On January 6, a team
of researchers, led by Harvard Graduate School of Education Professor Thomas
Kane and MIT Professor Joshua Angrist, released the results of a study of
Boston's charter, pilot, and traditional public schools. The study, which used
students selected for schools based upon lottery therefore allowing direct
comparison of the groups, indicated that charter school students in Boston
outperform their peers at other public schools. In the months following the
study's release, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Thomas
Menino both revised their positions on charter schools. Here, Professor Kane
reacts to Mayor Menino's recent proposal to create several city-run
charter schools:
Our report did not offer a blanket endorsement of charter
schools. Indeed, our failure to find robust effects of the pilot
schools (particularly in middle school grades) should be a warning that
additional flexibility for schools does not ensure results for
kids. Rather, we found that the particular charter schools in the
Boston area (especially those that were part of the lottery study) seem to be
having large impacts on student achievement. If the charter sector
in Boston were to expand, those charter schools from our study, with a track
record of success, should be the first in line for expansion and/or
replication.
The cap should not be raised for just any charter school. Now that
we've learned that several Boston-area charter schools are having a huge
positive impact on kids, those schools should be allowed to replicate.
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Essentially agreeing with Tom Kane, my letter to the Boston Globe (published on June 16, 2009)and copied below makes an additional point about political will, should the cap be raised:
MAYOR MENINO ("Menino boosts charter schools," Page A1, June 10), the Globe ("Take caps off charter schools," Editorial, June 10), and Scot Lehigh ("New momentum for charter schools," Op-ed, June 12) get only partial credit in the charter school debate. Several studies, including "Inside Urban Charter Schools" and "Informing the Debate," document that several Boston charters perform better than both pilot and traditional schools. The reasons are careful planning, clear missions, strong structures, and a relentless pursuit of strong MCAS scores, sometimes to the detriment of higher-order learning. But Boston has weak charters too. Just because a school has "charter" in its name is no guarantee of success.
While more charters will give more parents choice in schooling, a lack of thoughtful monitoring will not improve educational outcomes for all students. All schools, charter and traditional alike, need clear goals and well-defined expectations that extend beyond MCAS scores. Those that are underperforming and lack improvement after a period of time should be shut down. The real question is whether Menino, Governor Patrick, and charter advocates have the will to close underperforming
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Editor's note: Katherine Merseth, a senior lecturer on education and director of the Teacher Education Program at HGSE, is co-author of the recent book, " Inside urban charter schools: Promising practices and strategies in five high-performing schools."
While I agree that we should be encouraging highly successful charters in replicating we need to keep the door open to the new education entrepreneurs, especially young ones! After all, where did these high performers come from? At one time they were all unproven – often springing from young, relatively inexperienced entrepreneurs. The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has one of the most rigorous charter applications in the country. As long as we keep the bar high, I think we should say that replicating high performers, plus continuing to support the development of high-promise new charters, is the way forward.