What kind of a job are charter schools doing when it comes to teaching our students? The answer may be "just fine" or "not very good," depending upon the study.
Charter schools have more uncredentialed teachers, pay their teachers less, have larger class sizes and obtain less federal funding for children who are poor or have special needs than public schools do, according to an April 2003 study by Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), a think tank at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley.
Nearly half of the teachers at a typical charter school lack a teaching credential, compared to 9 percent of teachers in conventional public schools. Classrooms in charter schools are 20 percent more crowded, according to the PACE study. Less than 5 percent of all charter school students receive help from federal programs for low-income students even though 43 percent are eligible.
UC Berkeley Professor Bruce Fuller, author of the PACE report, "Charter Schools and Inequality," found that black students who attend charter schools are more racially isolated than black students in conventional public schools, even though the law states that a school's charter must include a description of the school's plan for achieving a racial and ethnic balance that is reflective of the district's general population. Such inequities may hurt the academic performance of charter students, especially if they are poor and minority.
Charter schools face high levels of segregation, according to a new Harvard University study, "Charter Schools and Race: A Lost Opportunity for Integrated Education."
"Although these schools have the potential to transcend high residential segregation created by neighborhood assignment and school district boundary lines, in many cases they are even more segregated than regular public schools," notes the study. "This might be due to the fact that many schools are located in segregated neighborhoods."
The study found that African American students are enrolled in charter schools at a rate nearly twice their percentage of the school population. "Black students in charter schools experience high levels of racial isolation and are exposed to very low percentages of white students," adds the report. "At a time when the public schools are more segregated for minority students than 30 years ago, any reform that is publicly funded and intensifying the increasing public school segregation deserves very careful evaluation."
Charter students are keeping up with their peers at conventional public schools in math and reading - and sometimes slightly outperforming them - despite less funding and less experienced teachers, concluded a study released in July by RAND, a nonprofit think tank. According to "Charter School Operations and Performance: Evidence from California," which was commissioned by the state Legislature, charter schools that convert from public schools perform about the same as conventional public schools; charter schools that start from scratch have slightly higher test scores than traditional public schools; and charter schools that provide independent study programs have lower test scores than classroom-based charter schools or traditional public schools.
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Math teacher Rob Clifford delights in telling naysayers that Animo Leadership High School is not only a charter school, but a public school and a union school as well. |
Elementary and high school students enrolled in the state's charter schools have lower overall scores, but made greater gains on standardized tests than students attending traditional schools between 1999 and 2001, according to a June 2003 report from the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. "The Performance of Charter Schools," which analyzed API scores, found the average API test score was 612 for charter high schools and 635 for traditional high schools. But the charters raised their test scores by 37 points on average, compared to 18 points for traditional high schools, during the study period.
Students at for-profit schools that are part of Edison's chain (approximately half of which are charter schools) perform at levels similar to their host districts but fail to make the educational gains claimed in annual reports, according to an independent study sponsored by NEA. "An Evaluation of Student Achievement in Edison Schools Opened in 1995 and 1996" was conducted by the Western Michigan University Evaluation Center in 2000.
On tests that measure whether or not students meet prescribed state standards, Edison students' gains or losses mirrored those of students in the comparison groups examined, which included students from surrounding public school districts.
Using criterion-referenced analyses, the researchers measured achievement trends in 49 different categories across the 10 schools that had been operating the longest and found that Edison student performance often lagged behind district performance and almost always was below state performance levels.
A September 2002 study by the Brookings Institution found that students in charter schools score significantly below public school pupils in basic reading and math skills. After studying 1999-2000 reading and math test scores of 376 charter schools in 10 states, the researchers concluded that charter school students were six months to a full year behind public school students.
A nationwide study released in June by the Fordham Institute, "Charter School Authorizing: Are States Making the Grade?" asserts that California's school boards are doing a poor job of overseeing the charter campuses they are supposed to monitor. The study gave California an overall grade of D-plus for charter oversight and ranked California 22 out of 23 states that were studied.
A 2002 California State Auditor report charged that the Fresno, Los Angeles, Oakland and San Diego unified school districts failed to adequately monitor charter schools under their jurisdiction. "Without periodically monitoring their schools for compliance with charter terms, the chartering entities cannot ensure that their schools are making progress in improving student learning in accordance with their charters, nor are they in a position to identify necessary corrective action or revocation."
