New Reports on Charter School Impacts

Brookings just released The Impact of Milwaukee Charter Schools on Student Achievement. Among its findings: charter school attendance is associated with higher scores on mathematics exams than attendance at traditional public schools, but there is no statistically significant relationship between charter school attendance and performance on reading exams. These positive results are due to student performance in the initial years of the program—the performance of charter schools and traditional public schools is statistically indistinguishable for the most recent years of the study.

Interesting…especially because in the first year of the study (school year 2000), which showed the largest advantage for charter schools, the sample included only 4 charter schools. The most recent year (school year 2006—in which the authors actually found a statistically significant advantage for reading scores in traditional schools), they included 35. In the report, they give great weight to the fact that first year charters tend to have a negative impact on test scores, which could account for the decline in overall performance. However, in school year 2005, the study included 38 schools…which suggests that few if any new schools were included the 2006 data [because otherwise they would have had to eliminate several previously included schools, which doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense]. Might another idea be that charters performend better in the early years because the early charters were given only to the very best of the applicants, whereas a current push to increase the number of charter schools has led to less impressive applicants being granted charters? This notion has implications for Obama’s push to lift caps on charter schools…

Another interesting finding from this report: student mobility has a negative effect on performance and is a more robust predictor of student performance than the organizational factors the authors considered (which seems to me, as a teacher who dealt with student mobility, be a “duh” statement). Also, the positive impact of charters relative to traditional public schools declines as the number of years a student has attended a charter school increases (this could be really interesting to delve into…).

If you are interested in learning more about the impact of charter schools, check out this new RAND publication, How Charter Schools Affect Student Outcomes. It presents a much more complete picture [and actually incorporates the Milwaukee data used in the Brookings report]. The most promising results for charter supporters: The long-term outcomes of high-school graduation and college entry—in the two locations with available data on these 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.

Labels: charter, research

Turning ex-traders into new teachers

This article from the New Jersey Star-Ledger discusses a new pilot program just approved by the New Jersey state legislature to fast-track teacher certification in science and math. A likely recruitment target: recently unemployed Wall Street workers, who have a significant math background. Kudos to New Jersey for a policy that is intended to both put the unemployed to work and to provide qualified math and science teachers for urban districts struggling to fill those slots. As with any policy, though, we will have to wait and see whether it accomplishes either goal.

Of course, within the education community there is a great debate over the effectiveness of teachers who undergo alternative certification programs in general. People interested in the topic might be interested in this Mathematica evaluation on the efficacy of different teacher preparation methods in contributing to students’ academic achievement. It concluded that there was no difference, on average, to student achievement resulting from placing an alternatively versus traditionally certified teacher in the classroom.

Another study of interest might be this 2008 Urban Institute publication on the effectiveness of Teach For America teachers (who were specifically excluded from the Mathematica study) in secondary schools in North Carolina. While, like all studies, there are methodological limitations, the authors found that TFA teachers are more effective, as measured by student exam performance, than teachers certified traditionally working in the schools in which they are placed. They also suggest that TFA teachers are more effective than experienced secondary school teachers in those schools. Results are particularly strong in math and science. [Note: I do have slight bias in posting this study, as I taught high school math and science as a TFA corps member]

Labels: teacher certification

In-State Tuition for Illegal Residents???

This article from Sunday’s New York Times jumps into the debate on in-state tuition for long-term undocumented immigrants. The article definitely calls attention to some of the arguments for giving such students the benefits of that tuition, including but not limited to the fact that current legislation (in the 40 states that do not currently offer that tuition rate) can be considered denying access to higher education to these students, many of whom have been in the United States nearly their entire lives. However, the article also includes the counterpoint that some stakeholders believe taxpayers should not subsidize the college education of illegal immigrants.

The article does not point out what this article from the February 27th Arizona Republic does--that undocumented students who graduate from college in the US are not eligible to work here and therefore 1) must either return to home countries they barely know to get meaningful work or toil underground in the same labor and service-sector jobs as their illegal immigrant parents; and 2) the state is unable to recoup the investment it makes in these students.

Aside from opinions about whether the policy of in-state tuition for illegal immigrants is right or wrong (or just sound or unsound), I think its interesting that the NYT article makes such a major omission. Its a major point that would likely influence the thinking of many individuals. The omission seems to speak either to the perils of basing policy opinions on mass media, or to the fact that policies can be designed to exist in a bubble outside of reality…

Labels: immigration, tuition