Post a comment about the budget cuts at your school on our interactive comment map. more »
GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools
Study says...
January 5, 2010
Stanford study shows many city charters besting district schools
A chart from the CREDO study shows black and Hispanic students in charter schools have higher scores on reading and math tests than peers in district schools.
Students in nearly 50 charter schools across the city are outperforming their peers in district schools on state tests, according to a study by an education research group at Stanford University.
The report, which was done by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, known as CREDO, uses the same methodology the group used when looking at the performance of charter schools in several states across the country. Looking at 49 city charter schools from the 2003-04 to 2008-09 school years, CREDO matched data from about 20,000 students in grades 3-8 to an identical number of students with comparable scores at local competing district schools. Though the Department of Education asked CREDO to do the analysis, the foundation procured its own funding for it.
CREDO’s study of charter schools across the country offered a mixed picture — charter schools in some states did better than local schools, while others did worse — but New York City stands out as having a particularly successful crop of charter schools.
In the city charter schools CREDO looked at, 51 percent had higher math scores than district schools, 33 percent were no different, and 16 percent had lower scores. On reading tests, 29 percent had higher scores, 59 percent showed no difference, and 12 percent had lower scores.
Charter school advocates welcomed the study, which is the second of its kind in the last several months to show charter schools outperforming district schools. In September of last year, another researcher at Stanford, Caroline Hoxby, released a study comparing students who entered and won charter school lotteries to those who entered the same lotteries but did not secure seats.
“It’s good news,” said James Merriman, who heads the New York City Charter School Center.
“I like that we’re seeing consistency in the findings. What you want to see is researchers using different methodology and seeing the same trends. I think that’s pretty rare in education research,” he said.
Among charter school critics, the report’s findings elicited common criticisms of a system that permits charter schools to admit fewer students who are not fluent in English and fewer students with severe learning disabilities than districts schools do.
“I am surprised that the charters don’t do better, given their many advantages,” said New York University education historian Diane Ravitch.
“We know they have only 111 of the city’s 51,000 homeless students. We know they have longer hours and their teachers work 50 hours a week or so. We know their sponsors add millions so they can have smaller classes and better facilities.
“Kids who go to charters have a very large chance of going to a school that is no better or worse than their public school,” Ravitch said.
Overall, the study found that charter schools are scoring about five scale score points higher in math and two points higher in reading than students in district schools. It also found that in students’ first year at a charter school, their reading scores decrease modestly, but then rebound and eventually top those of district school students in the following years.
CREDO director Margaret Raymond said charter schools may be having a harder time getting their reading scores far beyond district schools’ scores because the city has been focusing on literacy programs for years.
“There is not that sort of unified focus around math instruction,” Raymond said. “In the charter school world, and this is anecdotal, there is something in the student culture about being a math wizard. There are lots of school cultural things like contests for knowing your multiplication tables,” she said.
Columbia Teachers College Professor Aaron Pallas had another theory: “The kinds of math skills that are tested are just more responsive to test prep than reading is.”
The study also found that black and Hispanic students have higher test scores than peers in district schools, but students who are not fluent in English and special education students in charter schools are not performing any differently than those in district schools.
“We would have hoped, as everyone would hope, that charters had figured this area out,” Merriman said. “This is clearly something that charter school leaders will be looking at.”
Raymond said the group’s study did not take into account whether charter schools have smaller class sizes, more instructional time, or significantly different student populations. She also noted that because the study focuses on schools with data from state tests, newly opened schools where students are too young to have been tested were not included.
CREDO’s study “doesn’t tell us what would happen if there was a great deal of expansion of charter schools,” Pallas said. “The new schools coming on line may not be like the ones that are already there. We don’t know much about the newer charter schools and how they’re doing.”
Though there’s little chance CREDO’s study will quell debate over whether charter schools are better than district schools, the study may add another layer of support to Hoxby’s earlier findings.
“The fact that the national CREDO study was much more critical of charter schools will make this study more credible to folks,” said Columbia Teachers College Professor Jeff Henig.
-
January 5th, 2010 6:29 pm
Does the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO),have any connections or affiliations to the charter school movement?
-
January 5th, 2010 7:09 pm
Pogue,
CREDO has strong connections to the charter movement. check this article out from the local media in San Fran. for more info……this article tells you everything one needs to know about this group and their affiliations..
-
January 5th, 2010 7:23 pm
this group (CREDO) has strong ties to the charter movement, check what the local media (San Francisco) had to say about this topic…….
-
January 5th, 2010 9:45 pm
Per the “Summary of Findings”:
“With the students they have enrolled…”
Yessiree, right there at the top of page 14 of 14, le grande disclaimerdre.
-
January 6th, 2010 2:43 am
If students with disabilities and students who are ELLs do no better in charter schools than they do in regular district schools, maybe it means that the education industry in general is just unequipped to effectively teach these students. They’re a large and ever-growing proportion of all school children, so the answer to this problem really matters.
How many graduate schools of education thoroughly train any of their students in even one research-validated program of reading instruction - that is, validated as effective for kids with disabilities? So far, I’ve been able to find exactly one, and I’ve been looking for nearly 20 years. When it comes to ELLs, same old-same old.
The Pueblo 60 Colorado district implemented an interesting project some years ago. It adopted Lindamood Bell as the primary reading instruction program for all students, not just for kids with disabilities. LB is validated as highly effective for kids with professionally-diagnosed reading disabilities such as dyslexia, and to a lesser extent, for kids whom schools generally “classify” as learning disabled. The LB folks had to do a lot of training and lots more supervision in Pueblo - no one day specials. It worked for all NCLB sub-groups. Pueblo 60 described itself as a large urban district with many kids who were black, Hispanic, poor, ELL, etc.
How many American graduate schools of education thoroughly train their students - any of them - in Lindamood Bell? So far, I haven’t been able to find even one. If any of you know of one, I’d be delighted to hear of it. The problems I hear about re Lindamood are that it’s hard to learn, very structured, counter-intuitive and not fun for teachers to do. I would hope this wasn’t another set of reasons why it hasn’t been adopted more widely, but … who knows? I do know that the NYC DOE often “evaluates” programs it adopts by determining how happy teachers feel about using them.
-
January 6th, 2010 4:17 am
[...] Stanford study shows many city charters besting district schools … [...]
-
January 6th, 2010 5:14 am
Wait, if 51% were better on math scores and 49% were no different or worse, and, in reading 29% were better, while 71% were no better or worse, do we really want to throw the word “besting” around so easily? If so, I believe the New York Giants and the New York Mets had besting seasons.
-
January 6th, 2010 1:10 pm
Pogue, the average score looks like it’s significantly different.
Dee, correct me if I’m wrong but Lindamood Bell falls under the Orton-Gillingham umbrella. I believe a great deal of the charters are using Orton-Gillingham programs for all of their students in early childhood, explaining some of the success on state assessments.
Charters are free to adopt their own curricula, and build them over time, and direct training resources where they will be most effective: the type of ongoing support you describe, rather than the one-off nonsense promulgated in the past by districts. That’s one of the advantages of being a charter - you just don’t have to pay attention to the swaying winds of fashion when it comes to curriculum. You can do what works.
-
January 6th, 2010 3:56 pm
“That’s one of the advantages of being a charter - you just don’t have to pay attention to the swaying winds of fashion when it comes to curriculum. You can do what works.”
The second funniest thing I read today. Klein freed school from bureaucratic control didn’t he? So I see no difference.
-
January 6th, 2010 4:51 pm
Kitchen Sink - I’d love to know which charters were using some Orton-based methodology. It would explain their reading success. Unfortunately, if they’ve used the Wilson Method, with the “custom” Wilson training the NYCDOE had worked up for it, they’re getting very minimal results since that training was, to be blunt, incredibly substandard. However, Lindamood, which is one of the Orton-based programs, has been shown to be highly effective, including for kids who don’t speak English as their home language and for kids w/disabilities, groups which charters aren’t showing great results for. I’m guessing they’re not using Lindamood.
On another note, the NYCDOE has steadfastly refused to release evaluations and any data re the impact, if any, of their “custom” Wilson program. Knowing the NYCDOE, which is data-rich and actual knowledge-poor, if they’re not releasing the Wilson data it’s because it’s very bad. All I know is one teaching fellow I spoke with, who had been made into a special ed. teacher and given the NYCDOE’s Wilson training. She happens to be an extremely intelligent and perceptive - and caring - woman, btw. I asked her what she thought of the NYCDOE’s Wilson training and her response was both immediate and succinct: “absolutely useless.” Perhaps charters have found a better way to use this training, if that’s what they’ve received?
-
January 8th, 2010 10:15 am
I don’t know anything about the reading programs mentioned, but wouldn’t it be sick if the DOE selected Wilson over the other one and had little or no reading teachers in schools as a master plan to get more charter schools in the city and bust the UFT? Why don’t more people know that charter schools don’t take many ELL and Special Ed. students? Do the even take many Level 1 students?
-
January 8th, 2010 12:09 pm
I just returned from a trip to Sacramento’s State Board of Ed to speak on an agenda item (#32) regarding a new model of special education service delivery for Charter Schools in California. Trouble is - out of the 20 person task force, only one was a parent of a student with disabilities. The remainder were Charter operators, School administrators and State officials or appointees. Only one person who had the interests of children with disabilities and their parents was involved. I met her after the vote and she said that all of the concerns I voices were hers during the course of this task force and thanked me for making a public statement.
Of the board members present - several had “interest” in Charters (one was a director of a charter school, one was on a board for example). They should have recused themselves from voting (I think only one did), but the others did not. As board members are appointed, we have the Governator’s Charter friendly folks making decisions without a grasp of what IDEA and FAPE are really about. Many charters in LAUSD don’t realize that they must accept special needs children so have made a conscience effort to enroll only enough to “look” compliant.
I’ve collected data for several years on the type of disability and service offered by our LAUSD charters and the numbers are staggering in the Specific Learning Disability (SLD) and Speech and Language Impairment (SLI) category. Very, very few Deaf. Autism, Vision Impaired, Mentally Retarded. The numbers don’t lie, but no one wants to look at the numbers. No wonder Charters have better test scores…they don’t have the kids that bring them down.
The California Charter School Association is the machine behind attempts to loosen all the special education laws and requirements for Charter Schools (LAUSD is under a Federal Consent Decree and the local charters want to get out from under it). They charge $5 per student for general membership and have formed a Joint Powers Agreement to provide ‘quality’ special education services and then charges an additional $5 per student for a charter school to be involved with their new “service model”. They are a lobbying machine and parents of special needs children cannot compete with these people. They’ve created a business that sucks public education dollars from our public schools and special education programs for the more moderate to severe kids that are not accepted in their Charter schools. It’s a mess.
I feel that the decision yesterday by the board was flawed and should be investigated because several members have obvious conflicts of interest.
Leave a Reply
Mapping the Budget Cuts
Copyright Notice
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
12 Comments
Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack