Opinion: A new look at the CREDO charter school study

Most people involved in education policy know exactly what you mean when you refer to “the CREDO study.” I can’t prove this, but suspect it may be the most frequently mentioned research report over the past two years (it was released in 2009), says Matthew Di Carlo, senior fellow at the non-profit Albert Shanker Institute, for the Washington Post. For those who haven’t heard of it (or have forgotten), this report, done by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO), which is based at Stanford University, was a comparison of public charter schools and traditional public schools in 15 states and the District of Columbia. Put simply, the researchers matched up real charter school students with fictional amalgamations of statistically similar students in the same area (the CREDO team called them “virtual twins”), and compared charter school students’ performance (in terms of test score gains) to that of their “twins.”

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Study: On average, charter schools do no better than public schools

More evidence is in that charter schools – at least on average – do no better than regular public schools, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Middle-school students who were selected by lottery to attend charter schools performed no better than their peers who lost out in the lottery and attended nearby public schools, according to a study funded by the federal government and released Tuesday. This is the first large-scale randomized study to be conducted across multiple states, and it lends some fuel to those who say there is little evidence to back the drive for more charters. But the study also found more nuanced evidence that the charters that work best are those serving lower-income students, especially in urban areas…

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