Credo: Charter Schools Are Starting to Fulfill Their Promise

Charter schools - free (in both senses of the word) public schools - have not been as successful as their proponents might have wished, nor as unsuccessful as their opponents might have wished. The opponents of charter schools were quite gleeful about a  2009 CREDO study that had some negative things (as well as some positive things) to say about the performance of the approximately 5,000 charter schools then in existence. Now, four years later, a new CREDO study is much more bullish on the approximately 6,000 charter schools now in existence (more). I guess this means the opponents of charter schools will change their minds now (not). (Hint - their opposition is based on reasons other than the performance of charter schools).

Here are the main takeaways from the new CREDO report, as summarized by Andy Smarick in the Thomas B Fordham Institute's weekly newsletter.

• Contrary to public perception, only 56 percent of charter students live in urban areas; the rest are in suburbia, rural areas, and small towns.
• More than half of the charter kids studied live in poverty—higher than the district school rate. A growing number of Hispanic and low-income families are choosing charters.
• Among the sixteen initial states, charters have improved significantly in both reading and math. They now outperform traditional public school (TPS) peers in reading (about eight days more of learning per year) and are on par in math. (Figure 22 nicely shows these improvements.)
• The performance of new charters lags that of longer-standing charters.
• Looking at all twenty-seven states, the average charter student starts further behind academically than his TPS peers.
• Importantly, charters are producing large academic gains for the most historically disadvantaged students, notably low-income Hispanic and African American students and English language learners.
• Enrollment among these groups is growing; in other words, the groups of students that most benefit from charters are increasingly finding their ways into charters.
• However, there continues to be wide variation in performance within the national charter sector. Some schools outperform peer district schools, some do about the same, and some lag behind. But these proportions have been trending, since 2009, in the right direction for the charter sector.
• One continuing disappointment: CMO-run schools aren’t doing as well as they should. We’re all aware of the great CMOs, but too many states have allowed middling or poor charters to replicate, causing overall CMO performance to lag.
• Perhaps most striking is the enormous variation in charter performance from state to state. Some state charter sectors are helping their kids learn dozens of extra days worth of material annually. The best results are now found in D.C., Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Tennessee. (By contrast, the performance of Nevada’s charters is shameful.)
• I suspect it’s no coincidence that the states with great charter performance have independent authorizers (no more district authorizing!).
• The report compares the additional learning kids get from their states’ charters to their respective states’ NAEP scores. Two major findings jump out: In Massachusetts and New Jersey—states with high statewide NAEP scores—the charter sectors still best their TPS counterparts.
• In D.C., where NAEP scores are woeful, the charter sector is offering kids remarkably higher-performing options.
• Per Figure 42, the longer kids stay in charters, the more they learn compared to TPS peers.
• Lastly, the report offers five scenarios for closing low-performing charters. The upshot is clear: Get serious about shuttering failing charters, and the sector’s overall performance skyrockets. (It would have been nice if they had also shown the sector-wide influence of various scenarios for growing the best charters.)

SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT