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Charter Schools+context
While charter schools provide an alternative to other public schools, they are part of the public education system and are not allowed to charge tuition. Where space at a charter school is limited, admission is frequently allocated by lottery based admissions. Some charter schools provide a curriculum that specializes in a certain field—e.g. arts, mathematics, etc. Others attempt to provide a better and more efficient general education than nearby public schools.
Some charter schools are founded by teachers, parents, or activists who feel restricted by traditional public schools.[2] State-run charters (schools not affiliated with local school districts) are often established by non-profit groups, universities, and some government entities.[3] Additionally, school districts sometimes permit corporations to open chains of for-profit charter schools. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_school
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Charter Schools+background
The charter school idea in the United States was originated by Ray Budde,[4] a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and embraced by Albert Shanker, President of the American Federation of Teachers, in 1988 when he called for the reform of the public schools by establishing "charter schools" or "schools of choice". At the time, a few schools (which were not called charter schools but embodied some of their principles) already existed, such as H-B Woodlawn. As originally conceived, the ideal model of a charter school was as a legally and financially autonomous public school (without tuition, religious affiliation, or selective student admissions) that would operate much like a private business – free from many state laws and district regulations, and accountable more for student outcomes rather than for processes or inputs (such as Carnegie Units and teacher certification requirements).
Minnesota was the first state to pass a charter school law, in 1991. California was second, in 1992. As of 2008, 41 states and the District of Columbia have charter school laws.[5]
Charter Schools+definitions
Charter schools are elementary or secondary schools in the United States that receive public money but have been freed from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools in exchange for some type of accountability for producing certain results, which are set forth in each school's charter.[1]
Charter Schools+where to start
Charter Schools+best practices
Chalkboard project's Report: "Charter Schools & Tax Credits" (PDF) http://www.chalkboardproject.org/images/PDF/chartercredit.pdf
Charter Schools+issues
Caps on charter schools
According to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, twenty-six states and the District of Columbia have some type of limits, or caps, on charter schools. Although an estimated 365,000 students are on charter school wait lists nationwide, these states restrict the number of charter schools that may be authorized and/or the number of students a single school can enroll. Many of these caps are the result of political trade-offs among competing political interests. [9] Andrew Rotherham, co-founder of Education Sector and opponent of charter school caps, has written, "One might be willing to accept this pent-up demand if charter school caps, or the debate over them, were addressing the greater concern of charter school quality. But this is not the case. Statutory caps as they exist now are too blunt a policy instrument to sufficiently address quality. They fail to differentiate between good schools and lousy schools and between successful charter school authorizers and those with a poor track record of running charter schools. And, all the while, they limit public schooling options and choices for parents." [10]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_school
Critiques of Charter Schools: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_school#Critiques_of_charter_schools
Evaluations of Charter Schools
One obvious question charter schools face is whether they actually improve educational outcomes, which is their stated purpose. In the interest of testing this assertion, a number of researchers and organizations have examined educational outcomes for students who attend charter schools.
National Bureau of Economic Research Study
In 2004, the National Bureau of Economic Research found data that suggested Charter Schools increase competition in a given jurisdiction, thus improving the quality of traditional public schools (noncharters) in the area. Using end-of-year test scores for grades three through eight from North Carolina's state testing program, researchers found that charter school competition raised the composite test scores in district schools, even though the students leaving district schools for the charters tended to have above average test scores. The introduction of charter schools in the state caused an approximate one percent increase in the score, which constitutes about one quarter of the average yearly growth. The gain was roughly two to five times greater than the gain from decreasing the student-faculty ratio by 1. This research could partially explain how other studies have found a small significant difference in comparing educational outcomes between charter and traditional public schools. It may be that in some cases, charter schools actually improve other public schools by raising educational standards in the area.[21]
American Federation of Teachers study
A study performed by the American Federation of Teachers, which "strongly supports charter schools",[22] found that students attending charter schools tied to school boards do not fare any better or worse statistically in reading and math scores than students attending public schools.[23] This study was conducted as part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2003.[24] The study included a sample of 6000 4th grade pupils and was the first national comparison of test scores among children in charter schools and regular public schools. Rod Paige, the U.S. Secretary of Education from 2001 to 2005, issued a statement saying (among other things) that, "according to the authors of the data the Times cites, differences between charter and regular public schools in achievement test scores vanish when examined by race or ethnicity."[25] Additionally, a number of prominent research experts called into question the usefulness of the findings and the interpretation of the data in an advertisement funded by a pro-charter group.[26] Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby also criticized the report and the sample data, saying "An analysis of charter schools that is statistically meaningful requires larger numbers of students."[27]
Caroline Hoxby studies
A 2000 paper by Caroline Hoxby found that charter school students do better than public school students, although this advantage was found only "among white non-Hispanics, males, and students who have a parent with at least a high school degree".[28] This paper was the subject of controversy in 2005 when Princeton assistant professor Jesse Rothstein was unable to replicate her results. Hoxby released a follow up paper in 2004 with Jonah Rockoff, Assistant Professor of Economics and Finance at the Columbia Graduate School of Business, claiming to have again found that charter school students do better than public school students.[27] This second study compared charter school students "to the schools that their students would most likely otherwise attend: the nearest regular public school with a similar racial composition."[27] It reported that the students in charter schools performed better in both math and reading. It also reported that the longer the charter school had been in operation, the more favorably its students compared. Hoxby's methodology in this study has also been criticized, arguing that Hoxby's "assessment of school outcomes is based on the share of students who are proficient at reading or math but not the average test score of the students. That’s like knowing the poverty rate but not the average income of a community — useful but incomplete."[29] How representative the study is has also been criticized as the study is only of students in Chicago.[30]
Learning gains studies
A common approach in peer reviewed academic journals is to compare the learning gains of individual students in charter schools to their gains when they were in traditional public schools. Thus, in effect, each student acts as his/her own control to assess the impact of charter schools. This work generally finds that charter schools on average outperform the traditional public schools that supplied students, at least after the charter school had been in operation for a few years.[31][32][33][34] At the same time, there appears to be a wide variation in the effectiveness of individual charter schools.[34]
Meta-analyses
A report issued by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools,[35] released in July 2005 and updated in October 2006, looks at twenty-six studies that make some attempt to look at change over time in charter school student or school performance. Twelve of these find that overall gains in charter schools were larger than other public schools; four find charter schools’ gains higher in certain significant categories of schools, such as elementary schools, high schools, or schools serving at risk students; six find comparable gains in charter and traditional public schools; and, four find that charter schools’ overall gains lagged behind. The study also looks at whether individual charter schools improve their performance with age (e.g. after overcoming start-up challenges). Of these, five of seven studies find that as charter schools mature, they improve. The other two find no significant differences between older and younger charter schools.
A more recent synthesis of findings conducted by Vanderbilt University indicates that solid conclusions cannot be drawn from the existing studies, due to their methodological shortcomings and conflicting results, and proposes standards for future meta-analyses.[36]
National Center for Education Statistics study
A study released on August 22, 2006 by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) found that students in charter schools performed several points worse than students in traditional public schools in both reading and math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test.[37] Some proponents consider this the best study as they believe by incorporating basic demographic, regional, or school characteristics simultaneously it "... has shown conclusively, through rigorous, replicated, and representative research, whether charter schools boost student achievement ...", while they say that in the AFT study "... estimates of differences between charter schools and traditional public schools are overstated."[30] Critics of this study argue that its demographic controls are highly unreliable, as percentage of students receiving free lunches does not correlate well to poverty levels, and some charter schools don't offer free lunches at all, skewing their apparent demographics towards higher income levels than actually occur.[38]
United States Department of Education Study
In its Evaluation of the Public Charter Schools Program: Final Report released in 2003, the U.S. Department of Education found that, in the five case study states, charter schools were out-performed by traditional public schools in meeting state performance standards, but noted: “It is impossible to know from this study whether that is because of the performance of the schools, the prior achievement of the students, or some other factor.”[6]
Center for Research on Education Outcomes
The most authoritative study of charter schools was conducted by the Center Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University in 2009. The report is the first detailed national assessment of charter schools. it analyzed 70% of the nation's students attending charter schools and compared those students with demographically matched students in nearby public schools. The report found that 17% of charter schools reported academic gains that were significantly better than traditional public schools; 46% showed no difference from public schools; and 37% were significantly worse than their traditional public school counterparts. The authors of the report considering this a "sobering" finding about the quality of charter schools in the US.[39]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_school#Evaluations_of_Charter_Schools
Charter Schools+standards in field
Funding
Charter school funding is dictated by the state. In many states, charter schools are funded by transferring per-pupil state aid from the school district where the charter school student resides. The Federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Part B, Sections 502 - 511 also authorize funding grants for charter schools. Additionally, charter schools may receive funding from private donors or foundations.
In August 2005, a national report of charter school finance undertaken by the Thomas B. Fordam Institute, a pro-charter group,[12] found that across 16 states and the District of Columbia — which collectively enroll 84 percent of the nation’s one million charter school students — charter schools receive about 22 percent less in per-pupil public funding, or $1,800, than the district schools that surround them. For a typical charter school of 250 students, that amounts to about $450,000 per year. The study asserts that the funding gap is wider in most of twenty-seven urban school districts studied, where it amounts to $2,200 per student, and that in cities like San Diego and Atlanta, charters receive 40% less than traditional public schools. The fiscal inequity is most severe in South Carolina, California, Ohio, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Missouri. The report suggests that the primary driver of the district-charter funding gap is charter schools’ lack of access to local and capital funding.
In contrast, an earlier article from the Education Policy Analysis Archives at Arizona State University in August 2002 suggests that charters in economically depressed areas may receive more funding than the traditional public schools that surround them, placing traditional public schools at a funding disadvantage.[13]
Although charter schools may receive less public funding than traditional public schools, a portion of charter schools' operating costs can come from sources outside public funding (such as private funding in the form of donations). In the case of DC charter schools, private funding was found to have accounted for $780 per pupil and, combined with a higher level of public funding (mostly due to non-district funding), resulted in considerably higher funding for charters than comparable public schools.[14] Without federal funding, private funding, and "other income", DC charter schools received slightly more on average ($8,725 versus $8,676 per pupil), but that funding was more concentrated in the better funded charter schools (as seen by the median DC charter school funding of $7,940 per pupil). With federal, private, and "other income", charter school funding shot up to an average of $11,644 versus the district $10,384 per pupil. The median here showed an even more unequal distribution of the funds with a median of $10,333.[14]
Charter Schools+other
Further reading
- A Sum Greater Than the Parts: What States Can Teach Each Other About Charter Schooling
- Food for Thought: Building a High-Quality School Choice Market
- The Pros and Cons of Charter School Closures
- Failed Promises: Assessing Charter Schools in the Twin Cities.
- Perspectives on Charter Schools: A Review for Parents. ERIC Digest.
- Charter Schools: An Approach for Rural Education? ERIC Digest.
- Public Charter Schools and Students with Disabilities. ERIC Digest.
- Mississippi Teacher Corps Focus Paper on charter Schools
- The story of a charter school in Oakland
- National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities - Charter School Building Case Studies
- US Charter Schools - Charter School Weekly News Connection - archive
- US Charter Schools - Charter Schools Resource Update - archive
- Nation's Charter Schools Lagging Behind, U.S. Test Scores Reveal. New York Times
- Massachusetts Charter Public School Association - "Myths and realities About Massachusetts Charter Public Schools."
- Work Hard. Be Nice. How Two Inspired Teachers Created the Most Promising Schools in America. (2009) by Jay Mathews.
External links
