Do charter schools fall short?

An article published at EducationNews.org by Dennis Redovich criticizes the third grade reading results for Milwaukee charter schools. Redovich calculates that the percentage of students rated proficient and advanced is 84.9% statewide, 66.4% for MPS, and 43.2% for eight schools chartered by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee or the city of Milwaukee. (He has a line for schools chartered by MPS but has left it blank.)

Advocates for charter schools (including Schools Now) may find it easy to discount the Redovich analysis. For one thing, he is a long-time opponent of the charter and choice program who regards them as part of a conspiracy to destroy MPS. Also, his language is distinctively hyperbolic: "it is incredible that," "outrageously labels," "outrageous is too mild a term...!", "hypocrisy and stupidity in Milwaukee." (Full disclosure: some years ago I was dropped from his e-mail distribution for suggesting that milder language would be more effective.)

Yet the fact remains that for those hoping that charter schools would be a panacea for poor student achievement, the Milwaukee test scores so far are disappointing. Clearly expectations by some of the more starry-eyed supporters were unrealistic: getting rid of the public school bureaucracy does not solve all the problems of achievement among urban children.

Despite these data, it is not at all clear that the charter schools are doing less well than traditional schools:

1. These are new schools. It is increasingly evident that starting a school is difficult and it takes a while for the school to coalesce. As a result, student achievement usually suffers in the early years of a school, including with the few new MPS schools started in this period. Something of the same phenomenon seems to appear in grades where most of the students (but not the teachers) are new to the school, such as ninth grade and sixth grade; the latter helps explain the achievement advantage of K-8 schools over middle schools in MPS.

2. There is no information on how these students were doing before switching to the charter school. It seems plausible that a student struggling in a traditional school would be more likely to switch than one who was doing well. The early study of the Milwaukee choice program found that to be the case.

Also it should be noted that giving parents more choices is a good thing in itself. It is clear from enrollment numbers that there is a demand for alternatives.