New Reports on Charter School Impacts

Brookings just released The Impact of Milwaukee Charter Schools on Student Achievement. Among its findings: charter school attendance is associated with higher scores on mathematics exams than attendance at traditional public schools, but there is no statistically significant relationship between charter school attendance and performance on reading exams. These positive results are due to student performance in the initial years of the program—the performance of charter schools and traditional public schools is statistically indistinguishable for the most recent years of the study.

Interesting…especially because in the first year of the study (school year 2000), which showed the largest advantage for charter schools, the sample included only 4 charter schools. The most recent year (school year 2006—in which the authors actually found a statistically significant advantage for reading scores in traditional schools), they included 35. In the report, they give great weight to the fact that first year charters tend to have a negative impact on test scores, which could account for the decline in overall performance. However, in school year 2005, the study included 38 schools…which suggests that few if any new schools were included the 2006 data [because otherwise they would have had to eliminate several previously included schools, which doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense]. Might another idea be that charters performend better in the early years because the early charters were given only to the very best of the applicants, whereas a current push to increase the number of charter schools has led to less impressive applicants being granted charters? This notion has implications for Obama’s push to lift caps on charter schools…

Another interesting finding from this report: student mobility has a negative effect on performance and is a more robust predictor of student performance than the organizational factors the authors considered (which seems to me, as a teacher who dealt with student mobility, be a “duh” statement). Also, the positive impact of charters relative to traditional public schools declines as the number of years a student has attended a charter school increases (this could be really interesting to delve into…).

If you are interested in learning more about the impact of charter schools, check out this new RAND publication, How Charter Schools Affect Student Outcomes. It presents a much more complete picture [and actually incorporates the Milwaukee data used in the Brookings report]. The most promising results for charter supporters: The long-term outcomes of high-school graduation and college entry—in the two locations with available data on these attainment outcomes (Chicago and Florida), charter high schools appear to have substantial positive impacts, increasing the probability of graduating by 7 to 15 percentage points and increasing the probability of enrolling in college by 8 to 10 percentage points.

Labels: charter, research

A Couple Interesting New Reports...

New reports are out on both early childhood education and Advanced Placement (AP) courses. Given that both are on the chopping blocks in many districts thank to budget cuts, this research could be particularly timely…

Check out the National Early Literacy Panel’s new report "Developing Early Literacy" (click here to open the executive summary, and here to open the full report, both as PDFs).

Or read through a College Board report on the college outcomes AP coursework (click here to open the report as a PDF).

And note that the economy is impacting education not only through government budgets…even in spite of the recent report on the positive impact of AP courses, the College Board is cutting several AP exams, most notably Italian (see this New York Times article for more information).

Labels: AP, early childhood, research

Incentives for Hard-to-Staff Positions

On November 20, the Center for American Progress released "Financial Incentives for Hard-to-Staff Positions: Cross-Sector Lessons for Public Education." This report examines research from other sectors, such as the military, and suggests a variety of options to help education leaders overcome the problem of recruiting and retaining qualified teachers in hard-to-staff areas. Check out the executive summary (links to a pdf of the entire document). You can also check out Public School Insights thoughts on this piece.

I also personally enjoyed Ariel Sacks reaction to this report. Ariel is a teacher who presented at the CAP’s release, and she has some very interesting words about how she feels after being at a meeting of the policy community. My favorite quote? “I actually had the heated thought, "Well if this is what our profession is being turned into, maybe I will leave after all. Most of these people obviously wouldn’t care.”

I think her piece is a great reminder that in the policy community’s haste to develop what we consider innovative solutions to challenging circumstances, we have a tendency to ignore the reality of those actually in the classroom…which may not be the best way to create lasting change.

Labels: hard-to-staff, research, teacher pay

New Brief on KIPP

Columbia University’s Jeffrey Henig recently released a brief reviewing seven studies on the effectiveness of KIPP charter schools. Some of his conclusions? Students who enroll and stay in KIPP schools tend to perform better on standardized assessments than similar students in more traditional schools. However, Henig adds caveats to this finding, discussing unobservable biases in student motivation and support, as well as high (and seemingly selective) student attrition. He also points out that few studies actually examine the KIPP “process,” which includes high teacher turnover, and the implications of that process on the expansion and sustainability of the KIPP model. Ultimately, Henig provide recommendations to policymakers on how to best utilize the existing evidence on KIPP in informing education policy and reform strategies.

Learn more by checking out the executive summary or the full policy brief (both accessed from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice). You can also read the Washington Post’s Jay Mathews’ response to Henig's analysis.

If you are interested in more data on KIPP schools, check out SRI International’s three-year study of Bay Area KIPP schools, which found some promising short-term academic results but could not draw any long-term conclusions given the high and seemingly selective student attrition at these schools.

Labels: charter, KIPP, research