i’ve been following this blog for a while.  school choice isn’t my area of interest, but a regular reader would not see how reasonable people can dispute the obvious merits of choice.

still, i’m always interested in the data behind decisions.  so i poked around.  here’s a site that seems to offer data:  http://credo.stanford.edu/

there are several different reports, the results seem to be mixed.  in single-state studies, NY charters do modestly well, PA charters are hurting their kids.  averaged across 16 states, charters are not as good as regular schools, and some states like Ohio have awful charter schools.

there are different ways of reading this.  perhaps charters are forcing regular schools to improve their game (in which case, regular students should thank charter students for sacrificing their education to raise standards for all).

perhaps there are some outstanding charters, but too many sub-mediocre players have flooded the market (in which case we need to ask how more best-practice charters can be added).

perhaps the regular schools are simply lying about their test scores (viz recent scandals), and the data is flawed.

perhaps the older, more experienced union teachers are actually better (anecdotes suggest that a small number of ‘bad’ teachers cause the most damage).

perhaps some states have hobbled the charter schools in ways that make the public schools look better (would not shock any reader of this blog).  or perhaps for-profit schools are scamming parents and students (like their college and university counterparts). 

i’m certain charters feel impelled to provide better customer service to parents, for example by picking up the phone.  but that isn’t a good measure of education.  at first glance, stanford’s data does not support the hypothesis that charter schools are ‘better’ than state schools.

@Tom

Most honest charter school advocates would tell you that charters vary considerably. Charter operators are, after all, private organizations and it is perfectly possible for unscrupulous and/or incompetent operators from getting their hands on a charter school. Here’s where the state’s charter laws come in. A good charter law will set a high standard that potential charter applicants will have to meet before they are allowed to run a school, set high performance goals for charters and quickly shut down any charters that do not meet their performance goals.

New York has good charter laws - so their schools do better than other states. Several other states have terrible charter laws so those charters, on average, do worse than your the typical public school. So, there is no way you can consider charters to be one monolithic entity. What we need to do is look at the successful operators (like KIPP, Aspire etc), figure out what makes them so successful and try and emulate them.

- HCE

hmm.  here’s a careful ‘meta-study’ of some of the studies of kipp schools: http://www.greatlakescenter.org/docs/Policy_Briefs/Henig_Kipp.pdf

it provides an excellent tutorial about data validity and why you should take glowing ‘report cards’ with a grain of salt.

i didn’t read the study carefully, just skimmed (it’s not my area of interest).  but from what i saw, it was complementary; only said nice things about kipp.  it mentions the famous attrition problem with lower-performing students, finds no intent to push out weaker students, but adjusts the numbers to try to dig out the real achievement. 

it’s a very positive study.  but….  it found only small gains in learning outcomes.  the author echos your sentiment - figure out what is working and try to get more of that.  he warns, however, to keep realistic expectations.