http://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/lessons-and-directions-credo-urban-charter-school-study
The latest big charter school study looked at urban charters and found, on average, that charter schools in 42 urban areas are having a positive impact on test scores when compared to traditional public schools in those areas. Depending on how you interpret effect size, "positive" can look rather big (a charter student shows an additional 40 days of learning in math) or rather small (a charter student is at the 52nd percentile in math instead of the 50th). Perhaps more importantly, there's a lot to tease apart in the phrase "on average." There is still a wide range of performance seen in charters, as there is in public schools, and these large-scale studies don't tell us much of the story. For that, writes, Matt Di Carlo, we should really be looking more closely at *why* some schools perform better than others, and avoid the typical charter vs. public debate that often fails to actually look at what's happening inside the schools.
The latest big charter school study looked at urban charters and found, on average, that charter schools in 42 urban areas are having a positive impact on test scores when compared to traditional public schools in those areas. Depending on how you interpret effect size, "positive" can look rather big (a charter student shows an additional 40 days of learning in math) or rather small (a charter student is at the 52nd percentile in math instead of the 50th). Perhaps more importantly, there's a lot to tease apart in the phrase "on average." There is still a wide range of performance seen in charters, as there is in public schools, and these large-scale studies don't tell us much of the story. For that, writes, Matt Di Carlo, we should really be looking more closely at *why* some schools perform better than others, and avoid the typical charter vs. public debate that often fails to actually look at what's happening inside the schools.