Charters: Better than or just different from district schools?
New data show stark differences in who enrolls -- and remains -- in charter schools
A TRIFECTA OF initiatives focused on raising the charter school cap, including Governor Baker’s legislative proposal, a potential ballot initiative, and a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of Boston parents, has brought more heat than light to the charter school debate. The underlying argument of pro-charter school advocates can be boiled down to “charters are better than public schools while serving the same, or similar, student populations.”
In 2010, the Legislature passed An Act to Close the Achievement Gaps, which attempted to address acknowledged inequities in enrollment practices between public schools and charter schools related to under-enrollment of English language learners, low-income and special needs students. The law attempted to rectify the charter school practice of leaving empty seats unfilled in later grades by not accepting students after the initial enrollment grade.
A study released in October, “Who is Being Served by Massachusetts Commonwealth Charter Schools,”commissioned by the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, analyzed five years of Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) data since the law’s enactment and found that charter school enrollment practices do not support the pro-charter argument of “better than.” Rather, the data suggest that charter school enrollment – especially in Boston, Springfield, Worcester and Gateway Cities – is “different from” that of sending public schools.
Charter schools have chosen to be judged almost solely by their performance on MCAS and use results to support their “better than” claims. For this reason, policy makers should pay attention to the impact of enrollment practices on testing outcomes. Enrollment loss appears to be planned for and built into charter business strategy and contributes to higher test performance.
Certain student demographic characteristics are established predictors of testing outcomes. Therefore, looking at who enrolls, who stays and who leaves helps to understand charter outcomes. In general,- Regular education students outperform special education students.
- English speakers outperform non-English speakers.
- Middle- and high-income students outperform low-income students.
- Females outperform males.
Charter schools often describe themselves as “schools of choice.” It appears that parents, especially in urban districts, are choosing both to enroll and subsequently to remove their children from their charter schools. The data suggest that parents of 25 percent of K-4 students in urban charters take their children out of their schools before they complete the school’s program. In middle grades, the parents of 40 percent of the students in urban charter middle schools are choosing to remove their children. Parents of charter high school students are choosing to remove their sons and daughters in even higher percentages, 50 percent in Charters: Better than or just different from district schools? - CommonWealth Magazine: