The bottom line on charter school studies

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/09/24/the-bottom-line-on-charter-school-studies/

Don't believe the hype, regardless of what you think the hype is. Kevin Welner of the National Education Policy Center and CU-Boulder (nepc.colorado.edu) says that the CREDO studies essentially find no difference in charter and traditional public schools as measured with student outcomes. Also, the CREDO studies suffer from a few methodological issues that should dissuade us from believing they are the definitive word in charter school research. (Also, I like this post because Kevin mentions hierarchical linear modeling and, just for a moment, I wanted to think that all the readers would know what that was. Given that I don't really know much about HLM, that fantasy faded quickly.)