NYC Charter Schools Do Well, But so do Many Public Schools. So Now What?

On my quest to find a better way, here's the latest research on one specific charter school system:

Edweek (subscription, but try it anyway): Students in New York City’s charter elementary and middle schools make bigger learning gains than their regular public school counterparts in math and reading, according to a new study , the second in five months to find good results for the independently run public schools in the nation’s largest school system.

The findings are attracting a lot of attention because they come from a Stanford University research group that issued a critical national study of charter schools last June. In that study , which looked at 2,403 charter schools in 15 states and found that students in more than 80 percent of those schools performed the same as—or worse than—students in regular public schools on mathematics tests.

In contrast, CREDO’s new study found that:

51 percent of NYC charter schools are producing academic gains in math for students that are statistically larger than students in regular public schools. In reading, however, 30 percent of charters perform better on average than their local public alternatives. Black and Hispanic students, as well as struggling learners, do better on average in charter schools, but charter schools do not appear to boost learning significantly for English-language learners, special education students, or students who have been held back a grade.

Margaret E. Raymond, CREDO’s director offered this important caveat:

“Remember that in looking at the distribution of quality [in the previous study], we found hundreds of charter schools doing really well. What New York City provides us with is an opportunity to step back and say, how is it possible that one market can have as robust a quality sector, where in other markets they’re not able to get that kind of performance?”

But what might be even more important is this observation from Sean Reardon, an associate professor of education and sociology at Stanford.

"What’s harder to tell, he wrote, is 'if the larger effect of charter schooling in [New York City] is because N.Y.C. charter schools are better than charter schools elsewhere, or if it’s because N.Y.C.’s traditional public schools are worse than traditional public schools elsewhere.”

Jeffrey Henig, a professor of political science and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, wrote in an e-mail, “For national policymakers, this combination of findings suggests that there should be less attention to the question of whether charters in general are superior to traditional public schools, and much more recognition of the fact that charter schools may or may not succeed, depending on state and local policy designs; authorizer practices; localized foundation support; and other state and local contextual factors that we don’t yet fully understand.”

All good questions. But I think there's something else to consider.

Instead of increasing the number of charter schools, we should be taking the successful formulas from both charter and public schools and integrating them in our public schools nationwide, instead of creating a parallel system based on profits.