First-Year Report on New York City Charter Schools Finds Positive Impact on Reading and Math

A nice report on how charter schools are kicking butt in NYC:

The students in grades 3 though 8 gain  about 3.8 scale score points (0.09 standard  deviations) in math and about 1.6 scale score points (0.04  standard deviations) in reading for  every year spent in a charter school. A student can expect to improve by about  12 percent of a ³performance level² in math and about 3.5 percent of a  ³performance level² in reading for every year in a charter school in New York  City. These gains are in addition to whatever improvements the student would  have been expected to make in a traditional public school.

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First-Year Report on New York City Charter Schools Finds Positive Impact on Reading and Math

CAMBRIDGE A study done by the National Bureau of Economic Research for the New York City Charter Schools Evaluation Project, which was released today, finds that students who attend charter schools have higher academic achievement in reading and math in grades 3 through 8. The students in grades 3 though 8 gain about 3.8 scale score points (0.09 standard deviations) in math and about 1.6 scale score points (0.04 standard deviations) in reading for every year spent in a charter school. A student can expect to improve by about 12 percent of a ³performance level² in math and about 3.5 percent of a ³performance level² in reading for every year in a charter school in New York City. These gains are in addition to whatever improvements the student would have been expected to make in a traditional public school. However, since this is the first report of the independent, multi-year study -- known as the New York City Charter Schools Evaluation Project -- the results in this report should be viewed with caution, because they may change when more years of data are incorporated into the study.

At this time, there are not enough charter school applicants enrolled in high school to draw conclusions based on tests taken at that level.

By capitalizing on the random lotteries that charter schools hold to determine which students they enroll, the researchers were able to make ³apples-to-apples² comparisons of students in charter schools and traditional public schools. The study compared charter school applicants who were lotteried-in and subsequently enrolled in a charter school in the City versus applicants who were lotteried-out and stayed in the traditional public schools.

The study also looked at the characteristics of the student population served by charter schools. Charter school applicants are fairly typical of the neighborhoods where the schools are located, but New York City charter schools are located in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Thus, more than 90 percent of charter school applicants qualify for free or reduced-price lunch --they are 17.5 percent more likely to do so than the average student in the New York City public schools. The researchers further found that charter schools in New York City disproportionately attract black applicants: 63.9 percent of applicants are black, while 32 percent of New York City's students are black. Because New York City¹s charter schools draw from a population that is overwhelmingly black and Hispanic, any charter school where black students make up a disproportionately large share of applicants will automatically be a school where Hispanic students make up a disproportionately small share of applicants.

Charter schools enroll a proportionate share of special education students, once account is taken of the fact that their student bodies are weighted toward the early grades. The researchers were unable to draw any conclusions about English Language Learners, and are cautious about special education, because they found so many differences in the way that charter schools and traditional public schools recorded their numbers.

The majority of New York City charter schools have adopted one or more policies that are unusual in the traditional public schools--for instance, a long school year (190 days or more), a long school day (8 hours or more), Saturday school, and school uniforms. The researchers did not yet have sufficient data to ascertain the association between most such policies and charter schools' effects on achievement, but they note that a long school year is statistically associated with positive effects on achievement.

This report covers 42 of New York City¹s 47 charter schools and evaluates data on test results from 2000-1 through 2005-6. However, achievement results for only 35 of the schools are reflected in the report because not all charter schools had students enrolled in the test-taking grades of 3 through 12 as of 2005-6. The data in the report were derived from the New York City Department of Education, participating City charter schools, and the U.S. Census of Population and Housing.

A copy of ³New York City¹s Charter Schools Overal1 Report,² the 2007 report of the New York City¹s Charter School Evaluation Project, can be found online at the NBER website at www.nber.org/~schools/charterschoolseval <www.nber.org/~schools/charterschoolseval> .

The New York City¹s Charter Schools Evaluation Project is funded by the Institute for Education Sciences, the research arm of the U. S. Department of Education, and will report on achievement through the 2009-10 school year. The authors of this year's report are Caroline M. Hoxby and Sonali Murarka, both of the Economics of Education Program at the NBER.

The NBER is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts dedicated to promoting a greater understanding of how the economy works. The NBER is committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community.

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