{"id":730,"date":"2014-07-29T12:44:53","date_gmt":"2014-07-29T16:44:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bakeramitchell.com\/?p=730"},"modified":"2014-07-29T12:44:53","modified_gmt":"2014-07-29T16:44:53","slug":"study-charters-give-pupils-state-more-bang-for-buck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/2014\/07\/29\/study-charters-give-pupils-state-more-bang-for-buck\/","title":{"rendered":"Study: Charters Give Pupils, State More Bang for Buck"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from: \u00a0Carolina Journal News Reports<\/strong><\/p>\n

University of Arkansas researchers also refute claim of cherry-picking students<\/span><\/h5>\n
By\u00a0Dan Way<\/a><\/div>\n
Jul. 29th, 2014<\/div>\n
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RALEIGH<\/strong> \u2014\u00a0A new national study concludes that charter schools in North Carolina and other states uniformly outperform traditional public schools, and have a significantly better return on investment for taxpayers.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

One finding of the report refutes critics who have claimed North Carolina charters cherry-pick the best students from district schools. To the contrary, the report concludes that charter schools serve higher levels of minority, low-income, and special-needs students than their traditional public school counterparts.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/newswire.uark.edu\/articles\/24679\/research-finds-charter-schools-nationwide-more-cost-effective-produce-greater-roi<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cOur main intention was to simply provide a sort of descriptive look at what charter school productivity was like just because no one has ever done this at a national scale,\u201d said Albert Cheng, one of the authors of \u201cThe Productivity of Charter Schools,\u201d who researched the report for the School Choice Demonstration Project at the University of Arkansas.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur report isn\u2019t really a study of absolute achievement levels, but how much bang do you get for your buck,\u201d Cheng said. \u201cCharter schools are operating more effectively and getting a greater return on investment\u201d for taxpayers despite funding inequities that favor traditional public schools.<\/p>\n

The study includes 21 states and the District of Columbia. It is based on numbers from the 2010-11 school year. There are two measures of productivity in the report showing charter schools generated better results than traditional public schools for the amount of money spent.<\/p>\n

One is a cost-effectiveness study based on student scores in the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The researchers devised a value measurement showing how many NAEP points were earned for every $1,000 invested in per-pupil spending.<\/p>\n

The other is a return-on-investment component, which arrives at an estimate of students\u2019 lifetime earnings potential based on gains in student achievement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe find that while charter schools in some states have uneven performance, the average charter in this study outperforms [traditional public schools] on both the cost effectiveness and the ROI measures, overall and for each of the states and the District of Columbia,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n

National cost-effectiveness numbers show that charter school students scored 17 points higher on average in math on the weighted NAEP assessment results than traditional public school students, or 40 percent better in productivity. Charter school students scored 16 points higher in weighted reading assessments, or 41 percent better.<\/p>\n

In North Carolina, NAEP-weighted results for cost-effectiveness showed that charter schools outscored traditional public schools by 14 points per every $1,000 invested in both math and reading. That means charters outperformed traditional public schools by 26.38 percent in math, and 27.25 percent in reading.<\/p>\n

Terry Stoops, director of research and education studies at the John Locke Foundation, characterized that as \u201ca pretty significant spread.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charter schools in all states delivered a greater aggregate return on investment than traditional public schools by a weighted average of 3 percent for a student with one year of charter school education, and 19 percent if half of the K-12 years were spent in a charter school. In North Carolina, the return on investment was 1.31 percent higher for one year, and 9.2 percent higher for 6.5 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a significant study mainly because there\u2019s a lot of criticisms, especially during the time the data were taken from, that North Carolina\u2019s charter schools were underperforming, that they weren\u2019t performing as well as traditional public schools\u201d when direct student-to-student performance measurements were used, Stoops said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis asks a different question. It\u2019s not just how the kids are performing, it\u2019s how much money are we putting in and what are we getting out, and that\u2019s a very different question than just comparing student performance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Complementary reports<\/b><\/p>\n

The University of Arkansas study complements another recent research report from the liberal Center for American Progress ranking individual school districts\u2019 return on investment, Stoops said.<\/p>\n

At the time the University of Arkansas study was done, North Carolina spent $9,999 per-pupil at traditional public schools and $8,277 for charter school students. A separate University of Arkansas study released in April, \u201cCharter School Funding: Inequity Expands,\u201d awarded North Carolina a D for that funding disparity.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur research can\u2019t prove that charter schools, if they were to get more money, would maintain their level of productivity. It\u2019s not a slam-dunk case where the implication of this report is to fund charters at a greater level,\u201d Cheng said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut definitely there\u2019s considerations of equity and efficiency in terms of how we manage and steward public dollars,\u201d Cheng said. \u201cThese are salient issues, and we hope to bring both sets of values into discussions of public funding and public policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Richard Vinroot, a lawyer, former Charlotte mayor, and one of the founders of the Sugar Creek Charter School, said there is \u201ca dramatic, growing gap\u201d between the two education sectors in North Carolina.<\/p>\n

Vinroot has been lobbying lawmakers for several years for more charter school funding and believes this latest report bolsters the case. In 2003 the funding differential between charters and traditional schools was just 8 percent. It widened to 17 percent by the time of the study.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis report\u2019s analysis shows not only that charter schools are outperforming school systems, but in fact charter schools have more free and reduced [price] lunch students \u2014 that means poor people, probably \u2014 and more special-education children, and more minorities than they do in the [traditional] school system,\u201d Vinroot said.<\/p>\n

‘Better job for less money’<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cSo we\u2019re doing a better job for less money with a more difficult population, bottom line,\u201d Vinroot said. \u201cI hope it means that finally this legislature will begin to understand they need to be fairer to charter schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the study, 48.9 percent of North Carolina charter school students were from low-income families eligible for free lunch programs compared to 47.2 percent of traditional public school students. There were 56.8 percent of charter school students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch programs compared to 53.9 percent of traditional school students.<\/p>\n

North Carolina charter school student demographics include 8.5 percent in special-education programs compared to 7.5 percent in traditional public schools.<\/p>\n

Sugar Creek Charter School\u2019s student population comprises more than 90 percent poor, black children, Vinroot said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost 90 percent are at grade level compared to maybe 30 or 40 percent of their peers in the [Charlotte-Mecklenburg] school system here, and across the state, and we\u2019re doing it with 70 percent per dollar. And we\u2019re doing it in an old, worn-out Kmart building, so I know it can be done,\u201d Vinroot said.<\/p>\n

He said he is \u201cvery, very disgusted\u201d with accusations that charter schools filter for only the top-performing students.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got 500 kids waiting on the doorstep trying to get into our school that has about 1,000 students in it now, because the parents understand we\u2019ve done a better job,\u201d Vinroot said.<\/p>\n

Senate Education Committee members Gladys Robinson, D-Guilford, Angela Bryant, D-Nash, and Don Davis, D-Greene, and House Education Committee vice chairwoman Tricia Cotham, D-Mecklenburg, who are frequent critics of charter schools, did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Dan Way is an associate editor of<\/i>\u00a0Carolina Journal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from: \u00a0Carolina Journal News Reports University of Arkansas researchers also refute claim of cherry-picking students By\u00a0Dan Way Jul. 29th, 2014 Share on facebook\u00a0\u00a0Share on twitter RALEIGH \u2014\u00a0A new national study concludes that charter schools in North Carolina and other states uniformly outperform traditional public schools, and have a significantly better return on investment for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-k-12","category-learning-and-education","category-politics-nc"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bakeramitchelljr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}