Accessibility Resources

LISC Ánimo Pat Brown Charter High School, in Los Angeles, California, is committed to fostering a community of empowered learners and socially conscious and concerned citizens.

Elise Balboni, Project Director, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), and Ann Margaret Galiatsos, Management and Program Analyst, U.S. Department of Education

Overview

The charter school movement is a response to the deteriorating performance of the public school system, most notably in urban areas, and to a persistent achievement gap between minority or low-income students and their peers. Minnesota passed the nation’s first charter school law in 1991. Since then, the number of schools and the number of students attending charter schools have grown significantly. Today, approximately 5,000 charter schools educate more than 1.6 million students in 40 states and the District of Columbia. Charter schools represent 5 percent of all public schools nationally and serve 3 percent of all public school students.

Quality charter schools provide public education alternatives to low-income students and families that do not have the option of private education or moving to a neighborhood with a quality district public school. Studies have shown that they can help boost educational achievement and the future earnings potential of their students. Beyond these benefits, successful charter schools also serve as community anchors and forces for revitalization. They help maintain and strengthen a community’s population, redevelop deteriorating properties, provide a safe place to offer health and other community services, and ultimately act as a beacon, attracting further housing and business development.

Location

Charter schools tend to be located in low-income communities and low-performing school districts where the need for quality educational options is greatest. The New Orleans and Washington, D.C., school districts had the most charter schools in the United States in 2009-2010, and Los Angeles and Detroit had the most students enrolled. As illustrated in figure 2, in the 2008–2009 school year, more than half of all charter schools were located in urban areas, compared with 25 percent of all non-charter public schools.

Because they tend to be located in urban areas, charter schools serve a relatively higher percentage of minority and low-income students. Nationally, roughly 43 percent of charter school students are eligible for the federal free or reduced-price lunch program, compared with 40 percent in non-charter schools. In the 2009-2010 school year, charter schools nationally had a student body that was 56 percent black and Hispanic, compared with 38 percent in non-charter schools.

Charter School Academic Achievement

Charter schools disproportionately serve minority and low-income students in large, underperforming urban school districts. How have they performed academically? Do they outperform traditional district public schools? The debate over these achievement questions has been fierce at times over the past two decades, frequently involving complex research methodology questions that can be difficult for the layperson, the press, and the general public to parse.

There is no single definitive study that answers the question of how charter schools are performing compared with traditional public schools at the national, state, or even district level. There have been nearly 300 studies examining charter school performance, many with contradictory findings. In its December 2010 report, "Measuring Charter Performance: A Review of Public Charter School Achievement Studies," the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools reviewed 203 studies that compared charter school achievement with that of traditional public schools and examined a significant segment of the charter sector. While the results of these studies were mixed, analysis of 33 high-quality studies that used longitudinally linked student-level data ("panel studies") from 2001 and later shows that charter schools produce more instances of larger achievement gains in both math and reading when compared with traditional public schools (see table 1).

Thirty-three studies also compared the achievement of students who stayed at a charter school for an extended period of time with that of traditional public school students. Of these studies, 21 found that charter school students showed larger gains the longer they were enrolled in charters, 11 found similar or mixed results, and one showed smaller gains for charters.

In addition to illustrating the need for more high-quality studies on charter performance, these studies underscore the fact that there is no "uniform" or "average" charter school. When underwriting charter schools, it is important to analyze academic performance from both a mission and a financial perspective. Certain jurisdictions with strong charter environments, such as Massachusetts and New York City, have produced extremely strong charter schools. Some stand-alone charter schools and nonprofit charter management organizations seem to have found the right formula of culture, teaching, and curriculum that allows their students to make great gains in achievement and outperform not only district but also statewide performance benchmarks. An integral part of charter accountability is that poor or underperforming charters should be closed and high-performing charters should be replicated, both within the charter sector and by sharing best practices with traditional district schools.

Outlook

The $4.35 billion competitive federal Race to the Top grant fund, launched by the federal government in 2009, has given far greater visibility to charter schools as part of broader education reform efforts and has prompted the removal or loosening of state caps on charter growth. The year 2010 also featured the charter documentary film, with Waiting for Superman and The Lottery, among others, calling for reform with a sense of urgency not normally associated with large system change. Securing adequate and affordable facilities remains a central challenge for charter schools, however, hindering the growth of some of the nation’s highest-performing schools and limiting the scale of the movement as a whole.

Elise Balboni can be reached at (917) 698-9960 or elisebalboni@gmail.com; Ann Margaret Galiatsos can be reached at (202) 205-9765 or ann.galiatsos@ed.gov.