Charter school movement growing and results improving, study shows

In the United States in recent years many low-income parents have had the opportunity to move their children from failing public schools into charter schools. A new study looks at how the charters are coping.

Last year, the first United States-wide study of how well charter schools were educating students (between 1999 and 2001) found many were not doing well.

This year the study looks at the period 2000-2002 and the results show improvement. Charter schools generally have a lower socio-economic profile than public schools (see table 2 below) and this is largely why they have done worse than public schools in test scores in the past. But the evidence suggests that they are increasing performance faster than public schools and, among charter schools, education companies are closing the gap fastest. The report says that the charter schools run by Education Management Organisations (EMOs) showed solid gains in test scores, significantly out-gaining similar non-EMO schools (see table 1 below). Compared to non-EMOs and regular public schools they served more black children and children in poverty, and typically targeted low-achieving students (see table 2). The study says the results show that importing management expertise from the private sector should be explored further. "The findings raise doubts about a strain of thought that anyone can successfully start and operate a school if he or she merely possesses abundant energy and a love of children."

"It looks like management expertise matters," said Tom Loveless, study author and director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution.

Edison is perhaps the most well-known company running charter schools. Other companies include the Leona Group, Nobel Learning Communities and National Heritage Academies.

Mr Loveless also studied test score data from 66 'conversion' charter schools - charters that were converted from regular public schools - and compared the data with scores from other types of charter schools over a three-year period.

He found that many conversion charters are producing average test scores with populations of children historically associated with low-test scores.

Meanwhile, a US General Accounting Office comparison of achievement results from six cities shows no consistent pattern of superior student performance between schools managed by private companies and demographically-similar traditional public schools.

In two cities, Denver and San Francisco, students at the privately-managed schools had on average significantly higher reading and mathematics scores than students at similar traditional public schools.

Students at these privately-managed schools also demonstrated greater academic gains over multiple years.

In two other cities, Cleveland and St. Paul, student scores in reading and math were significantly lower in schools managed by private companies compared with similar traditional schools.

In Detroit, results were mixed, although reading scores were lower in six of the eight privately-managed schools and maths scores were lower in seven of the eight. In Phoenix, there were no significant differences.

The Brookings Institution study is at this web page.

The GAO study can be downloaded as a PDF from this web page.