Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes praised New Orleans charter schools in a study release last week. CREDO said in a press release it:
found that the typical student in a Louisiana charter school gains more learning in a year than his or her district school peer, amounting to about fifty more days of learning in reading and sixty-five more days of learning in math.
In addition to analyzing state trends, the study included a separate analysis of New Orleans charter schools. The study period included six years of schooling, beginning with the 2005-06 school year and concluding in 2010-11. During this study period nearly 80 percent of the public school students in the city attend charter schools, constituting 69 percent of the state’s charter school population. The results for the typical student in a New Orleans charter were even more pronounced than the state results, equating to more than four months of additional learning in reading and five months greater progress in math. At the school level, 50 percent of New Orleans charter schools have significantly more positive learning gains than their district school peers in reading and 56 percent in math.
Some tidbits from the study:
*"On average, students in Louisiana charter schools learned significantly more than their virtual counterparts in reading and mathematics. The results for the charter students in New Orleans show that they are growing even more by comparison to their TPS counterparts." (p.14)
*Remember stats in college? "The data is analyzed in units of standard deviations of growth so that the results will be statistically correct. Unfortunately, these units do not have much meaning for the average reader. Transforming the results into more accessible units is challenging and can be done only imprecisely. Therefore, Table 3 below, which presents a translation of various outcomes, should be interpreted cautiously" (p.15)
*"on average, charter students in Louisiana gain an additional 50 days, nearly three months of learning in reading over their TPS counterparts.9 In math, the advantage for charter students is about 65 days, more than three months of additional learning in one school year. Charter students in New Orleans gain an additional 86 days of learning in reading and 101 days in math over and above their state counterparts."
*"On average, Black students in charter schools have significantly better learning gains in reading and math compared to Black students in traditional public schools. Black charter students have 43 more days of learning in reading and 65 additional days of learning in math than their TPS counterparts." (p.23)
*"Charter students in poverty receive no significant benefit or loss in reading or math gains compared to their TPS peers in poverty." (p.25) However, that is due to the white students in poverty because the black students....
*"Black students in poverty who are enrolled in charter schools show significantly better performance in reading and math compared to Black students in poverty in TPS. Black charter students in poverty gain an additional 50 days of learning in reading and 65 more days in math than their peers in TPS." (p.26)
4 comments:
this study confirms that students who want to learn and are in a culture of learning will. Charter schools can, and do, boot the bad apples back to traditional public schools. if public schools could kick out students, they would "test" far better. since that will never happen, its just obvious that charter schools in failing school districts is the answer to save those who want to be saved!
BS. 86% of the NOLA kids are in charter schools. I think that probably covers more than a few of the bad apples.
Unless you are saying the 14% are all bad apples.
Go get another talking point.
The study begins in 2005. Katrina came through New Orleans in 2005 resulting in many demographic changes that might also result in drastically improved test scores.
The study shows statistical significance, but at .14 or less there is no practical significance. And without explaining how the study determined the number of days of learning in relation to standard deviations one cannot refer to that reliably. Basically, some charters do better, some do worse, some about the same as traditional public schools. As a side note, when CREDO 2009 came out charter supporters railed against it because it showed no significant gains. Now that CREDO 2013 shows significant (although impractical) gains, supporters now trumpet the study. Since CREDO 2013 states that poor performing charters have closed, and hinted that this attributed to some of the gains, the question begs: where did those students go? Into another charter? Back to traditional public schools?
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