Twelve studies find that overall gains in charter schools are larger than other public schools; four find charter schools’ gains higher in certain significant categories of schools; six find comparable gains; and, four find that charter schools’ overall gains lagged behind traditional schools.
Source: Charter School Achievement: What We Know, July 2005 Update
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http://www.brook.edu/comm/books/0003Fiske.htm
The main message of this book is that market-based school reforms—including large-scale charter school plans—are likely to exacerbate rather than solve the problems of troubled urban schools unless accompanied by appropriate policy safeguards. The authors base their analysis on data resulting from a nationwide self-governing reform effort, "Tomorrow's Schools," begun in New Zealand in 1989. The governance of the country's public schools was turned over to locally elected boards of trustees in each school, and parents were given choice over which school their children would attend. The authors found widespread polarization of student enrollment by race and ethnicity, with difficult-to-teach students—those with learning or behavior difficulties, those with poor English, those from disadvantaged environments—increasingly concentrated in certain schools. The book warns U.S. school reformers that choice and competition will not solve the problems of troubled public schools. The authors conclude that if the United States and other nations are eager to continue down the path of school choice that policymakers must put in place safeguards that will protect the most disadvantaged students and communities.
Date: 2000
Source: Brookings Institution
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