Limitations of Transparency and Oversight of Charter Schools

Transparency & oversights of charter schools are not enough. Valid research must also support our efforts. All the transparency and oversight that we apply to our efforts becomes moot, if the research that analyzes it is flawed. Here’s an example of what I mean.

A report from the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington concludes that charter school benefited students, particularly in math. However, in a peer review by the National Education Policy Center of the University of Colorado, Boulder, the claims of benefit are challenged. The initial conclusions are that “… charters are serving students well, particularly in math.”

The NEPC review finds:

• “…conclusion is overstated; the actual results are not positive in reading and are not significant in high school math; for elementary and middle school math, effect sizes are very small, ranging from 0.03 to 0.08 s.d.”

• The report describes the limitations of the methodology and then “seemingly forgets those limits in the analysis.”

• The initial report considers “lottery selection” by charter schools to be the same as “random selection” of students in classes of traditional schools. However, “but lotteries only exist in charter schools that are much more popular than the comparison public schools from which students are drawn.” Therefore, the similarity does not exist and the conclusions drawn from those “similarities” are invalid.

• The initial report finds that there’s been no change in charter schools and then make claims of “positive effects when they are not statistically significant…”

• These flaws “render the report of little value for informing policy and practice.”

You can see the summary and full report here:

http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/nepc-ttr-chartermeta.pdf