Tom Loveless, Brown Center on Education Policy, Brookings Institution
October 22, 2003
This publication rolls three important studies into one report. Part I analyzes how well American students are learning, with a special focus on rural schools. Part II is the already widely cited Brookings' study on whether American students have an unbearable homework load. [They do not. See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=117#1475 for more information.] Part III - perhaps the most interesting section - is Brookings's second appraisal of achievement and accountability in charter schools, comparing average achievement in charter schools to average achievement in traditional public schools. Researchers were able not only to compare average achievement, but also to compare test score changes, or gain scores, from 2000 to 2002 for charters and traditional public schools. Further, they could distinguish among charter schools, comparing achievement and gain scores between conversion charters and schools run by education management organizations (EMOs). This year as last, researchers found that average "test scores in charter schools lag behind the scores of regular public schools." But, they also found that "charter schools in this year's study . . . registered significant gains in test scores from 2000 to 2002." Much of the evidence suggests that those gains are larger in charters than in conventional public schools. Among charters, conversion schools (that converted from traditional public to charter status) fared better than charters run by for-profit EMOs. "Compared to regular public schools and to other charters serving students with similar socioeconomic characteristics, EMO-operated charters have much lower test scores." Yet once again, their "gains made from 2000 to 2002 have been significantly larger than those of both non-EMO charters and regular public schools." And, while most charters scored lower than traditional public schools, "conversions produced average test scores despite a demographic profile that is usually correlated with low scores." There is a wealth of interesting information in this report, and you can see it for yourself at http://brookings.edu/gs/brown/bc_report/2003/2003report.pdf.
