Stanford Study Offers Mixed Appraisal of Charters

“Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States,” a report released last month, presents a mixed portrait of charter school effectiveness. According to researchers at the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University, charter students nationwide experience statistically significant, slightly smaller learning gains in math and reading than traditional public school pupils with similar demographic characteristics. The data show that approximately 80% of the charters assessed perform significantly worse or no better than their conventional counterparts. The study, however, also identifies subgroups of students that are likely to fare far better in charters and recognizes several high-achieving states.

Students from poverty backgrounds and English Language Learners (ELLs), on aggregate, achieve significantly higher academic growth in both reading and math than similar students in conventional schools. On the other hand, African American and Hispanic children, and students proficient in English and not from poverty backgrounds exhibited smaller gains than their non-charter peers. Notably, charters in Arkansas, Colorado (limited to schools in Denver), Illinois (limited to schools in Chicago), Louisiana and Missouri outperformed their district counterparts in both reading and math.

CREDO’s findings are particularly timely as the Obama administration works to spur school reform through provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Charters are a centerpiece of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s agenda, and the CREDO report could have important implications for the policies his agency chooses to promote. In a speech before the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools last month, Duncan detailed the administration’s proposals, including a $52 million increase in funding and the requirement that states lower charter caps in order to be eligible to receive the ARRA’s “Race to the Top” grants, for supporting “successful charter schools” that “[bring] new options to underserved communities.” Duncan also exhorted advocates to establish stricter standards of accountability in order to weed out low-quality charters. The CREDO report appears to lend support to the administration’s efforts. The researchers found that states without caps outperformed those with restrictions. Additionally, the report shows that states with multiple authorizers—and on the authors’ view, presumably less accountability—see smaller academic gains.

Amidst the debate over accountability, some charter proponents attribute low performance to inadequate funding levels. In many states, charters receive fewer dollars-per-pupil than conventional, district-run schools and often have greater fixed costs, they say. The CREDO report does not address these concerns, and there is scant research assessing the impact of funding on charter performance. (See, Jeffrey Henig, Spin Cycle 2008). As a preliminary matter, correlating funding data from the Center for Education Reform with the findings of the CREDO report suggests no clear relationship between performance and funding parity in the states. Charters in the highest and lowest performing states in the CREDO study receive approximately 72% and 74% of the funds allocated to their traditional public school counterparts, respectively. Additionally, there are wide disparities in funding levels between states within each subset. Among high performers, for instance, Missouri charters receive 99% of conventional school funds compared to Arkansas’ 64%. These data do not, however, include information on private donations, and it is not possible to determine the relationship between funding and performance without a more sophisticated approach taking into account myriad economic, educational and political factors.