The Education Wars: Charter Schools

Although previous studies have proven charter schools to be no better than regular public schools and are often worse performing, that hasn't stopped advocates for trying to claim otherwise.

Original article snip:

Because New York is the nation's largest school district and Mayor Michael Bloomberg's school reform policies are so drastic and controversial, this report should get a lot of attention. But there are some strange things about it.

The organization CREDO -- the Center for Research on Education Outcomes -- released its nationwide study in June 2009, showing that (according to the press release on the study) "in the aggregate, students in charter schools [are] not faring as well as students in traditional public schools." The report "found that 17 percent of charter schools reported academic gains that were significantly better than traditional public schools, while 37 percent of charter schools showed gains that were worse than their traditional public school counterparts, with 46 percent of charter schools demonstrating no significant difference."

The study was especially significant because CREDO is part of the Hoover Institution, a so-called "think tank" at Stanford University that is a strong promoter of "free-market solutions" in education, including charter schools and vouchers. So when the CREDO study showed poor results for charters, that must have stung badly. .

Then in August 2009, Stanford professor and longtime charter/privatization advocate Caroline Hoxby published a memo challenging the CREDO study, claiming that a "serious statistical mistake" in CREDO's work led to an inaccurate "negative bias in its estimate of how charter schools affect achievement." CREDO hit back with an October 2009 response calling Hoxby's memo "misleading" and "riddled with serious errors."

A discussion of this study is here.