Study: N.C. charters get better results for less money

Students in N.C. charter schools earned higher reading and math scores in 2011 than their counterparts in traditional public schools,  while the charter schools got less money for doing it,  according to a new study from the University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform.

The latest study,  "The Productivity of Public Charter Schools,"  piggybacks on an April report that compared per-pupil spending on charters and other public schools.  It compares scores on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress eighth-grade reading and math exams for the two groups and links those to spending.

The report,  which looks at all states that had charter schools in 2011,  shows that N.C. charter school students averaged 13 points higher in reading and nine points higher in math than students in N.C. school districts.  Meanwhile,  charter schools averaged $8,277 per charter student compared with $9,999 per district student.  The study does a lot of other number-crunching but that's the gist:  Higher scores for less money.

Skeptics may assume that's because charter schools are working with the students who tend to score higher.  But according to this study,  the N.C. charter schools averaged slightly higher percentages of low-income and disabled students than public schools across the state.

Of course,  there are plenty of caveats to consider,  and the 43-page report explores many of them.  This is one year's performance  (a year that precedes North Carolina's charter school expansion)  for one grade level.  As the study notes,  those students may have experienced a mix of charter and traditional public schooling  (and,  for that matter,  private and home-schooling),  all of which contributes to eighth-grade scores. The report uses that data to extrapolate a  "return on investment"  based on lifetime earnings.  I'm skeptical of that technique,  which is used to turn small data points into huge savings by any number of educational groups,  including traditional public schools.

The researchers note that the overall analysis leads to one clear national finding:  "Charter schools tend to exhibit more productivity than traditional public schools."

You can bet that will come up as North Carolina debates how to balance its investment in various forms of public education.

Baker

Update: A reader steered me to a University of Colorado National Education Policy Center review of the April report on charter inequities. Reviewer Bruce Baker of Rutgers University says the University of Arkansas study  "displays complete lack of understanding of intergovernmental fiscal relationships."  For instance,  he writes,  money that is passed through school districts for distribution to charters is counted as school district revenue in per-pupil calculations  (CMS passed through about $23 million in 2013).

"In addition, the report suffers from alarmingly vague documentation regarding data sources and methodologies, and it constructs entirely inappropriate comparisons of student population characteristics,"  Baker writes.  "Simply put, the findings and conclusions of the study
are not valid or useful."

As some of you have noted,  and as I pointed out in the post about the April report,  the University of Arkansas research is part of the university's School Choice Demonstration Project,  which is funded by the Walton Family Foundation.

Read more here: http://obsyourschools.blogspot.com/search?q=+university+arkansas+charter#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://obsyourschools.blogspot.com/2014/05/report-nc-charter-schools-dont-get-fair.html#storylink=cpy

What's real message of urban district scores?

Before we all break for the holiday, I wanted to pass along some interesting posts on this week's "nation's report card"  tally of how 21 urban districts fared on national reading and math exams.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools rated high compared with the other districts on the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress,  though proficiency rates remain frustratingly low across the country,  especially for low-income and minority students.  As I noted in my article,  CMS' large numbers of white and middle-class students compared with most other districts contributed to its high rankings.

Paul Hill of the University of Washington's Center on Reinventing Public Education elaborated on that issue in a Friday blog post.

"It is tempting to squeeze the urban NAEP scores for evidence about what city is doing better or worse than other cities. But the big messages are that everyone's scores are very bad, and that cities with the highest concentrations of low-income and minority kids do the worst,"  Hill writes.  "Some cities have gotten unstuck from the bottom and are regressing a little bit to the mean. That's better than staying stuck, but unless those cities increase a lot faster, and keep improving for a long time, most of their disadvantaged students will not be ready for higher education or good-paying jobs."

"The deep message here is that nobody knows how to educate large numbers of disadvantaged kids successfully. A new curriculum or teacher training initiative can move the needle for a while, but results then level out. A great school can do wonders for a few kids, but efforts to replicate are seldom as successful. As a country, we still haven't accepted the core fact that this problem remains unsolved."

Andy Smarick of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute also took a dim view of the results and the cheerleading that ensued. He blogged that  "today is a day to be sad for millions of disadvantaged kids,"  not to celebrate.  He also noted that winners and finalists in the Broad Prize for Urban Education competition fared poorly  (though he didn't mention CMS, the 2011 winner).

Robin Lake of the CRPE called for expanding the data,  especially on cities that have some of the most innovative approaches to urban education,  including extensive use of charter schools. 

"The NAEP TUDA has effectively focused our attention on cities, where reforms are most urgently needed, but the data don’t tell us what mayors and civic leaders across the country need to know: which cities are most quickly and equitably increasing students’ access to high-quality public schools,"  Lake wrote.  "Our cities have long since moved past the notion of districts as the sole provider of public education. It’s time that our assessment and evaluation systems do, too."

Eighth-graders: Phooey on reading!

I suppose it's no shock in this wired generation,  but fewer than one in five eighth-graders in Charlotte and nationwide say they read for fun almost every day.  And about one-third say they never read when they don't have to.

That's a tidbit from the latest "nation's report card" report on reading and math results for students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and 20 other large urban districts.  The sampling of students who took the 2011 eighth-grade reading test were asked some background questions , including how often they read for fun on their own time.  Eighteen percent of CMS students said  "almost every day,"  matching the national average.  Only Chicago;  Washington,  D.C.;  and Louisville,  Ky.,  were higher,  at 19 percent.  Dallas had the fewest daily readers at 9 percent.

Non-readers made up 33 percent of the national test-takers and 30 percent in CMS.  Other cities ranged from 40 percent choosing  "almost never"  in Fresno,  Calif.,  to 17 percent in Chicago.

Not surprisingly,  the report says students who read more frequently for pleasure scored higher on the reading tests.