Professor Kane Comments on Mayor Menino's Charter School Initiative

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.