We have a friend who teaches at a charter school and is quite proud of the school and how well she thinks her students are performing. I open with that statement, because that undoubtedly has an influence on what I think of charter versus public schools. Reinforcing that is a Colorado report that documents charter schools generally outperform public schools at a significantly reduced cost for both teachers and administrators. Read on if you are interested in specific data.Internet research finds that sometimes charter schools are sometimes better, public schools are sometimes better, and sometimes there isn’t much of a difference. One paper that is “pro-public schools” or “anti-charter schools,” depending on your perspective, concludes that charter schools “…do not, on average, show greater level of student achievement.” The paper then observes that 17% of charters performed better, 37% performed worse, and the rest were about the same. My reaction is that is a weak argument in favor of public school performance.
There is an 85 page report that was submitted to the Colorado General Assembly by the Colorado Department of Education that is filled with useful information. It discusses comparison of students from the entire spectrum of ethnic groups and income levels. The conclusion is that charter schools haven’t always served a population similar to the state averages in years past, but the number of ethnic students is now “…virtually identical to the state average…” They still lag behind in the number of special education students. The information of student performance is quite interesting Public school students in the 9th and 10th grades scored higher in math and writing and in reading in the 10th grade. Charter schools ranked higher for all other grades and subjects.
The most remarkable part of the Colorado report is the comparison of pay for teachers and administrators. “Pay for charter school teachers in 2012 was $35,537 compared to $51,150 for non-charter teachers. Charter school teachers tend to have less experience, but even factoring this into the comparison the charter teaches still earned $9700 less the non-charter teachers. There is a similar gap for administrators.”
I am only certain of a couple of things. One is that we should all be sad about the scores our students are achieving compared to other countries. Another is that we should be skeptical of comments that our kids will do better if we just pay teachers and administrators more.
What is my conclusion? I have three grandchildren in public school and one in a charter school. They all seem to be thriving and learning. Each parent should be actively involved in what is the best educational environment for their children. Send them to the school you judge is best for them and then demand excellent performance from the school!
Update: The report that was submitted by the Colorado Department of Education to the Colorado General Assembly has been taken down and is no longer available. I did find a summary of the report that confirms the observations made above. There is a link within that summary that presents most of the information covered by the original report that appears to have been taken down. I’ll be interested whether this link somehow also disappears.