Charter School: No Skimming, No Rising Tide, No Better or Worse

"...charter-school competition is

unlikely to create arising tide of school performance,

in the absence of dramatic changes in the structures,

incentives, culture, and operation of conventional school districts."

A timely new study from RAND on charter schools provides analysis of several key questions in eight states.

Charter Schools in Eight States:

Effects on Achievement, Attainment,

Integration, and Competition

Charter schools are publicly funded schools that operate outside the direct control of local school districts, under a publicly issued charter that gives them greater autonomy than other public schools have over curriculum, instruction, and operations. Their students (or the students’ parents) choose to attend the charter schools rather than being assigned to a school based on residential location. The first U.S. charter school opened in 1992, and the scale of the charter movement has since grown to 4,000 schools and more than a million students in 40 states and the District of Columbia. With this growth has also come a contentious debate. Supporters argue that charter schools can improve student achievement and attainment, serve as laboratories for innovation, provide choice to families that have few options, and promote healthy competition with traditional public schools (TPSs).

Critics worry that charter schools perform no better (and, too often, worse) than TPSs, that they may exacerbate stratification by race and ability, and that they harm the students left in TPSs by skimming away financial resources and motivated families.

In recent years, research has begun to inform this debate, but many of the key outcomes have not been adequately examined or have been examined in only a few states. Moreover, questions about the validity of the findings of even the best-designed charter-school impact studies have remained, producing deep uncertainty about the interpretation of results.

What Are the Characteristics of Students Transferring to Charter Schools?

• We find no systematic evidence to support the fear that charter schools are skimming off the highest-achieving students.
• Transfers to charter schools did not create dramatic shifts in the sorting of students by race or ethnicity in any of the sites included in the study.
• We find suggestive evidence that African American students are more likely to self-segregate: African American students transferring to charter schools moved to schools with higher concentrations of African American students in five of seven locales.

What Effect Do Charter Schools Have on Test-Score Gains for Students Who Transfer Between Traditional Public Schools and Charter Schools?

• The average effect that charter schools are having on their students across grades K–12 is difficult to estimate.
• In five out of seven locales, these nonprimary charter schools are producing achievement gains that are, on average, neither substantially better nor substantially worse than those of local TPSs.
• In Chicago (in reading) and in Texas (in both reading and math), charter middle schools appear to be falling short of traditional public middle schools.
• In most locations, charter schools have difficulty raising student achievement in their first year of operation, typically producing achievement results that fall short of those of local TPSs. This is consistent with prior research and common sense and may not be a charter specific phenomenon: Opening a new school is challenging, regardless of whether the school is a charter school. Across locations, we see a general pattern of improved performance as schools age.
• Charter schools in most locales have marginally greater variation in performance than TPSs, as measured by the achievementimpact estimate for each school, and, in some locations, this may simply reflect greater measurement error associated with the smaller
  average size of charter schools. Ohio is a notable exception: Its charter schools have a much wider range of variation in performance than its TPSs have.

What Is the Effect of Attending a Charter High School on the Probability of Graduating and of Entering College?

• In the two locations with attainment data (Florida and Chicago), attending a charter high school is associated with statistically significant and substantial increases in the probability of graduating and of enrolling in college.

What Effect Does the Introduction of Charter Schools Have on Test Scores of Students in Nearby Traditional Public Schools?

• There is no evidence in any of the locations that charter schools are negatively affecting the achievement of students in nearby TPSs. But there is also little evidence of a positive competitive impact on nearby TPSs.

What Are the Policy Implications?

• We emphasize the modifier “possible” in discussing policy influences: ...conclusions must remain tentative.
• Findings on the students transferring to charter schools and on the integration effects are largely consistent across sites, suggesting that policymakers need have little fear of cream-skimming or of substantial increases in racial isolation.
• The overall estimates of the average achievement impacts of charter schools can provide little guidance for policy, given that the validity of the estimates for elementary schools is in doubt.
• the challenge is to minimize the
  number of charter failures without sacrificing successful charter
  schools.
• The absence of evidence of substantial effects of charter schools on the achievement of students in nearby TPSs might be encouraging to policymakers who were concerned about negative effects and disappointing to policymakers who hoped that competition would induce TPSs to improve.
• Our findings support the hypothesis (see, e.g., F. Hess, 1999) that charter-school competition is unlikely to create a rising tide of school performance, in the absence of dramatic changes in the structures, incentives, culture, and operation of conventional
  school districts.

Early Intervention

One of the most important methods of closing the achievement gap is early intervention - something lacking for far too many children.

This from Education Week:

Kids Who Need Preschool the Most Aren't Enrolled

Low income and minority children could benefit most from quality preschool, but a new report finds that they're least likely to be enrolled in good early development programs.

In a report released Wednesday by the RAND California Preschool Study, researchers estimate that only 15 percent of those who could benefit most are in high-quality programs that prepare them for success in K-12.

"We can't close the achievement gap unless we close the preparedness gap before kindergarten," said Debra Watkins, founder of the California Alliance of African American Educators. "As a former high school teacher of nearly 30 years, I certainly see what happens (to students who) do not have high quality preschool by the time they reach high school, where we have a dropout problem."
...

Teachers Say NCLB Has Changed Classroom Practice, but not always for the better

A new study tracking the classroom impact of the No Child Left Behind Act in California, Georgia, and Pennsylvania suggests that teachers are adjusting their teaching practices in response to the law—but not always in ways that educators and policymakers might want.

According to the three-year study, which is being conducted by the Santa Monica, Calif.-based RAND Corp., majorities of elementary and middle school science and math teachers in all three states report in surveys that they are making positive changes in the classroom by focusing on their states’ academic standards or searching for better teaching methods.

At the same time, though, sizable percentages of educators are also spending more time teaching test-taking strategies, focusing more narrowly on the topics covered on state tests, and tailoring teaching to the “bubble kids”—the students who fall just below the proficiency cutoffs on state tests.

“This is telling us we’re seeing both positive responses as well as responses that raise some concerns,” said Laura S. Hamilton, the study’s lead author and a senior behavioral scientist at RAND. Her study was among five reports spotlighted here this week at a conference organized by the prominent think tank.

With financing from the National Science Foundation, Ms. Hamilton and her research partners have been surveying teachers, principals, and superintendents in the three study states since 2002, the year the NCLB legislation became law, as well as conducting more in-depth studies in 18 districts spread across those states.

...The findings suggest that educators on the ground are viewing and responding to the federal law in complicated ways. For instance, across all three states, two-thirds or more of superintendents and principals and 40 percent to 60 percent of teachers said that staff focus on student learning had improved as a result of the new accountability pressures, but many also agreed that staff morale had declined.

This from Education Week.