Caroline M. Hoxby, Harvard University
December 2004
That was Wednesday. A day earlier, Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby released a thorough and sophisticated analysis of a different body of data comparing the performance of charter students with those in district-operated public schools. She looked for the percentage of a school's (4thgrade) pupils that pass their state's proficiency test and compared it with the percentage at the nearest district school. Although also a "snapshot," and necessarily constrained by the idiosyncrasies of diverse state tests, timetables and reporting formats, Hoxby's work deals with a matter that is notably more consequential than NAEP results from the standpoint of parents and taxpayers: what are children's odds of meeting state standards in these two nearby-schools. She's also working from a far larger data set than the NAEP sample. Her findings are also very different - and important for policy makers, too.
Though it varies by state - in some there's no difference and in North Carolina the charter pupils do worse - for the U.S. as a whole, Hoxby finds, charter students pass state reading proficiency tests at a rate five percent higher than those in neighboring district schools; in math, the differential is three percent. More interesting still, the longer the charter school has been in operation, the wider its advantage. Hoxby also finds charter pupils doing (relatively) better in states with strong charter laws (those that confer greater autonomy on schools) and where the charter schools are not egregiously under-funded. The charter edge is also wider in poor and heavily Hispanic neighborhoods. To read the full report, click here.
"Two types of D.C. public school are not easy to compare," by Michael Dobbs, Washington Post, December 15, 2004
"New research brings good news about charter schools," by Jennifer A. Marshall and Kirk A. Johnson, Heritage Foundation, December 14, 2004
