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Child Trends 5 is a new monthly publication from Child Trends.
 July 1, 2013
Charter schools are
increasing in prevalence, and they continue to be the subject of great
interest and debate in the education community. Charter schools are
public schools, but unlike traditional public schools, they operate
under a contract, or "charter," issued by a school district or other
public authority, and they can be closed if they fail to meet the
conditions of their contract. In communities where charter schools are
available, children may attend a charter school instead of their
regularly assigned public school. But what do we actually know about charter schools?
Child Trends offers five insights based on its review of the most recent national data on charter schools.
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Charter schools are on the rise
From 2000 to 2011, the number of charter schools more than tripled
(from 1,500 to 5,300) and the number of students served by charters
quintupled (from about 340,000 to about 1.8 million), according to the
U.S. Department of Education. Estimates
from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools suggest that
there were 6,000 charter schools, serving 2.3 million students, in 2012.
Most charter schools are concentrated in cities -- 56 percent in 2011, compared with 25 percent of traditional public schools.The cities
with the highest percentage of students enrolled in charter schools
were New Orleans (76 percent), Detroit (41 percent), and Washington,
D.C. (41 percent). Although the charter school student population
represented just 3.6 percent of all students in 2011, it increased 11 percent from 2010 to 2011.
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Parents give charter schools high marks
In
2007, charter school parents were more likely than traditional public
school parents to report being very satisfied with their child's school
(70 percent vs. 56 percent) and teachers (78 percent vs. 60 percent),
according to U.S. Department of Education National Household Education
Surveys Program data. Charter school parents were also more likely to trust the staff in their children's school (61 percent vs. 42 percent).
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Charter school student bodies are more likely to be Black, Hispanic, low-income
Compared with traditional public schools, charter school student populations
were more likely to be mostly Black (25 percent vs. 10 percent) and
mostly Hispanic (21 percent vs. 14 percent) in 2011. Nationally, one in
three charter schools (33 percent) served a student population that was
at least 75 percent low-income, compared with one in five traditional
public schools (21 percent).
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Report cards for academic performance are mixed
Experiments --
the gold standard of education research -- have shown that some charter
schools outperform traditional public schools, while others
underperform. Quasi-experimental studies, which attempt to control
statistically for differences in student populations across school
types, also show mixed results. A recent nationwide quasi-experimental study
found that for reading gain scores on state assessments, 56 percent of
charters scored no different from matched traditional public schools, 29
percent scored better, and 19 percent scored worse. For math, these
statistics were 40 percent, 29 percent, and 31 percent, respectively.
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We can learn from successful charter schools
What
should parents and students look for in a school? The best charter
schools -- as measured by gains in math and reading -- are those where
principals provide frequent feedback to teachers, teachers use data to
drive instruction, students receive frequent tutoring and additional
instructional time, and school staff members hold high expectations for
all students' behavior and academic performance, according to a recent study
of charter schools in New York City. This same study found that
traditional measures, such as class size, per pupil expenditure, and
teacher qualifications were not strongly linked to student learning.
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Contributors:
Daniel Princiotta, Renee Ryberg, Hannah Schmitz, and Laura Lippman
7/2013, Publication #2013-32
©2013 Child Trends. May be reprinted with citation.
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