The last "quick hit" from this morning reminded us of a great "apples-to-apples" study that was released in September 2009 on the impact of Charter Schools in New York City authored by the National Bureau of Economics (NBER) and Stanford University (Link to report:
http://www.nber.org/~schools/charterschoolseval/). The entire report is 85 pages and well worth reading. As it stands today, there are real-time studies unfolding in Washington, DC and Newark, New Jersey (to name a couple) on the impact school choice does, or does not, have on education standards and achievement. The
New York City report gives an introspective look into the impact Charter Schools had (and presumably continue to have) on narrowing the so-called “Scarsdale-Harlem” gap.
What allowed the study to present data on an apples-to-apples basis is the unique method in which attendees are selected to attend New York City Charter Schools. As the study outlines,
“94 percent of charter school students in New York City are admitted to a school after having participated in a random lottery for school places. In a lottery-based study like this one, each charter school's applicants are randomly divided into the "lotteried-in" (who attend charter schools) and the "lotteried-out" (who remain in the regular public schools.”
Socio-economic, ethnicity, language skills, and gender are effectively neutralized for the purpose of the study given the lotteried nature of the selection process. The students are only separated by number.
There is a plethora of data but below are some interesting highlights:
Application process:
Ø Charter school applicants are much more likely to be black and much less likely to be Asian or white than the average student in New York City's traditional public schools
Ø Charter school applicants are more likely to be poor than the average student in New York City's traditional public schools.
Ø Charter schools' lotteries appear to be truly random, as they are designed to be. Our tests for randomness are based on students' race, ethnicity, gender, prior test scores, free and reduced-price lunch participation, special education participation, and English Learner status.
Achievement and effectiveness of Charter Schools:
Ø Lottery-based analysis of charter schools' effects on achievement is, by far, the most reliable method of evaluation. It is the only method that reliably eliminates "selection biases" which occur if students who apply to charter schools are more disadvantaged, more motivated, or different in any other way than students who do not apply.
Ø On average, a student who attended a charter school for all of grades kindergarten through eight would close about 86 percent of the "Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap" in math and 66 percent of the achievement gap in English. A student who attended fewer grades would improve by a commensurately smaller amount. [see all tables & charts below]
Ø Compared to his lotteried-out counterpart, a student who attends a charter high school has Regents examination scores that are about 3 points higher for each year he spends in the charter school before taking the test. For instance, a student who took the English Comprehensive exam after three years in charter school would score about 9 points higher.
Chart 1: Lotteried-Out v. Lotteried-In
Table 1: Effect of Charter Schools on Math & Science
Chart 2: Standard Deviation Distribution of Charter School Impact on Math
Chart 3: Standard Deviation Distribution of Charter School Impact on English & Arts
I suggest reading the entire study and we’ll get into more detail in future posts, but the study suggests what some of the differences for the better performance of Charter School attendees compared to public school attendees.
Ø Longer school year
Ø More minutes dedicated to English each day
Ø Small rewards / penalties disciplinary policy
Ø Performance based pay for teachers (exceptionally important, we’ll present more data later as to why – think market principles)
Ø Mission Statements that emphasize academic performance, compared to other things.