Boardbuzz read with interest the US News & World Report story on a large study of charter schools (“Charter Schools Might Not Be Better“) and encourages a closer look at some of the findings for the good news about charter schools authorized by traditional public school systems.
Conducted by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States indeed shows sobering results and concludes: “In the aggregate, charter students are not faring as well as their traditional public school counterparts,” (p. 6). However a closer look at variations between states, different student demographic groups, academic subjects, etc. reveals a significant finding: charter school authorizers are an important variable in the outcomes for students in reading and math.
The study found that states with multiple charter school authorizers (translation: entities outside the public K-12 system) experience significantly lower growth in learning in their students. The reasons aren’t completely clear, but the report suggests that multiple entities could permit charter school operators to “shop around” for an authorizer and recommends ratcheting up accountability through authorizer “report cards” or other mechanisms to increase transparency.
Boardbuzz knows that local school boards already are accountable to their communities and as such are logical authorizers for charter schools.
How do charter schools operate in your state? Are there multiple authorizers? Is yours one of the five states that experienced gains in student learning according to the study (AR, CO, IL, LA, MO)?
As with everything, accountability is crucial to achieving high standards. Set clear standards, have them set goals for achieving them and then hold them to it.
Now to do that with our own public schools…