Charter-school data inconclusive

By Jay Mathews
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Fourth-graders in traditional public schools nationwide did somewhat better in reading and mathematics, on average, than those in charter schools, a long-awaited federal report said Tuesday.

The National Center for Education Statistics looked at 2003 data from 6,764 traditional public schools and 150 charter schools, which are public schools that operate independently of the school system. It said fourth-graders in regular public schools scored an average of 5.2 points better in reading than students in charter schools on the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress test. Students in traditional schools scored an average of 5.8 points better in math.

Even when students' race, income and learning disabilities were taken into account, students in traditional schools fared better than those in charter schools.

The study emphasized that the results could have been distorted by several factors it could not adjust for, such as the lack of a random sample, different levels of parental support and different levels of learning before the students reached fourth grade.

"These studies are just snapshots," said Tom Loveless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "They tell us how students in two kinds of schools are performing at one point in time. Unfortunately, they don't answer the question of which kind of school — charter or traditional — is better."

Mark Schneider, commissioner of the statistics center, rejected the suggestion by some reporters that he might be playing down the significance of his report because of the political battle over charter schools. He said national data could not help a parent trying to compare schools in a local neighborhood because individual schools vary widely in quality.

Information

National Center for Education Statistics: The report is available at www.nces.ed.gov

"My advice to parents is shop around carefully," he said.

The study also tried to compare just charter schools associated with a local school system with traditional public schools. In both reading and math for fourth-graders, there was no significant difference. Charter schools that have no tie to a system, and often draw students from several systems, scored lower than traditional schools.

Several experts said the study had either fortified or failed to shake their view of charters.

American Federation of Teachers President Edward McElroy said the report "provides further evidence against unchecked expansion of the charter-school experiment."

Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, criticized the methodology and said "charter schools are succeeding and do better in most cases."

Chester Finn, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, which supports education research, said the study added little useful to the debate.

"Bottom line: big yawn," he said.

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.

Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company