is a lucky number for public charter high schools (28 public charter schools were also on the Washington Post’s top 100 Challenge Index rankings last week). Place your bets now for Newsweek's America's Best High Schools rankings.

Congratulations to these charter schools recognized as the top public high schools in the nation!

Image via U.S. News & World Report website

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Public-Charter-Schools-with-True-Autonomy-and-Accountability-Positively-Impact-Student-Achievement

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:00:00 GMT

A recent thread in studies about public charter schools and student achievement is that broad analyses often mask the key features that explain why some charter schools outperform traditional public schools (TPS). A paper by Hiren Nisar from Abt Associates follows this idea by highlighting the impact of school autonomy on student performance. He finds that students in Milwaukee public charter schools that operate with more autonomy from traditional public school regulation (called non-instrumentality charter schools) outperform their counterparts in less-autonomous public charter schools (instrumentality charter schools) and traditional public schools.

In Milwaukee, both instrumentality and non-instrumentality schools have more budget and curricular flexibility than traditional public schools. However, there are key differences in operational autonomy: instrumentality public charter schools operate as a part of traditional school districts, they face little risk of closure, and they hire unionized teachers. When looking at achievement over all charter school students compared to TPS students, Nisar found little significant difference in performance. However, not all public charter schools are subject to the same policies, and those differences have significant impacts on student achievement levels.

Nisar breaks down these differences by examining how a school’s instrumentality status relates to students’ reading proficiency. He finds that “students at a non-instrumentality charter school would be reading at a grade higher from their counterparts in an instrumentality charter school in two years, and their counterparts in a TPS in three years.” He also finds that African-American students perform better in non-instrumentality charter schools than any other type of public school. When looking at low achieving students, he estimates that attending a public charter school of any type would eliminate the reading achievement gap in two years.

Aside from the encouraging empirical findings, there is a broader takeaway from Nisar’s paper – as he puts it, “the details of charter school policies matter.” In Milwaukee, public charter schools that operate autonomously from traditional school districts, and therefore face a greater risk of closure, perform better. As NAPCS President & CEO Nina Rees said, “The charter school idea is predicated on the notion that in exchange for autonomy and freedom from bureaucratic rules, schools would face closure if they fail to meet their academic goals.” The tradeoff of enjoying more autonomy for greater accountability in the form of school closures is a basic tenet of charter schools, as well as a keystone of the NACSA’s One Million Lives campaign. This paper offers a strong suggestion that autonomy and accountability for public charter schools are essential policies that go hand in hand with learning gains for students.

Image by Mike Di Sisti originally published in the Journal-Sentinel online Nov. 18, 2012

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Public-Charter-Schools’-Use-of-Student-Centered-Approaches

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The CRPE/Mathematica studies of non-profit charter management organizations (CMOs) (see here and here) highlighted some of the common educational strategies used by CMOs. A new project, Students at the Center, aims to provide educators with resources on key components of student-centered approaches in the era of Common Core Standards. The project’s newest report looks at whether high performing school districts and CMOs are utilizing student-centered strategies in ways that fundamentally change schooling for students.

The project defines student-centered approaches as “those that engage each student in acquiring the skills, knowledge, and expertise needed for college and career success.” Specifically, student-centered approaches are those that:

Embrace the learner’s experience and learning theory as the starting point of education;
Harness the full range of learning experiences at all times of the day, week, and year;
Expand and reshape the role of the educator; and
Determine progression based upon mastery.

The study finds that nearly all of the school districts and CMOs examined use at least some student-centered strategies. The CMOs appear to use student-centered approaches with a greater percentage of their students than the traditional school districts. Moreover, the study indicates that it will be more difficult for school districts to make changes to embrace student-centered approaches since they lack the flexibility built into the public charter school model. The table below shows some of the strategies used by the 25 CMOs examined in the report.

Source: Levin, B., A. Datnow, & N. Carrier. (2012). Changing school district practices. Washington, DC: Students at the Center.

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Public-Charters-Lead-the-Way-in-Extended-Learning

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Over the past 20 years, the public charter school movement has been on the cutting-edge of key school reforms: setting high expectation for all students, offering an education that prepares students for success in college and careers, and identifying highly effective teachers.

A new report documents just how far public charters are leading in another area: expanded learning time.

The National Center on Time & Learning (NCTL) examined all of the schools in its database of schools with school days longer than the tradition 6½ hours. They found that 60 percent of them are public charters. What’s really noteworthy about that figure—only 6 percent of all public schools are charter schools.

Here’s more from the report:

Expanded-time (ET) charter schools typically offer longer school days than traditional district expanded-time schools. Just over half the traditional district ET schools provide a school day longer than 7.5 hours. In contrast, three-quarters of all public charter ET schools operate a school day that is longer than 7.5 hours, and nearly half of all charter ET schools operate a school day that is longer than 8 hours. This difference is particularly apparent at the elementary and middle school levels, where charter ET schools are much more likely than traditional district ET schools to offer a school day longer than 8 hours . Charter ET schools are also more likely than traditional district ET schools to offer a longer school year. While nearly one-third of charter ET schools operate with yearly schedules that are at least 10 days longer than surrounding schools, only 10 percent of traditional district ET schools fall in this category.
Charter ET schools offer more total time in school per year that traditional district ET schools. Charter ET schools in the NCTL Database offer on average 100 more hours per year than traditional district ET schools in the database. Charter ET schools are also more likely to offer both a longer school day (8+ hours) and a longer school year (>187 days) than traditional district ET schools. Over 41 percent of charter schools fall in both these categories, while only 17 percent of traditional district schools do. By contrast, 81 percent of traditional district ET schools have both the shortest school year (<181 days) and the shortest school day (< 7.5 hours).

Images via the National Center on Time & Learning. See the full infographic here.

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Q0024A-with-Naomi-Chudowsky,-Co-Author-of-New-NAEP-Report-on-Public-Charter-Schools

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) recently commissioned a new study of public charter schools using National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) data. In this Q & A, NAPCS Research Director Anna Nicotera talks with Naomi Chudowsky, co-author of the study.

AN: What has previous research using NAEP data found regarding the comparison of traditional public schools and public charter schools?

NC: The main U.S. Department of Education study was released in 2005 using 2003 NAEP data. The report examined 4th grade reading and math. For the first time in the 2003 NAEP administration, charter schools were oversampled to make sure there were enough students to compare with students in regular public schools (roughly 3,300 charter students and 190,000 students in regular public schools). The 2005 study found that charter school performance lagged behind that of regular schools in 4th grade math, and was about the same in 4th grade reading. As one of the first national studies comparing performance differences between charter and regular public schools, the study received a lot of attention.

AN: Why did NAGB commission a new analysis of charter schools using NAEP data?

NC: It had been a number of years since the first study using 2003 NAEP data, and given the increase in charter school enrollment, NAGB considered it worthwhile to look at the charter school performance data once again. Beginning in 2005, NAEP included enough charter school students to examine 8th grade in addition to 4th grade. New research could use 2003 as a baseline for 4th grade and 2005 as a baseline for 8th grade performance data.

There has also been more interest among NAGB members to examine the background information collected by NAEP, including information on student background variables, what teachers have been doing in class, school characteristics, amount of time spent in different subjects, etc. NAGB wants to publish more studies using background data and support researchers using the data. The background data elements are available on the NAEP Data Explorer and are publicly available to anyone interested in the data for research.

AN: What did you find in your study of public charter schools on NAEP?

NC: We looked at two major areas: charter school enrollment and student achievement. In terms of enrollment, some interesting subgroup data pieces emerged. For example, between the 2003 and 2011 NAEP administrations, enrollment of Black students in charter schools in urban areas jumped from four to 12 percent. The data suggest that charter schools are playing a larger role in the education of some subgroups of students.

The main story that came out of our analyses for performance was that when you look at the national level, NAEP scores for regular public schools look higher than for charter schools. However, when you focus in on cities and subgroups, you start to see that charter schools demonstrate higher performance.

Nationally, we found that NAEP scores for regular public schools were higher than for charter schools with statistical significance. But the category of regular public school includes all students who attend regular public schools across the country in all types of communities. When we focus in on urban areas where most charter schools are located, we no longer found an advantage for regular public schools.

Moreover, some student subgroups performed significantly higher in charter schools. For example, Black and Hispanic students attending charter schools performed higher than similar students in regular public schools, with statistical significance.

The most interesting analysis, in a way, was looking at four urban districts (DC, Atlanta, Chicago, and Milwaukee). The students in charter schools performed significantly better than students in regular public schools in many subject areas and grades analyzed. There were no instances of students in regular public schools performing significantly better.

It should be noted that because the charter school sample is small in NAEP, there is more room for statistical error and the performance differences have to be quite large to find the statistically significant differences we found between charter and regular public schools.

AN: Given the limitations of comparing public charter schools and traditional public schools with NAEP data, what can the findings tell us about charter school performance?

NC: There is a lot that we don’t know and can’t know from analyses using NAEP data. NAGB and NCES staff are very careful to explain that NAEP data cannot be used for causal inferences. We still don’t know that what is going on in the charter schools is the reason for the difference in performance. It could be that the kids in these schools are different based on background characteristics, and that it is these differences that cause differences in performance.

However, the results from our analyses point to some interesting descriptive findings. Researchers should build on these data and look at why students in charter schools are performing better. Is it because of the school? Or is it because of student background or because certain students are selecting charter schools? The findings are not conclusive, but suggest that there is something good happening in charter schools that we should find out more about. If the results are because of particular teaching methods, the organization of charter schools, or the extent to which charter schools involve parents, can these practices be replicated in other schools?

When studies using different data and different methodologies converge, the findings become compelling. And that is what appears to be happening with charter school research, particularly in certain cities. When research on charters started, the findings were all over the place, often finding exactly opposite results. But more recent research is showing that charter schools often outperform regular public schools when like groups of students, attending schools in similar locations, are compared.

AN: What additional research on charter schools do you believe can be done with NAEP data?

NC: My co-author, Alan Ginsburg conducted a study using the NAEP background data to study trends in time on learning. He looked at time spent on various subjects, absenteeism, and homework. But he wasn’t able to focus on charter schools because there was so much data. It would be interesting to compare time on learning between charter and regular schools. The NAEP background data also include a lot of information about instructional content and methods. It would be interesting to explore, for example, whether teachers in charter schools are more frequently engaging students in hands-on activities in science, or role-playing in social studies, or manipulatives in math.

NAEP would be good for getting a broad look into the “black box” of what’s going on in charter schools, and then further research could examine instructional methods in more detail using more rigorous research designs or case studies.

Naomi Chudowsky is a consultant with Caldera Research LLC, which does research on federal education policy for state and national clients. She was previously a senior program officer at the National Research Council, where she worked on a variety of studies related to education and testing. Before that she worked on test development for President Clinton’s Voluntary National Testing Initiative at the U.S. Department of Education and as the coordinator of Connecticut’s statewide high school testing program. She has a Ph.D. in educational psychology from Stanford University.

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Record-Breaking

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT

The Guinness World Records was founded on the premise that collecting the superlative facts of the world would help us understand our place within it. Today, the NAPCS releases its annual report of the public school districts with the biggest and fastest growth in the charter school sector. A Growing Movement: American’s Largest Charter School Communities finds that a record number of public school districts—six—have at least 30 percent of their public school students enrolled in public charter schools. In addition, an all-time high of 18 school districts have more than 20 percent of their public school students enrolled in charter schools. Los Angeles, the Robert Wadlow of districts with the highest number of public charter school students enrolled, again tops the list with 79,385 students. To provide a sense of scale, the number of students enrolled in public charter schools in Los Angeles, alone, would place the city’s charter schools in the top 45 of the 100 largest school districts in the United States. For more exceptional findings from the report, including the “Top 10” districts with highest number, percentage and annual growth of public charter school students, click here.

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Report-Highlights-Practices-0024-Performance-of-Broad-Prize-for-Public-Charter-Schools-Winner

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 00:00:00 GMT

The inaugural Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools was awarded to YES Prep Public Schools at the 2012 National Charter Schools Conference. The mission of YES Prep is to increase the number of low-income students in Houston who graduate from a four-year college. The network of schools was recognized for demonstrating “the most outstanding overall student performance and improvement among the country’s largest urban charter management organizations in recent years while reducing achievement gaps for poor and minority students.”

YES Prep received a $250,000 award from the Broad Foundation. Additionally, Broad committed to spend time in the YES Prep network of schools and to release a report describing their educational practices and performance. Here are key findings from the report:

72 percent of YES Prep alumni are currently enrolled in college or have earned a bachelor’s degree.
- Nationally, less than a quarter of low-income students complete college.
Of the 6,700 students in YES Prep’s 11 secondary schools in Houston, 95 percent are Hispanic or African-American, 80 percent are from low-income families, and more than 90 percent will be the first generation in their families to go to college.
7,000 students are on waiting lists to attend YES Prep charter schools.
YES Prep offers a course about college each year of high school, which instructs students on everything from SAT prep, to the financial aid process, to writing college application essays.
The network’s teachers stand out for their in-depth content knowledge, energy, and passion.
- While teachers nationally often report feeling disempowered in their jobs, those at YES Prep approach their work with an almost missionary zeal and see their dedication rewarded.
YES prep schools focus on character education, with character traits of successful college students, such as grit and tenacity, heavily emphasized. Community service is mandatory, and students take pride in giving back to their neighborhoods.
Instead of a comprehensive summer school, YES Prep focuses on giving students the sort of life experiences that affluent parents can afford for their children: they attend programs on college campuses, take trips in the wilderness, and travel the world.
Two full-time network staff members as well as YES Prep college counselors support alumni. Counselors conduct exit interviews with all YES Prep graduates to prioritize college-support services based on academic, social/ emotional and financial needs.

The details in the report provide lessons for other schools based on YES Prep’s success in defying the odds and creating outstanding learning environments for students.

Image of report cover via The Broad Prize website

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Research-Rewind:-Back-to-Basics,-Quality-Matters

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT

It’s no secret that the performance of charter schools varies quite a bit. With over 5,000 charter schools and wide variety in mission, vision and instructional focus, examining charter schools as a whole will lead to a mixed bag of results. Research is moving in the direction of identifying the educational conditions that may lead to differences in results, but there is still much to learn about effective practices.

As the year comes to a close, let’s step back and ask a very basic school choice question: what happens when students choose high quality schools?

A series of studies on a district-wide open enrollment school choice policy in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina provide some answers. The studies are sophisticated by design, but offer straightforward results:

Families who selected schools based on academic quality (higher school performance), rather than by the proximity of schools or the student demographic make-up of schools, experienced significant gains in test scores as a result of attending the higher quality school.
Students zoned to low-quality neighborhood schools who won lotteries to attend higher quality high schools were more likely than students who lost the lotteries and attended lower quality neighborhood schools to graduate from high school, attend a four-year college, and earn a bachelor’s degree. Moreover, these students were twice as likely to attend an elite university.
Families who received direct and easy-to-read information on school test scores selected higher-scoring schools for their children. And again, the researchers found that attending higher performing schools led to better academic outcomes for the students.

These studies should motivate the charter school sector. The studies do not support school choice for school choice’s sake. And the studies don’t suggest that school choice is very effective when families choose schools for non-academic reasons. Rather, the studies provide concrete evidence that when families use school choice to select higher performing schools, their children perform better.

The charter sector has to use evidence like this to ensure quality and uphold the charter school bargain—autonomy in exchange for accountability. Consistently low performing charter schools should not be allowed to stay open. Instead, the sector should be working to provide more high quality options to families. If the charter sector can define what academic quality looks like and guarantee that every charter school is a very good option for students, widespread results will follow.

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Research-Shows-Presence-of-Public-Charter-Schools-Leads-to-Improvements-in-Traditional-Public-Schools

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

When a public charter school opens in a neighborhood, there are several impacts that are worth consideration: Will the charter school create pressure on neighboring traditional public schools (TPS) to make changes in their organization, instructional strategies, or outreach to families that may lead to improvements in student achievement? New research presented at the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) 38th Annual Conference suggests that traditional public schools do in fact respond to the presence of public charter schools. Yusuke Jinnai, a Ph.D candidate in Economics at the University of Rochester, examined the impact of opening public charter schools on achievement levels for students at a neighboring traditional public school in North Carolina. A few interesting findings from the study:

Public charter schools generated “a positive and significant direct impact on student achievement” in math and reading at nearby traditional public schools.
About 25 percent of this direct impact can be explained by low-achieving students switching from traditional public schools to charter schools, leaving higher-performing students at traditional schools.
The larger portion of the impact was due to direct competitive effects. In other words, the presence of public charter schools encouraged TPS to make improvements for remaining students that lead to increases in student performance.

Using student-level North Carolina panel data from 1997 to 2005, the study is innovative because it focuses on gaps in grades between charter schools and TPS in North Carolina. Oftentimes, a charter school will open with a single grade level and expand their grade range in subsequent years. Jinnai uses this gap to tease out the direct impact charter schools have on TPS students in overlapping grades and indirect impact on non-overlapping grades. Previous research estimated the impact of charter schools on TPS for all grade levels, regardless of whether charter schools served students in all grade levels.

Jinnai shows that the introduction of charter schools generates a positive and significant direct impact on student achievement: an increase of 0.033 standard deviations in math and 0.017 in reading for neighboring TPS students. While these gains are small in comparison to the impact of experienced teachers or per-pupil expenditure on achievement, they are larger and more accurate than previous competitive-effects studies due to the distinction between direct and indirect impact.

Public charter schools in North Carolina attract lower performing students, but they are showing academic success. In 2010, 77 percent of public charter schools made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). In contrast, 57 percent of traditional public schools made AYP in 2010. With North Carolina lifting their 100-charter school cap in 2011 and receiving 70 new charter applications for the 2014-2015 school year, there is potential for significant learning gains for all public school students.

Jinnai’s new paper debunks the myth that the success of public charter schools comes at the detriment of neighboring traditional public schools. In North Carolina, public charter schools contribute to education reform by serving low-performing students and encouraging high standards of performance for nearby traditional public schools.

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Research-Suggests-that-Public-Charter-Schools-Do-Not-Push-Out-Low-Performing-Students

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 00:00:00 GMT

There is an argument propagated by charter school critics that public charter schools systematically push out low-performing students. While critics do not provide evidence of specific examples of charter school policies that explicitly push out students, the hypothesis underlying the argument is that there are subtle policies—such as strict discipline and attendance rules, retention if students are not performing at grade-level, or expectations for parent involvement—that effectively counsel out hard-to-educate students. Moreover, critics contend that charter schools are under intense pressure to perform well, which may provide incentives to find ways to attract high performing students and to discourage low-performing students from staying. (However, traditional public schools face similar accountability pressures and may theoretically advise low-performing students to transfer to schools of choice in the district.)

A recent study of KIPP charter schools challenged the notion that there is more student attrition out of KIPP schools or that attrition explains higher levels of academic performance in the schools. Now, a new working paper by Ron Zimmer and Cassandra Guarino provides additional evidence that public charter schools are not pushing out low-performing students. The study examined patterns of student transfers in an anonymous school district with over 60 charter schools. A larger percentage of charter schools in the district met AYP compared with traditional public schools, making the district a good case study for examining whether charter schools were pushing out low-performing students in order to meet federal accountability standards.

The study finds no evidence that public charter schools were more likely to push out low-performing students. Conversely, the study finds that below-average students were five percent more likely to leave traditional public schools than below-average students in charter schools. The authors write, “In looking at different groups of charter schools (i.e., charter schools near AYP proficiency thresholds, low- and high-performing schools, primary and secondary schools), we generally find no evidence consistent with the claim of pushing out low-performing students.”

Even though the study provides evidence for only one school district, it is a good example of the empirical research needed to determine whether the persistent critiques of public charter schools are accurate.

Image via flickr

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Review-of-“Choices-0024-Challenges:-Charter-School-Performance-in-Perspective”

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Two decades after the first public charter school opened in Minnesota, and now that there are more than 6,000 public charter schools in operation, the timing is right for a comprehensive examination of the research on public charter schools. There have been a number of reviews of the research on academic performance studies (see the Betts & Tang meta-analysis and our own research synthesis), and NAPCS’s recent assessment shows that there is a positive trend in the performance of public charter schools demonstrated in high quality studies. But there is a great deal that we do not fully understand about why some charter schools are knocking it out of the ballpark, while others struggle. What are the mediating factors that create opportunities for public charter schools to perform well?

A new book from researchers Priscilla Wohlstetter, Joanna Smith, and Caitlin Farrell takes a deep dive into the large body of research on public charter schools, covering over 500 academic papers and reports—not just the academic performance studies—to compare how charter schools perform and operate relative to the goals initially set for them through legislation. The authors identified the following goals for public charter schools from a review of state charter laws:

Classroom goals:

Increase opportunities for teachers
Increase innovations in education programs
Increase student performance

School community goals:

Increase school autonomy
Increase opportunities for parent involvement
Increase school accountability

System goals:

Increase competition among public schools
Increase capacity of the K-12 education system
Increase student performance throughout education system

It is a solid framework for looking at the impact of public charter schools, specifically by assessing public charter schools through the lens of whether charter schools have achieved the legislative intent of the reform initiative. Overall, research suggests that public charter schools have lived up to most of the reform goals. Yet, the research does not reveal a secret sauce for public charter school success. Despite the 500 plus studies on public charter schools, the research is pretty lean in evaluating most of the goals. And given the fact that the sector has shifted towards a true acknowledgement of the importance of high quality authorizing and strong governance, there are other areas of research that need attention.

Beyond the call for more research, the book provides a nice discussion of the path public charter schools have taken as a reform initiative: from the early days of experimentation, to an era of expansion, to the current era of refinement. The final chapter includes reflection and commentary from five influential thinkers, including Jeffrey Henig (Teachers College, Columbia University), Paul Hill (Center for Reinventing Public Education, University of Washington), Bruno Manno (Walton Family Foundation, Deborah McGriff (NewSchools Venture Fund & NAPCS Board Member), and Charles Payne (University of Chicago), around the following questions:

In what ways, if any, have charter schools challenged the definition and boundaries of public education?
Across the levels of the system—classroom, school, district—where have charters succeeded? Where have they fallen short?
How is the relationship between charter and non-charter public school changing? How is the role of charters in the education sector as a whole evolving?
Most policies last ten to twenty years before being eclipsed by “the next big thing.” What does the charter sector have to do in the next five years to assure its future?

The last question should be on the minds of everyone involved in the public charter school sector.

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Rural-Charters-are-the-Fastest-Growing-Segment-of-Public-Charter-Schools

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Contrary to popular media coverage, which often focuses on the dramatic academic gains made in high performing urban charter schools, there is a little known truth about growth trends in the public charter school sector. While many great public charter schools are located in cities, charter schools are by no means an urban phenomenon.

You might be surprised to learn that rural charter schools are actually the fastest growing segment of the public charter school sector. In fact, nearly half of all charter schools are found outside city limits. And nearly 20 percent of all charter schools are in rural areas.

In response to the growth of rural charter schools, the Alliance released two reports today that provide a deeper look at this trend. Our new issue brief, Beyond City Limits: Expanding Public Charter Schools in Rural America, examines challenges that rural schools may face and profiles four rural charter schools that use creative approaches to meet the needs of the families and communities they serve. The flexibility that is a core part of the charter school model can present unique opportunities for rural communities as they navigate complex funding, human capital, and transportation questions.

The second publication is the latest installment in our Details from the Dashboard series. The new report analyzes charter schools statistics based on geographic region–including the growth of charter schools in all four areas (city, suburb, town, rural) compared with traditional public schools—as well as breakouts by charter management organization, authorizer, and union status.

And if you’re still hungry for more geographic information about charter schools, check out this blog–especially the graphical displays.

Table 1: Number of Schools and Students by Geographic Region

		2005-2006		2009-2010		5 Year Growth
Total number of charter schools
	City	1,934	(52.7%)	2,574	(52.3%)	32.5%
	Rural	539	(14.6%)	785	(16.0%)	45.6%
	Suburb	905	(24.5%)	1,011	(20.6%)	11.7%
	Town	213	(5.8%)	381	(7.8%)	44.1%
Total number of traditional public schools
	City	23,057	(25.1%)	22,817	(24.5%)	-1.0%
	Rural	29,066	(31.6%)	30,848	(33.1%)	6.1%
	Suburb	30,622	(33.3%)	25,765	(27.7%)	-15.9%
	Town	9,140	(9.9%)	13,402	(14.4%)	46.6%
Total number of students enrolled in charter schools
	City	576,736	(56.6%)	901,662	(55.4%)	56.3%
	Rural	123,779	(12.1%)	251,507	(15.5%)	103.2%
	Suburb	285,485	(28.0%)	382,985	(23.5%)	34.2%
	Town	32,436	(3.2%)	89,013	(5.5%)	174.4%
Total number of students enrolled in traditional public schools
	City	14,160,849	(29.5%)	13,572,890	(28.5%)	-4.2%
	Rural	10,494,737	(21.9%)	11,723,441	(24.7%)	11.7%
	Suburb	19,571,853	(40.8%)	16,527,293	(34.8%)	-15.6%
	Town	3,957,636	(8.2%)	5,850,786	(12.3%)	47.8%

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StudentsFirst-2013-State-Policy-Report-Card

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

StudentsFirst released their first state report card today, grading state policies against three policy areas the organization believes are critical to refocusing the education system on students:

Elevate the teaching profession
Empower parents with choice and information
Spend wisely and govern well

The states with the top ten scores in the overall ranking system are: Louisiana, Florida, Indiana, Rhode Island, Michigan, Hawaii, Arizona, Colorado, District of Columbia, and Ohio. However, no states received an overall grade higher than a B-.

The section on empowering parents has several charter school indicators, including many elements of NAPCS’ model charter school law. The top ten states are: Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, Florida, Hawaii, District of Columbia, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Missouri. In this category the highest score was a C+. Clearly there is a lot of room for improvement if states are going to implement policies that meet the objectives of StudentsFirst.

In NAPCS’ 2012 state-by-state ranking against the charter school model law, Maine had the highest score – with 158 out of 208 points available. NAPCS will be releasing an updated version of the law soon with new analysis about states’ effectiveness in implementing their laws.

For an online database of the StudentsFirst report card, click here.

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Taking-Excellence-to-Scale

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

The good news to come out of the new study of Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) is that there is strong evidence that high quality public charter schools can be taken to scale. Several of these CMOs produce outcomes equivalent to three years of learning gains in just two academic years. The even better news is that the apparent drivers of these impressive performance gains are educational practices that the entire charter sector (and probably all schools) can put into practice.

There are two promising practices identified in the study: intense instructional coaching, particularly with new teachers, and the implementation of a culture of high expectations through comprehensive behavior policies. Broad application of these approaches could lead to more widespread academic quality, a true scaling of excellence. Importantly, these practices can be adopted without diminishing individual charter autonomy over curricular content or instructional strategies. In short, the practices associated with high performance in large CMOs don’t require a central office or multiple locations.

Let’s take a closer look at the study, by Mathematica and the University of Washington’s Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE). It examines nonprofit CMOs that had a minimum of four schools open in 2007, direct control over the decision to hire and fire school leaders (which excludes most KIPP schools), and served students who were not primarily dropouts or similar special populations. Forty CMOs with 292 schools met these criteria. For the achievement impact analysis, the sample was further decreased to 22 CMOs based on having schools with middle school grades and data to compare with traditional public schools.

Some interesting findings:

The overall impact of CMOs on student achievement is positive, but not statistically significant.
On average, large CMOs made larger gains. The magnitude of the positive gains experienced by highest performing CMOs are great enough to overcome black-white and Hispanic-white NAEP achievement gaps.
The study found no evidence that CMOs focus on one subject area at the expense of another. Rather, CMOs that perform well in math also perform well in reading.
There is a positive relationship between math performance and a larger percentage of CMO teachers who are from Teach for America (TFA) or other teacher fellowship programs.
Compared with schools in traditional school districts, CMOs are less prescriptive in determining curriculum and instructional materials, log more instructional time (mostly through longer school days and more time on task), are more likely to hire teachers based on sample lessons and teacher commitment to the mission of the school, have larger applicant pools of teachers for each open position (63 vs. 20 applicants), are more likely to employ performance-based compensation, observe teachers and provide feedback more frequently, more often require teachers submit lesson plans for review, and use coaching and monitoring more often than “in-service” or workshop days for professional development.
States with higher scores on the components that lead to more autonomy in NAPCS’ model law have more CMOs.

This report provides lots to dig through, and there will certainly be a lot of discussion around this report. But the big takeaways are that a good number of CMOs are taking high quality education to scale, and there are common, high quality practices that can be implemented in more charter schools.

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The-Instructional-Strategies-Charter-Schools-Use-[Infographic]

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT

This past spring, NAPCS conducted a survey of public charter schools across the country. (The national survey provided data for our estimate of 610,000 students on waiting lists to attend charter schools (see here, here, and here).) There were over 5,600 charter schools operating nationwide when we administered the survey in 2011-2012, and we know that charter schools are not a uniform category of schools. One of NAPCS’ goals through the school survey was to collect information that would help us better understand the wide range of instructional strategies charter schools use. We asked charter schools to select their instructional focus from a list of 44 categories (schools could select more than one area of focus). We started with a list from the 2006 Fordham Institute study, Playing to Type: Mapping the Charter School Landscape and revised the list (adding some categories, deleting others) based on work NAPCS has done work collecting information about charter schools nationwide.

Crunching through the survey data, we found that over 40 percent of charter schools responded that their instructional focus is “college-prep.” The term “college-prep” may generate images of a particular type of school: students in uniforms, college and university banners hanging in hallways, a “no excuses” mantra. But when we looked a little deeper at the survey data, we found wide variation in how charter schools go about implementing the focus of preparing students for college. Charter schools use service-learning, project-based instruction, community service, arts, technology, and STEM, among a variety of other instructional methods, to prepare students for college. The survey data reflects the reality that charter schools are not a homogenous set of schools. The infographic below presents findings from the survey (we have a PDF version of the infographic, too).

This week and next NAPCS will use the Charter Blog to feature public charter schools that prepare students for college using a range of instructional strategies. We have asked school leaders to tell us in their own words how they use service-learning, project-based instruction, child-centered methods, etc. to create a “college-prep” focus. By combining data on instructional strategies from a national survey with on the ground stories of the work of charter schools, we hope to show the wide scope of possibilities in how charter schools can provide great learning environments for students.

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The-Race-Ethnicity-Demographics-of-Public-Charter-Schools

Mon, 21 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Over the last several years, public charter schools have faced steady criticism that there are a larger percentage of charter schools with majority race/ethnicity groups than traditional public schools. The critics will point to national, state, or peculiar comparisons at metropolitan statistical areas to show that charter schools enroll more students of color.

Regrettably, racial isolation has been growing in our public school systems, largely as a result of the lifting of court order busing mandates, limitations on the use of race/ethnicity as an assignment mechanism, residential segregation, school district boundaries, attendance zones, and limited transportation. The fact is that, more often than not, charter schools mirror the demographic trends of the surrounding school district (read more here).

Today NAPCS is releasing a Details from the Dashboard report that presents race/ethnicity breakouts for public charter schools and traditional public schools at the state and school district levels. We present the data at these two levels to show that when comparisons are made solely at the state level, the differences between charter schools and traditional public schools in the demographics of students enrolled are exaggerated. District level comparisons provide a much better assessment of student demographics. The table below shows a couple of examples of states where charter schools appear to enroll a much different student population than the state average, but in reality the charter schools are on par with traditional public schools in the surrounding district.

The Details from the Dashboard report serves as a complement to our recently released issue brief on the different ways in which public charter schools serve the diverse needs of communities. The state and district statistics provide context to the case studies presented in the report.

Race/Ethnicity Percentages by Public Charter Schools and Traditional Public Schools, 2010-2011

State (School District)			White %	Black %	Hispanic %	Asian %	Other %
Indiana		CPS	32.6	51.2	8.1	0.7	7.3
Indiana		TPS	74.0	11.2	8.4	1.6	4.8
	Indianapolis Public Schools	CPS	28.2	53.1	8.9	0.3	9.5
	Indianapolis Public Schools	TPS	24.2	53.9	15.6	0.4	5.9
	Gary Community School Corporation	CPS	1.0	90.6	6.9	0.0	1.5
	Gary Community School Corporation	TPS	0.7	88.4	2.7	0.1	8.1
Maryland		CPS	11.7	80.0	4.8	1.2	2.2
Maryland		TPS	43.5	35.1	11.7	5.8	4.0
	Baltimore City Public Schools	CPS	8.2	83.9	5.1	1.0	1.8
	Baltimore City Public Schools	TPS	7.8	86.6	3.9	1.0	0.7
	Prince George's County Public Schools	CPS	1.3	91.7	3.5	1.3	2.1
	Prince George's County Public Schools	TPS	4.5	68.9	21.0	2.9	2.7
Michigan		CPS	33.1	54.4	6.7	2.1	3.2
Michigan		TPS	72.5	16.3	5.8	2.7	2.7
	Detroit Public Schools	CPS	4.1	85.9	8.6	0.9	0.3
	Detroit Public Schools	TPS	3.0	86.7	8.9	1.0	0.3
	Southfield Public Schools	CPS	7.1	91.6	0.4	0.0	0.8
	Southfield Public Schools	TPS	4.9	93.9	0.4	0.3	0.5
Missouri		CPS	10.0	78.2	9.7	1.3	0.2
Missouri		TPS	76.1	15.7	4.4	1.9	1.9
	Saint Louis Public Schools	CPS	11.2	82.8	4.0	0.8	0.2
	Saint Louis Public Schools	TPS	12.8	81.1	3.4	2.2	0.2
	Kansas City, Missouri School District	CPS	8.6	73.1	16.0	1.8	0.1
	Kansas City, Missouri School District	TPS	8.9	66.5	21.8	2.5	0.2
Pennsylvania		CPS	40.4	42.4	11.9	2.3	2.8
Pennsylvania		TPS	72.8	14.2	8.1	3.2	1.7
	The School District of Philadelphia	CPS	15.6	64.4	15.9	2.7	1.3
	The School District of Philadelphia	TPS	13.8	59.5	17.7	6.1	2.9

Source: Compiled by NAPCS using the Public Charter Schools Dashboard.

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The-Results-Are-In…

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT

As we approach the 20^th anniversary of the opening of the first charter school, we’re at a critical moment for reflection. Many are understandably asking: are charters performing any better than their traditional public school counterparts? There have been a number of conflicting studies on charter school performance, with some receiving a fair share of attention over the past several years. Making sense of the often wide variation in findings can become quite overwhelming, given the differences in samples and locations, years studied, and research design strategies.

But now there is some clarity in the muddy charter school research waters. Researchers from the University of California San Diego just released a meta-analysis of studies on charter school achievement, a must read for folks who want to keep up with the growing charter school performance research base. Meta-analysis, which is a study of studies strategy popularized by the medical research field, pulls together the results from a body of research and analyzes the overall effect of the program. Consequently, the findings from a meta-analysis—in this case, the overall impact of charter schools on student outcomes—are stronger than results from any individual study.

The UCSD meta-analysis shows that public charter schools outperform traditional public schools in the following break-outs (drumroll please…): elementary reading and math, middle school math, and urban high school reading. Given the large number of studies on KIPP charter schools, the authors were able to break out the findings and found large, positive results for KIPP middle schools in reading and math. In sum, charters serving elementary and middle school grades by and large outperform traditional public schools.

The positive results are testimony to the constant efforts by all the students, parents, educators, and others in the charter world whose daily work makes these results a reality.

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Two-Million-Charter-Students!

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT

This certainly is a momentous year for the charter sector. Two million students enrolled (200K new students)! 500 new schools! Twenty years since the first charter school opened! Oh my! The growth in the number of public charter schools and students demonstrates parents’ continued demand for high quality educational options. Follow the yellow brick road to here and here for our newly released estimates of the number of students enrolled in charter schools for the 2011-12 school year.
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Washingtonian-Disses-Board,-Misses-Point

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 00:00:00 GMT

It’s good to see the GAO’s new report giving a high-five to my alma mater, the DC Public Charter School Board. The PCSB is a standard-setter in its field, recognized as such by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers.

But Alyssa Rosenberg’s Washingtonian blog about the report includes an odd take on the PCSB’s tough accountability record: “Since the board began granting charters in 1996, it has closed down 24 of the 76 schools it’s opened. Of those 24, three gave up their charters voluntarily and four gave them up after they couldn’t attract enough students to stay financially viable….” Noting a higher closure rate than the national average, the piece concludes: “The problem, it seems, isn’t oversight after the fact—it’s picking the proposals for schools that have the best chance to succeed during the application process. And if the Public Charter School Board could find a way to weed out schools that were likely to fail, the organization might need fewer of those outside performance review consultants that are driving up its personnel costs.” (Homework needed here: The PCSB has actually been quite parsimonious in awarding charters, for example approving just four of thirteen applications in the 2010 cycle.)

But here’s the big, unmentioned factual gap: Of the 24 charters closed since 1996, 14 were chartered not by the PCSB but by the now-defunct DC Board of Education, commonly acknowledged as one of the nation’s worst authorizers (so bad that its charter officer went to the slammer for diverting school funds to a sham contract operation set up by her daughter). The old Board handed out charters at random and did no oversight; by imposing some serious standards and giving schools close scrutiny, the PCSB is thinning the herd. It’s closed six of the schools inherited when the DC Board was put out of its misery in 2007.

You wouldn’t know from the blog the report is actually titled "District of Columbia Charter Schools: Criteria for Awarding School Buildings to Charter Schools Needs Additional Transparency." GAO’s major recommendations are aimed not at the PCSB but at the mayor and the city, faulting them for failing to fulfill the spirit of DC’s public education facilities laws, which give charters right of first refusal on excess school-district property. In a response included with the report, Mayor Vincent Gray commendably sets out new rules for accommodating charters in the decision process.

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What-do-Special-Education-Enrollment-Figures-Really-Tell-Us003F

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Critics say that public charter schools do not serve students with disabilities. But simple comparisons of the relative number of students with special needs served do not tell the full story. The Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) recently released a report that gives some context. It describes the distribution of students with disabilities in New York State charter and district-run schools. The analysis compares charter and district-run schools at the state level, and then conducts further break outs by school type, district, and authorizer.

The different comparison levels yield different results. Of particular note is that comparisons of state-level and other large data sets mask important information and variation. More specifically, the report finds:

The statewide comparison of the difference in charter and district enrollment is too simplistic—charter schools on average serve a smaller share of special education students than New York’s district-run schools, but the distribution and range of enrollment are not that different from the district-run schools’ composition
Charter middle and high school special education enrollments are indistinguishable from district enrollments, while charter elementary schools show underenrollment of students with disabilities.
There is variation among charter authorizers—some oversee schools with special education enrollments that closely track those of nearby district-run schools; others do not.

Given the variation of special education enrollment across charter and district schools, the report calls for nuanced policies. Rather than using sweeping measures such as enrollment targets, policymakers and authorizers should conduct further research to identify where special education underenrollment exists in charter schools and examine possible explanations. Then work should be done with the charter school community to develop innovative strategies to address specific problems.

The charter community is taking this work very seriously. Last summer, the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report that found that charter schools, on average, serve a smaller proportion of students with disabilities than district-run public schools. As a response to these concerns and to better serve their students and community, public charter schools, advocates in districts, states, and courts across the country have sought to improve access. The new analysis by CRPE helps the public charter community understand the problem and create appropriate responses.

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What-is-the-Value-of-Educational-Opportunity003F

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT

In essence, the question ‘what is the value of educational opportunity?’ is a primary question underlying school choice reform efforts. It is also the question which studies that compare the academic performance of public charter schools and traditional public schools attempt to quantify. We wrote on this blog about three solid studies that showed that the quality of school options matters quite a bit. One of the authors of those quality studies, Justine S. Hastings, has released a new working paper through the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) that examines the impact that winning admission to one’s school of choice via lottery has on non-cognitive measures (such as behavior) while the students still attend their current schools. The paper is smartly designed and indicates that once students find out that they have won the lottery to attend a charter school, behavior problems decline (measured by truancy rates). Male students applying to charter high schools had the largest decline in truancy by 21 percent (you can read more about the study here, here, and here).

Studies that compare the academic performance of students who won lotteries to attend charter schools with students who lost lotteries (see Boston, NYC, Chicago, and elsewhere) provide evidence that students who win the lottery and attend charter schools experience higher levels of achievement. The new NBER report suggests that winning the lottery impacts behavior before students even enroll in the new charter school. These findings support the idea that educational opportunity can truly be about more than what happens within a school. Believing in the opportunities that a high quality education can unleash may impact behavior and performance outcomes, as well as the hard to measure qualities such as aspiration and motivation.

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Why-Examining-the-Promising-Practices-of-Charter-Schools-Matters

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Earlier this week the Washington Post published a blog taking shots at findings from the recent CMO study that demonstrated a correlation between high performing CMOs and the strategies of teacher coaching and strict behavioral management. The blog’s critique boils down to suggesting that we should disregard the findings for being anecdotal (e.g., only five CMOs are highlighted in the study) and failing to establish causal order (e.g., are the CMOs high performing because they use teacher coaching or are they able to focus on teacher coaching because they are high performing?). Sure, these are valid methodological concerns (and they mirror the critiques of the “effective schools literature” of the 80s and 90s). But the authors of the CMO study are very careful to explain that their results are exploratory.

So should we disregard the findings? I would argue no, and here’s why. The charter sector needs more exploratory research. The majority of research on charter schools uses large administrative databases to compare charter schools to traditional public schools at the district, state, and national level. These types of analyses are important, but they are only able to compare the performance of charter schools in the aggregate to comparison traditional public schools in the aggregate. And what has this type of research uncovered? In some instances, charter schools perform better than traditional public schools, sometimes they perform the same, and sometimes they perform worse. The findings are mixed, with evidence that overall charters perform a little better.

But there are a good number phenomenally successful charter schools (too many to ignore, regardless of aggregate results), and when research clumps all charter schools into a homogenous dummy variable, it is difficult to tease out why some charter schools perform so well. What the charter sector needs is a significant amount of exploratory research to identify promising practices. Then the research can move from exploratory to explanatory by taking the promising areas of instructional and governance practices and use experimental and quasi-experimental research methods to determine what practices impact student performance (e.g., the research should move from development to scale-up to validity, the i3 categories).

Rather than boohooing the CMO study results, we should use them as a launching pad to ask more questions about how successful CMOs and other high performing charter schools function to improve student learning.

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