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New Report on Charter School Performance Finds Test-Score Effects Comparable to Those of Conventional Public Schools

PRINCETON, N.J. (March 18, 2009)—While the number of charter schools continues to grow, debate continues about whether charter schools provide a better education experience than traditional public schools. Proponents contend that charter schools expand educational choices for students, increase innovation, improve student achievement and provide much-needed competition to public schools.

Opponents, meanwhile, argue that charter schools lead to increased racial or ethnic stratification of students, skim the best students from traditional public schools, reduce resources for public schools and provide no real improvement in student achievement.

A new RAND study examining charter schools in Chicago, San Diego, Philadelphia, Denver, Milwaukee, and the states of Ohio, Texas and Florida is the first to use longitudinal, student-level data to systematically examine these issues across multiple communities and varied charter laws. It finds that:

• Across locations, there is little evidence that charter schools are producing, on average, achievement impacts that differ substantially from those of traditional public schools. But the evidence is incomplete, because the performance of charter elementary schools— which constitute a substantial proportion of all charter schools—cannot be easily assessed.
• There is reason for concern about low performance among two specific groups of charter schools: charter schools in their first year of operation; and, in Ohio, “virtual” charter schools that serve students remotely via technology rather than in a conventional school building.
• The most promising results for charter schools relate to the long-term outcomes of high-school graduation and college entry. In the two locations with available data on these critical attainment outcomes (Chicago and Florida), charter high schools appear to have substantial positive impacts, increasing the probability of graduating by 7 to 15 percentage points and increasing the probability of enrolling in college by 8 to 10 percentage points. 
• Across seven locations examined, charter schools are generally not “skimming the cream” in recruiting students: Students entering charter schools generally have prior achievement levels that are comparable to those of their peers in traditional public schools.
• Across locations, charter schools do not appear to produce effects that substantially help or harm student achievement in nearby traditional public schools

“Previous conclusions about the academic effectiveness of charter schools have been premature. In most states, the effectiveness of charter elementary schools cannot be determined with existing data. And we need to find out if charter schools across the country are improving graduation and college entry rates, as they seem to be doing in Chicago and Florida. If charter schools are substantially improving their students’ long-term attainment outcomes, this could be far more important than any test-score results,” added report author Brian Gill, senior social scientist and associate director of research at Mathematica Policy Research.

The report, “How Charter Schools Affect Student Outcomes,” can be found at www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/redirect_pubsdb.asp?strSite=http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG869/. The authors are Ron Zimmer of Michigan State University, Brian Gill and Kevin Booker of Mathematica Policy Research, Tim Sass of Florida State University, and Stéphane Lavertu and John Witte of University of Wisconsin.

Mathematica, a nonpartisan research firm, conducts high quality, objective policy research and surveys to improve public well-being. Its clients include federal and state governments, foundations, and private-sector and international organizations. The employee-owned company, with offices in Princeton, N.J., Washington, D.C., Cambridge, Mass., Ann Arbor, Mich., and Oakland, Calif., has conducted some of the most important studies of education, nutrition, health care, welfare, employment, and early childhood policies and programs in the United States.