Filed under: Education, Elementary Education, High School, Politics, Public School, Research, k-12
The RAND Corportation just released a report on charter schools and whether they’re a help or a hindrance to the students that attend them. Charter schools are one of the reigning flavors of the month in the education debate kerfuffle. It’s a wee bit chaotic in the education world right now, but here’s the simple version of the yeas and nays with regard to charter schools:
While the number of charter schools continues to grow, debate continues about whether charter schools provide a better education experience than traditional public schools. Proponents contend that charter schools expand educational choices for students, increase innovation, improve student achievement and provide much-needed competition to public schools.
Opponents, meanwhile, argue that charter schools lead to increased racial or ethnic stratification of students, skim the best students from traditional public schools, reduce resources for public schools and provide no real improvement in student achievement.
The study was conducted in several states, which one would hope for in a decently scientific study. I think more research in more schools over longer periods of time is necessary to really know the impact charter schools have on student outcome. But for now, with the information the study gave us to go on, it’s interesting to note that there’s nothing hugely wonderful or negative at the elementary-school level, but that at the high school level things look a little better.
The most promising results for charter schools relate to the long-term outcomes of high-school graduation and college entry. In the two locations with available data on these critical 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.
Perhaps those numbers are due to smaller schools with fewer kids getting lost in the shuffle, or maybe the kids at charter high schools are more interested in the curriculum. Whatever it is, the numbers aren’t astounding, but they’re still positive, which is good. We like it when kids graduate and head to college.
Posted by Alexa Harrington