The performance of charter schools in Wisconsin

The meteoric rise in charter schools has several implications for traditional public schools and their students. One understudied implication is the geographic competition for students. Given traditional public school boundaries are often fixed while charter school boundaries are more flexible, charter schools can draw students away from existing traditional public schools, and we have very little information about how distance matters in the competition for students. Because of this, traditional public schools and school districts have little ability to plan for enrollment changes in the face of charter school growth. Our paper uses data on enrollments and demographics in all charter and traditional public schools in Los Angeles from 2000 to 2013 to better understand these dynamics. We find that traditional public school enrollments clearly decline with competition from nearby charter schools. However, we also observe that charter schools tend to locate where traditional public school enrollments are on the decline. Competition is more relevant for elementary schools at short distances—within about 1 mi appears to be where the associations between charter school enrollments and TPS enrollment declines are the strongest. For middle and high schools, those connections are apparent within 2 to 6 mi in some models.

In post-Katrina New Orleans, Louisiana, there is a growing concentration of charter schools. The Recovery School District (RSD) has oversight of the majority of these schools. To explore charges from community advocates that RSD charter schools restricted admission and provided inadequate services for students with disabilities, the following questions were asked: Were students with disabilities admitted equally to charter and traditional schools in New Orleans? and How were the services for students with disabilities the same or different in charter and traditional schools? A case study research design that included both traditional and charter RSD schools was used. Data were gathered through examination of relevant reports from school entities and popular media. Additional data were gathered through interviews with district personnel and traditional school, charter school, and community disabilities advocates. Analysis of resultant themes indicated evidence of selective practices as well as differences in education provision for students with disabilities.

There is a long-standing debate in public administration as to the differences and similarities in management practices across sectors. A number of scholars have argued for market-based reforms as a means to transform and improve public sector services, including the educational system. Charter schools have emerged as a reform that proposes to improve the educational system through choice, competition, and autonomy from the bureaucracy of traditional public school districts, but their implications are not fully understood. This mixed-method study analyzes differences in human resource management practices across traditional public, charter, and private schools, with a focus on formalization and autonomy. In support of other research on public-private management differences, this analysis suggests that traditional public schools are more formalized and have less autonomy than private and charter schools. Findings provide support for the utility of a core approach that distinguishes between public and private organizations based on ownership. The study suggests that ownership has a significant influence on personnel management practices, but that funding generally does not.

<p>This interpretive, exploratory qualitative study examines the similarities and differences between charter school leadership and traditional public school leadership. Previous research has examined the differences in school leadership in traditional public schools from large-scale, quantitative data (Cravens, Goldring,& Penaloza, 2012; Goff, Mavrogordato, & Goldring, 2012). Though research exists on specific facets of charter schools such as student achievement, there is little research on the needs of charter school leaders and how well-prepared they are for their unique roles (Huerta, 2009; Hughes & Silva, 2013). The purpose of this study is to contribute to the body of knowledge on school leadership by developing an emic description of the relationship between charter school leadership and traditional public school leadership through a qualitative interpretivist study approach.</p><p>School leaders in Minnesota who have been heads of school in both independent charter schools and traditional public schools were surveyed, and four were selected for in-depth follow-up interviews. The guiding research questions are: (1) What are the differences between traditional public school leadership and charter school leadership according to school leaders in Minnesota who have been leaders of both types of schools; (2) How do school leaders in Minnesota who have been leaders of both charter schools and traditional public schools experience instructional leadership in the different school organizations; and (3) How do school leadership preparation programs help prepare educators for leadership in charter schools?</p><p>Findings from this study indicate that differences in school leadership in traditional public schools and independent charter schools may exist due to organizational structure, including the expanded scope of school leadership in charter schools. However, some of the differences may be because of school size, as leaders with experience in both types of schools indicated that leading a charter school is similar to leading a small, rural, traditional public school. The findings also examine the structures created to support charter school leadership, and the need for professional community and support. Implications for school leader professional development and school leadership preparation programs are discussed.</p>

A widely cited report by the federal Government Accountability Office found that charter schools enroll a significantly smaller percentage of students with disabilities than do traditional public schools. However, thus far no hard evidence exists to definitively explain or quantify the disparity between special education enrollment rates in charter and traditional public schools. This article uses student-level data from Denver, Colorado, to map the creation and growth of the special education gap in elementary and middle school grades. The gap begins because students with disabilities are less likely to apply to charter schools in gateway grades than are nondisabled students. However, the special education gap in Denver elementary schools more than doubles as students progress between kindergarten and the fifth grade. About half of the growth in the gap in elementary grades (46%) occurs because of classification differences across sectors. The remaining 54% of the growth in the gap in elementary grades is due to differences in student mobility across sectors. However, the gap does not primarily grow—and in fact tends to shrink—due to the movement of students with disabilities across sectors and out of the city’s school system. Rather, the impact of student mobility on the gap is driven primarily by nondisabled students: Regular enrollment students are more likely to enter into charter schools, thus disproportionately reducing the percentage of students with disabilities within the charter sector.

Teacher Attrition in Charter and Public Schools

Blending in and standing out: College-going rates across charter and traditional public high schools

In recent years, a series of articles have examined the performance of charter schools with mixed results. Some of this research has shown that charter school performance varies by charter type or the age of the school (Bifulco & Ladd, 2006; Buddin & Zimmer, 2005; Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 2002; Sass, 2006). However, this research has not examined the school attributes that lead to high- or low-achieving charter schools. In this article, we examine how student achievement varies with school operational features using student-level achievement and survey data for charter and a matched-set of traditional public schools from California. We did not find operational characteristics that were consistently related with student achievement, but we did identify some features that are more important at different grade levels or in charter schools versus in traditional public schools. We also examined the relationship between greater autonomy within schools, which is a major tenet of the charter movement, and student achievement and found very little evidence that greater autonomy leads to improved student achievement.

Studies of the charter sector typically compare charters and traditional public schools at a point in time. These comparisons are potentially misleading, because many charter‐related reforms require time to generate results. We study quality dynamics among charter schools in the State of Texas from 2001 to 2011. School quality in the charter sector was initially highly variable and on average lower than in traditional public schools. However, exits, improvement of existing charter schools, and higher quality of new entrants increased charter effectiveness relative to traditional public schools despite an acceleration in the rate of sector expansion in the latter half of the decade. We present evidence that reduced student mobility and an increased share of charters adhering to No‐Excuses‐style curricula contribute to these improvements. Although selection into charter schools becomes more favourable over time in terms of prior achievement and behaviour, such compositional improvements appear to contribute little to the charter sector gains. Moreover, accounting for composition in terms of prior achievement and behaviour has only a small effect on estimates of the higher average quality of No Excuses schools.

In this study, we analyzed public school teacher employment data from 2009 to 2015 to understand why teacher attrition is 54% higher in charter schools compared to traditional public schools. We investigated the factors associated with the differences in exit rates of teachers from traditional public and charter schools in Arizona which has a large charter school sector. Our findings suggest that the major factors behind the gap in retention rates between school sectors in Arizona are teachers’ professional characteristics: less experienced teachers and teachers with alternative certification are more likely to exit schools and, in particular, charter schools which also employ a significantly larger share of these teachers. We argue that charter school and school district leadership might consider interventions, mentoring, and support for teachers in the early stages of their career targeted at novice teachers.

Examining resource allocation practices, including savings, of charter schools is critical to understanding their financial viability and sustainability. Using 9 years of finance data from California, we find charter schools spend less on instruction and pupil support services than traditional public schools. The lower spending on instruction and pupil support is offset, not by administrative costs, but by higher spending on operations, consultant services, and a greater rate of savings (carry-over). Further, analysis indicates that the differences in resource allocation patterns between charter schools and traditional public schools is not completely explained by the characteristics of students served. The resource allocation practices revealed in this study, combined with findings from prior research, shed some light on how charter schools may avoid financial deficiency and ensure their sustainability.

The current investigation will synthesize numerous studies conducted across the nation at the elementary, middle and high school levels. Meta-analytic techniques will assist parents and educators in making evidence-based decisions while adding to the research supporting educational reform and promoting best practices in both educational models. This study was specifically designed to consider a number of variables in charter schools relative to traditional public schools, including socioeconomic status, English language learning, school competition, and eligibility for special education that may impact student mathematics and reading achievement. The findings of the current investigation suggest that students in charter school programs are not performing as well as students in traditional public schools on mathematics and reading achievement examinations.

ABSTRACTFew evaluations have focused on the supply and demand within the education marketplace in a school choice environment. Because traditional public schools are not subject to the same level of competitive pressures as private schools, we expect that measures of school quality—enrollment, academic achievement, and safety—will be more likely to predict closures for private schools and public charter schools than Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). We employ survival analysis using data from private, traditional public, and public charter schools in Milwaukee from 2005 to 2016. Data on enrollment trends, demographics, and academic performance from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction were combined with data from other sources on school safety and closure. Results from our models suggest: (a) enrollment losses drive school closure in all three sectors, (b) low academic achievement only predicts closure for private schools, (c) families choose schools based on academics in all three sectors, and (d) academics and school safety are positively correlated.

This brief argues that charter school programs can have direct fiscal impacts on school districts for two reasons. First, operating two systems of public schools under separate governance arrangements can create excess costs. Second, charter school financing policies can distribute resources to or away from districts. Using the city school districts of Albany and Buffalo in New York, we demonstrate how fiscal impacts on local school districts can be estimated. We find that charter schools have had fiscal impacts on these two school districts. Finally, we argue that charter schools policies should seek to minimize any avoidable excess costs created by charter schools and ensure that the burden of any unavoidable excess costs is equitably distributed across traditional public schools, charter schools, and the state. We offer concrete policy recommendations that may help to achieve these objectives.

The policy diffusion framework is critical to understanding the spread of policy innovations such as charter schools in the United States. This framework, however, is less instructive in explaining the state-by-state configuration of these policies. What explains the wide variation in charter school policy among states? This study addresses this question by introducing the concept of policy regimes. Policy regimes capture dominant and distinct approaches to policy innovations that are informed by common institutional environments among states. This article applies this concept to charter schools by studying state charter school policies and their effects on academic performance. Factor analysis of different charter school policies identifies four unique policy regimes: independence, support, accountability, and mandate. These four regimes are linked to a series of state characteristics. This article then examines the relationships between regime type and charter school performance using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models. The results show that regime types are statistically related to charter student achievement in ways that are consistent with each regime’s policy approach. These finding suggest that policy regimes may be important in disentangling the apparent variation in charter school performance.