Why the recent changes?
One of the biggest arguments against charter schools—publicly funded but privately run—is that there’s little data to support the claim that charter schools perform better than traditional public schools; therefore, the funding those public schools could have used to implement new achievement-aiding measures has essentially gone to waste.
Other arguments against charter schools is that they “cream” the students with the least discipline problems and most engaged parents, and lead to lowered enrollment in public schools.
“Folks are losing access to walkable schools, to public resources. What we feel it is about is pushing low-income and moderate income people of color out of the District,” said Daniel del Pielago of the community group Empower DC, which has called for a moratorium on school closures, according to the Washington Post. (D.C. is on track to become “a city where a majority of children are educated not in traditional public schools but in public charters.”)
However, charter advocates say it’s a free market, and if traditional public schools can’t help students succeed, it’s only fair that parents and interested students are presented with alternatives.
Yet, little data exists on whether or not charter schools do, in fact, raise student achievement.
“Truth be told, ethical arguments between supposedly ‘pro-‘ and ‘anti-‘ groups fall prey to the same pitfall as the empirical arguments: they obscure the essential heterogeneity of charter schools,” writes Conor P. Williams, senior researcher in New America’s Early Education Initiative. “Charters are diverse to such an extent that they almost cease to be a definable subset.”
Williams argues that instead of using national data to try and define whether or not charter schools are better or worse than traditional public schools, performance should be examined by state.
“Research suggests that jurisdictions where charters are relatively easy to close (e.g. New York City and Massachusetts) get much better results than places where closures are difficult (e.g. Arizona, Texas),” said Williams.
Williams looked at the 2013 CREDO report, which showed that charter students in Massachusetts made math gains equivalent to 65 additional days of learning in comparison with their traditional public school peers.
In Texas, charter students’ math gains worked out to 22 fewer days of learning than their traditional public school peers.
“Of course, this alone doesn’t quite demonstrate that strong accountability measures caused better outcomes for students in Massachusetts, but it’s a far more productive starting point for debate than the mixed national data,” Williams emphasized.
Perhaps that’s why states are now taking aggressive steps to update charter laws—if charters in some states work better than others, states should look to scale the policies that support this success.
(Next page: State rankings in laws and performance)
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