The Fordham Institute has a study out today that is so full of shit I can smell it through my computer. They looked at Charter vs. District School turn arounds of federally titled "failing schools." They concluded (of course) that charter schools were more successful and that the federal government should be spending more on charter schools. The findings did come with an asterisk. They mentioned a caveat noting that, "because of the small sample size, the results cannot be deemed statistically significant."
Below is the comment I left:
I know in NYC, most district turn around models keep the same school personal. Perhaps it has less to do with the district vs. charter status and more to do with the #of school personal remaining. In that case closing down public schools and replacing them with new public schools would work just as well. I am not sure why you are obsessed with the proliferation of charter schools.
You said there had to be “No more than a 10 percentage point difference in their subsidized lunch and minority enrollments” for your comparison.
I would like to know what the average difference in the enrollment of ELLS, SPED, Disabled, Homeless and High Poverty was. An 8 percent difference in one of those categories might not be a big deal, but an increase in all of them would represent a pretty different type of school.
The reality is not that Charter schools can’t scale up. The reality is that they don’t want to turn around failing schools. In NYC (a city where charter schools go to court to fight for building space) only one of the many charter chains submitted an application to turn around a failing school this year.
http://gothamschools.org/2011/03/22/in-a-first-a-charter-operator-will-try-to-turn-around-a-failing-charter/
They don’t want to turn around those schools because the best predictor of success in turn around schools is the percentage of same students (not similar population) that remain at the school. (Is that true? My guess is yes, but we don’t know. It seems like a fundamental question to answer in your research.
On average, charter schools nationally have recognized that the best way to keep the “high performing label” is to not enroll the same students as district schools and if they do enroll, push them out in higher numbers. Turning around failing schools, keeping the same students, is not in charter schools’ business plans.
http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/the-offensively-defensive-ideology-of-charter-schooling/
It wasn’t in Arny Duncan’s business plans in Chicago either.
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/restrict.asp?path=archive/23_03/arne233.shtml