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The Institute on Race and Poverty's 2008 analysis of charter schools in the Twin Cities metro found that charter schools have failed to deliver on the promises made by charter school proponents. The study showed that charter schools were far more segregated than traditional public schools in the metro, even in school districts where traditional public schools already have high levels of racial segregation. The analysis also showed that charter schools performed worse than traditional public schools. The findings made it clear that, at that time, charter schools offered a poor choice to low-income students and students of color-one between low-performing public schools and charters that fared even worse. Compared to charter schools, other public school choice programs such as the Choice is Yours program offered much better schools to low-income students and students of color. Finally, the report found that charter schools hurt public education in the metro by encouraging racial segregation in the traditional public school system.  This work updates the 2008 study with more recent data-updating the work from the 2007-08 school year to 2010-11 in most cases. The results show that, despite significant changes to the state's charter law during the period, little has changed in the comparison between charters and traditional schools. Charter school students of all races are still much more likely to be attending a segregated school than traditional school students and the trends are largely negative. Charter schools are also still outperformed by their traditional equivalents. Analysis of 2010-11 test score data which controls for other school characteristics shows that charters still lag behind traditional schools, including especially the schools available to Choice is Yours participants.  

This study examines how teacher turnover differs between charter and traditional public schools and seeks to identify factors that explain these differences. Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics' (NCES) 2003-2004 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) and Teacher Follow-Up Survey (TFS), we found that 25% of charter school teachers turned over during the 2003-2004 school year, compared to 14% of traditional public school teachers. Fourteen percent of charter school teachers left the profession outright and 11% moved to a different school, while 7% of traditional public school teachers left the profession and 7% moved schools. Using multi-nomial logistic regression, we found the odds of a charter school teacher leaving the profession versus staying in the same school are 132% greater than those of a traditional public school teacher. The odds of a charter school teacher moving schools are 76% greater. Our analysis confirms that much of the explanation of this "turnover gap" lies in differences in the types of teachers that charter schools and traditional public schools hire. The data lend minimal support to the claim that turnover is higher in charter schools because they are leveraging their flexibility in personnel policies to get rid of underperforming teachers. Rather, we found most of the turnover in charter schools is voluntary and dysfunctional as compared to that of traditional public schools.

In this paper we consider the challenges involved in evaluating teacher preparation programs when controlling for school contextual bias. Including school fixed effects in the achievement models  used toestimate preparation program effects controls for school environment by relying on differences among student outcomes within the same schools to identify the program effects. However, identification of preparation program effects using school fixed effects requires teachers from different programs to teach in the same school. Even if program effects are identified, the precision of the estimated effects will depend on the degree to which graduates from different programs overlap across schools. In addition, if the connections between preparation programs result from the overlap of atypical graduates or from graduates teaching in atypical school environments, use of school effects could produce bias. Using statewide data from Florida, we show that teachers tend to teach in schools near the programs in which they received their training, but there is still sufficient overlap across schools to identify preparation program effects. We show that the ranking of preparation programs varies significantly depending on whether or not school environment is taken into account via school fixed effects. We find that schools and teachers that are integral to connecting preparation programs are atypical, with disproportionately high percentages of Hispanic teachers and students compared to the state averages. Finally, we  find significant variance inflation in the estimated program effects when controlling for school fixed effects, and that the size of the variance inflation factor depends crucially on the length of the window used to compare graduates teaching in the same schools.

[Passed by the House 9/13/11 365-54] This legislation would amend the section of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 that governs federal financial support for charter schools, creating a program that would award grants to charter school developers via state educational agencies, state charter school boards, or governors to open new charter schools and expand and replicate existing charter schools. Priority funding would go to states that take specific steps in support of charter schools, including removing limitations on the number or percentage of charter schools that may exist or the number or percentage of students that may attend charter schools, and ensuring equitable financing for charter schools when compared to funding for public schools. The bill creates a "credit enhancement grant program" that would provide funds to public and private nonprofit entities to help charter schools secure private sector capital to buy, construct, renovate, or lease appropriate school facilities. The legislation also allows charter schools to serve prekindergarten or postsecondary school students.

Recent quasi-experimental and experimental studies have found that KIPP middle schools-part of a nationwide network of charter schools-have large, positive impacts on academic achievement. In light of these findings,  skeptics have  asked whether KIPP schools benefit from unusually selective student attrition and replacement patterns. We investigate this question using longitudinal, student-level data covering 19 KIPP middle schools. On average, we find that  KIPP schools generally admit students who are disadvantaged in ways similar to their peers in local public schools. Rates of exit from KIPP schools are typically no different than rates at nearby district schools, and students exiting KIPP schools have characteristics similar to those of students exiting local district schools. To replace students who exit through attrition, KIPP schools admit a substantial number of new students in grade 6 but admit fewer students in grades 7 and 8 than do nearby public schools. Unlike local district schools, KIPP's late entrants also tend to have higher prior achievement levels and fewer males than the rest of the KIPP student body. Although it is difficult to gauge the size of any resulting peer effects at KIPP, the  existing peer effects  literature indicates  that the range of possibilities is limited. Overall, we find that KIPP's impacts do not appear to be explained by advantages in the prior achievement of KIPP students, even when attrition and replacement throughout the middle school years are taken into account.

"Given the budgetary strain that school districts have been facing in recent years and the impetus to increase the number of charter schools, concerns about the fiscal impacts of charter schools are more salient than ever. However, very little research has addressed this issue. Using the city school districts of Albany and Buffalo in New York, this brief addresses this gap in the literature by demonstrating how fiscal impacts on local school districts can be estimated and offering a way to conceptualize fiscal impacts that is useful for framing charter school policy objectives. We find that charter schools have had negative fiscal impacts on these two school districts, and argue that there are two reasons for these impacts. First, operating two systems of public schools under separate governance arrangements can create excess costs. Second, charter school financing policies can distribute resources to or away from districts. We argue that charter schools policies should seek to minimize any avoidable excess costs created by charter schools and ensure that the burden of any unavoidable excess costs is equitably distributed across traditional public schools, charter schools, and the state. We offer concrete policy recommendations that may help to achieve these objectives."

More than one out of every five principals leaves their school each year. In some cases, these career changes are driven by the choices of district leadership. In other cases, principals initiate the move, often demonstrating preferences to work in schools with higher achieving students from more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. Principals often use schools with many poor or low-achieving students as stepping stones to what they view as more desirable assignments. We use longitudinal data from one large urban school district to study the relationship between principal turnover and school outcomes. We find that principal turnover is, on average, detrimental to school performance. Frequent turnover of school leadership results in lower teacher retention and lower student achievement gains. Leadership changes are particularly harmful for high poverty schools, low-achieving schools, and schools with many inexperienced teachers. These schools not only suffer from high rates of principal turnover but are also unable to attract experienced successors. The negative effect of leadership changes can be mitigated when vacancies are filled by individuals with prior experience leading other schools. However, the majority of new principals in high poverty and low-performing schools lack prior leadership experience and leave when more attractive positions become available in other schools.

Section 1002.33(23), Florida Statutes, requires the Florida Department of Education to prepare an annual statewide analysis of student achievement in charter schools versus the achievement of comparable students in traditional public schools. This report of charter school student performance fulfills the statutory requirement for the 2010-11 school year. The analysis examines the average performance of charter school students and traditional public school students using eight years of Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) reading and math scores, as well as the FCAT science test scores that were added to the school grading calculation in 2007-08. Only students who were enrolled in a charter school or a traditional public school for an entire school year are included in the analysis. Limiting the analysis to include only full-year students is consistent with the state's school accountability system for awarding school grades under the A+ Plan. In addition, the report compares charter and traditional public schools in terms of achievement gaps and student learning gains.

"In numerous previous posts I have summarized New Jersey charter school enrollment data, frequently pointing out that the highest performing charter schools in New Jersey tend to be demographically very different from schools in their surrounding neighborhoods and similar grade level schools throughout their host districts or cities. I have tried to explain over and over that the reason these differences are important is because they constrain the scalability of charter schooling as a replicable model of "success." Again, to the extent that charter successes are built on serving vastly different student populations, we can simply never know (even with the best statistical analyses attempting to sort out peer factors, control for attrition, etc.) whether the charter schools themselves, their instructional strategies/models are effective and/or would be effective with larger numbers of more representative students. Here, I take a quick look at the other side of the picture, again focusing on the city of Newark. Specifically, I thought it would be interesting to evaluate the effect on Newark schools enrollment of the shift in students to charter schools, now that charters have taken on a substantial portion of students in the city. If charter enrollments are - as they seem to be - substantively different from district schools enrollments, then as those charter populations grow and remain different from district schools, we can expect the district schools population to change.  In particular, given the demography of charter schools in Newark, we would expect those schools to be leaving behind a district of escalating disadvantage - but still a district serving the vast majority of kids in the city."

So, let's look at a few big old schools and the new ones that replaced them in the same building. In particular let's look at the schools' comparative reading levels and comparative math. Until very recently, I didn't have these files, and until very recently I didn't think about same-building schools (called campus schools) too much, either. But then, the DOE made an inaccurate and unsupported claim about one of these campuses, and a few weeks later, Communities for Change set the record straight. The DOE's claim was the usual one ("similar" kids, astronomically better results). But the report from Communities for Change, showed that campus schools across the city were serving much lower concentrations of high-need special education students than the schools that they replaced. Before the old Seward shut down, for example, the concentration of self-contained students was 9%. In 2011, the new campus schools served 0%. Seward Park campus is in Manhattan, and the new schools earned As and Bs. Like disability averages, school wide average scores give us a good indicator of whether or not kids are ready for high school. Here is a comparison between incoming scores at closed old high schools and at the new schools on their campuses. These are actually relative rankings, and the details are explained below.

The New York City reform model is centered upon closing 'failing' schools and opening new ones. Some of these 'failing' schools have been pillars of their communities for decades. One such school I read about in The New York Times is Jamaica High School in Jamaica, Queens. This large high school opened in 1925. But it is in the process, now, of being shut down. New York City rates schools on an A to F scale and if a school gets an 'F' or a 'D' or three consecutive 'C's, then it runs the risk of getting shut down. I thought I'd take a look at the last Jamaica High School progress report to see if there was anything 'interesting.' What I found is that Jamaica High School, in the 2009 to 2010 school year did very well on the regents component of their 'progress' score. They ranked, in fact, 164th out of 424 schools. In this post, I'll explain how the 'Weighted Regents Pass Grades' are calculated and how Jamaica High School fared quite well on this metric.  Below is from Jamaica High's 2009-2010 progress report.  The left bar graph is the comparison to their peer group and the right graph is the comparison to all city schools.  Click on the image to enlarge it.

In the last decade, many cities around the country have needed to close schools due to declining enrollments and low achievement. School closings raise concerns about the possible negative impacts on student achievement, neighborhoods, families, and teaching staff. This study examines an anonymous urban district that, faced with declining enrollment, chose to make student achievement a major criterion in determining which schools would be closed. The district targeted low-performing schools in its closure plan, and sought to move their students to higher-performing schools. We estimate the impact of school closures on student test scores and attendance rates by comparing the growth of these measures among students differentially affected by the closures. We use residential assignment to school as an instrument to address non-random sorting of students into new schools. We also statistically control for the contemporaneous effects of other reforms within the district. Results show that students displaced by school closures can experience adverse effects on test scores and attendance, but these effects can be minimized when students move to schools that are higher-performing (in value-added terms). Moreover, the negative effect on attendance disappears after the first year in the new school. Meanwhile, we find no adverse effects on students in the schools that are receiving the transferring students.

Charter schools in New Orleans (NOLA) now serve over four out of five students in the city - the largest market share of any big city in the nation. As of the 2011-12 school year, most of the city's schools (around 80 percent), charter and regular public, are overseen by the Recovery School District (RSD), a statewide agency created in 2003 to take over low-performing schools, which assumed control of most NOLA schools in Katrina's aftermath. Around three-quarters of these RSD schools (50 out of 66) are charters. The remainder of NOLA's schools are overseen either by the Orleans Parish School Board (which is responsible for 11 charters and six regular public schools, and taxing authority for all parish schools) or by the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (which is directly responsible for three charters, and also supervises the RSD). New Orleans is often held up as a model for the rapid expansion of charter schools in other urban districts, based on the argument that charter proliferation since 2005-06 has generated rapid improvements in student outcomes.

The public charter school movement has grown rapidly in the 20 years since the first public charter school opened in 1992, with over 5,600 schools now serving more than two million students. One of the most exceptional developments within the first two decades of the movement has been the rise of high performing public charter schools with missions intently focused on educating students from traditionally underserved communities. Given that the demographics of these communities are often homogenous, it is no surprise the demographics of these schools are that way as well. In fact, the student populations at these public charter schools usually mirror the populations in nearby district schools. While much media attention rightly has been given to these schools, the past decade or so also has seen a noteworthy rise in high performing public charter schools with missions intentionally designed to serve racially and economically integrated student populations. These schools are utilizing their autonomy to achieve a diverse student population through location-based strategies, recruitment efforts and enrollment processes. Perhaps most notably, a growing number of cities-and the parents and educators in them-are welcoming both types of public charter school models for their respective (and in some cases unprecedented) contributions to raising student achievement, particularly for students who have previously struggled in school. This brief showcases this development in three of these cities: Denver, Washington, D.C., and San Diego.

While the number of charter schools is growing rapidly, questions have been raised about whether charter schools are appropriately serving students with disabilities. GAO was asked: (1) How do enrollment levels of students with disabilities in charter schools and  traditional public schools compare, and what is known about the factors that may contribute to any differences? (2) How do charter schools reach out to students with disabilities and what special education services do charter schools provide? (3) What role do  Education, state educational agencies, and other entities that oversee charter schools play in ensuring students with disabilities have access to charter schools? GAO analyzed federal data on the number and characteristics of students with disabilities; visited  charter schools and school districts int hree states selected on the basis of the number of charter schools in the state, among other things; and interviewed representatives of federal, state, and other agencies that oversee charter schools.

Estimates using admissions lotteries suggest that urban charter schools boost student achievement, while charter schools in other settings do not. We explore student-level and school-level explanations for these differences using a large sample of Massachusetts charter schools. Our results show that urban charter schools boost achievement well beyond ambient non-charter levels (that is, the average achievement level for urban non-charter students), and beyond non-urban achievement in math. Student demographics explain some of these gains since urban charters are most effective for non-whites and low-baseline achievers. At the same time, non-urban charter schools are uniformly ineffective. Our estimates also reveal important school-level heterogeneity in the urban charter sample. A non-lottery analysis suggests that urban schools with binding, well-documented admissions lotteries generate larger score gains than under-subscribed urban charter schools with poor lottery records. We link the magnitude of charter impacts to distinctive pedagogical features of urban charters such as the length of the school day and school philosophy. The relative effectiveness of urban lottery-sample charters is accounted for by over-subscribed urban schools' embrace of the No Excuses approach to education.

Estimates using admissions lotteries suggest that urban charter schools boost student achievement, while charter schools in other settings do not. We explore student-level and school-level explanations for these differences using a large sample of Massachusetts charter schools. Our results show that urban charter schools boost achievement well beyond ambient non-charter levels (that is, the average achievement level for urban non-charter students), and beyond non-urban achievement in math. Student demographics explain some of these gains since urban charters are most effective for non-whites and low-baseline achievers. At the same time, non-urban charter schools are uniformly ineffective. Our estimates also reveal important school-level heterogeneity in the urban charter sample. A non-lottery analysis suggests that urban schools with binding, well-documented admissions lotteries generate larger score gains than under-subscribed urban charter schools with poor lottery records. We link the magnitude of charter impacts to distinctive pedagogical features of urban charters such as the length of the school day and school philosophy. The relative effectiveness of urban lottery-sample charters is accounted for by over-subscribed urban schools' embrace of the No Excuses approach to education.

Recent analyses challenge common wisdom regarding the superiority of private schools relative to public schools, raising questions about the role of school processes and climate in shaping achievement in different types of schools. While holding demographic factors constant, this multilevel analysis of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics data on over 270,000 fourth and eighth graders in over 10,000 schools examines differences among schools on five critical factors: (1) school size, (2) class size, (3) school climate/parental involvement, (4) teacher certification, and (5) instructional practices. This study provides nationally representative evidence that both teacher certification and some reform-oriented mathematics teaching practices correlate positively with achievement and are more prevalent in public schools than in demographically similar private schools. Additionally, smaller class size, more prevalent in private schools, is significantly correlated with achievement.

From the outside, it looks like a single school, with one main door, one security guard, one principal greeting students. But on paper, the Charter School of Excellence at Tamarac is actually two schools in one - a bookkeeping strategy allowing the school to collect an extra $250,000 in grant money from the state. The grant money is intended to help new charter schools get started. But several South Florida charter school operators have tapped into this money by creating new "schools" within existing schools. In many cases, the two schools are indistinguishable, sharing the same building, equipment and administrators. The practice is perfectly legal, state and federal education officials say. But some critics say this allows existing schools to collect extra money instead of promoting new start-ups.

Principals new to their schools face a variety of challenges that can influence their likelihood of improving their schools' performance and their likelihood of remaining the principal. Understanding the actions that principals take and the working conditions they face in the first year can inform efforts to promote school improvement and principal retention, but the research on first-year principals' experiences is limited. This report examines the actions and perceived working conditions of first-year principals, relating information on those factors to subsequent school achievement and principal retention. This report presents findings from an analysis of schools led by principals who were in their first year at their schools. Throughout this report, we define first-year principals as principals in their first year at a given school including those principals with previous experience as principals at other schools. The study is based on data that were collected to support the RAND Corporation's seven-year formative and summative evaluation of New Leaders. New Leaders is an organization that is dedicated to promoting student achievement by developing outstanding school leaders to serve in urban schools. The findings will be of interest to policymakers in school districts, charter management organizations (CMOs), state education agencies, and principal preparation programs, in addition to principals themselves and teachers. This research was conducted in RAND Education, a unit of the RAND Corporation, under a contract with New Leaders.