Raising the Bar: A Performance Review of Charter Schools
Several significant events over the past year have raised awareness for the education reform effort called the charter school movement.
By Collin Hitt and Ashley Muchow
Download the full report with evaluations here.
Introduction
Several significant events over the past year have raised awareness for the education reform effort called the charter school movement. Specifically, President Obama in his Race to the Top initiative and filmmaker Davis Guggenheim in his Waiting for Superman documentary have pointed to charter schools as a means of providing a high quality education to students who deserve better than what the current system provides.
Nationally, research is converging to tell us that charter schools overall are improving education for low income youngsters. They are able to achieve these results because state charter school laws free them from bureaucratic customs and personnel laws that keep most public schools from trying something truly bold and new. Yet the schools are few and far between in Illinois, except in Chicago.
The scarcity of charter schools throughout most of Illinois is due to a number of a number of factors. Weak public policy is one of themstates that have widespread, successful charter school movements have created special centers or university institutes to oversee the growth of charter schools. No such institution exists in Illinois.
But another reason charter schools are scarce throughout Illinois is a lack of awareness. Most communities have not seen convincing examples of charter schools working in smaller, albeit challenged districts. This report should help change that.
A small, diverse cohort of charter schools have managed to open in Illinois outside of Chicago. On balance, these schools are raising the bar for academic performance. This report reviews official state testing data, using straightforward comparisons between the performance of charter schools and schools in their local districts. Readers can judge the performance of individual schools for themselves. But overall they will find a pattern of success.
In downstate and suburban communities, there are only twelve charter schools to enroll elementary and high school students. That number needs to increase dramaticallybut cannot do so without greater awareness and stronger policies at the state and local level.
Many of the charter schools featured in this report are pioneers, opening and finding success against the odds. They are creating one-of-a-kind opportunities for children in their communities. Here’s to hoping they have company very soon.
What Are Charter Schools?
Charter schools are open-enrollment public schools run by independent non-profit and community organizations. Theyre given the flexibility to innovate but are held more accountable for their resultsby parents and by local officials. Charter schools create new choices for parents within the public school system; indeed, they are attended only by students whose parents have signed them up.
At their best, charter schools are partnerships between educational entrepreneurs and parents seeking a better choice of schools. They open with the specific needs of a community in mind, and flourish only if parents choose to enroll their children. If a charter school is unpopular or fails to meet high performance standards, state and local officials can take actions to quickly close the school by revoking its charter agreement.
Performance Records of Downstate Charter Schools
This report focuses on the seven downstate and suburban charter schools that enrolled K-12 students during the 2009-10 school year. Charter schools that focus exclusively on reenrolling high school dropouts are excluded from the analysis. Also not included in the analysis are Peorias Math, Science and Technology Charter School and Rockfords CICS Patriots Charter School both set to open in the fall of 2010. All performance measures excluding test scores were included for the Southern Illinois University East St. Louis Charter School. The schools 2009-10 PSAE test scores taken by the schools grade 11 students were not posted by the Illinois Interactive Report Card and could therefore not be included in the analysis.
Of the charter schools that enroll elementary, middle and high school students, the results are promising. Downstate and suburban charter schools outperformed the district averages in 80.0 percent of school wide performance measures.
- In every instance, charter schools posted lower truancy rates than district schools.
- In 5 of 7 comparisons, charter schools had higher attendance rates.
- In 5 of 6 comparisons, charter schools had a higher percentage of all students meeting/exceeding state standards on tests.
A closer grade-by-grade and subject-by-subject analysis of performance shows charter schools are making strong headway. Overall, the grade-level test results at charter schools exceeded the district grade-level average 72.6 percent of the time.
In each subject area, charter schools outperformed the average at district schools in direct comparisons:
- Reading test results at charter schools exceeded district averages in 80 percent, or 20 of 25, direct comparisons.
- Math test results at charter schools exceeded district averages in 71.4 percent, or 20 of 28, direct comparisons.
- Science test results at charter schools exceeded district averages in 55.6 percent, or 5 of 9, direct comparisons.
- Writing test results at charter schools exceeded district averages in 68.4 percent, or 13 of 19, direct comparisons.
In the four schools where the grade-level performance of economically disadvantaged students could be compared directly to district averages, charter students outperformed the district averages in 70.8 percent, or 34 of 48, direct comparisons:
- At Decatur Robertson Charter School, low-Income students outperformed their peers district-wide in 66.7 percent, or 12 of 18, comparisons.
- At Springfield Ball Charter School, low-Income students outperformed their peers district-wide in 100 percent, or 18 of 18, comparisons.
- At Galapagos Charter School low-income students outperformed their peers district-wide in 66.7 percent, or 2 of 3, comparisons.
- Legacy Academy of Excellences performance did not hold consistent with the patternlow-income students outperformed their district-wide peers in only 22.2 percent, or 2 of 9, comparisons.
These results are consistent with those published for Springfield Ball and Decatur Robertson in the 2007-08 and 2008-09 editions of this performance report.
Charter schools provide parents with new school choices for their children, which is something that Illinois families strongly desire. In a December 2007 poll, more than 80 percent of people surveyed in Illinois said that they would most prefer to enroll their children in a school other than a regular district public school. More people named charter schools as their top choice than they did regular public schools, 23 to 19 percent.
Throughout the state, many parents are looking for smaller classes or safer schools. Others are looking for a unique curriculum; for example, one suburban charter school focuses on ecological issues. Success at meeting these unique demands is difficult to measure and does not always show up on data-driven reports such as this, which focuses exclusively on standardized measures of student performance.
That said, the data are clear. More often than not, charter schools in downstate and suburban Illinois are outperforming the average at district schools. This is the case with low income students in particular. Parents who are seeking schools with stronger academic records are likely to be happy with their choice of charter schools.
As more charter schools open throughout downstate Illinois and the suburbs of Chicago, one hopes they will match the success of existing charter schools. Every community could use better schoolsas charter schools continue to flourish, perhaps they will spur all public schools to challenge the norm and improve how all of Illinoiss children are educated.
Methods and Definitions
This report reviews several measures of school performance. These measures include results on standardized tests during the 2009-10 school year, gains on standardized tests from the previous year, measures of student attendance, truancy, and graduation rates, as well as the performance of economically disadvantaged students. All data were gathered from the Illinois Interactive Report Card, which is published by Northern Illinois University using data provided by the Illinois State Board of Education.
Attendance Rate
Regular attendance is a prerequisite for other academic achievements in the classroom. As a general rule, students who frequently miss school will learn less as a result. A schools attendance rate is calculated according to the following guidelines published by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE): Student attendance rate is the aggregate days of student attendance, divided by the sum of the aggregate days of student attendance and aggregate days of student absence, multiplied by 100.
Truancy Rate
Truancy has substantial adverse impacts on student learning. As stated above, students who attend school less will learn less. In the case of truancy, that point can be stated even more emphatically: students who miss school on a regular basis will fail in school on a regular basis. ISBE provides the following guideline for calculating truancy rates: Chronic truancy rate is the number of chronic truants, divided by the average daily enrollment, multiplied by 100. Chronic truants include students subject to compulsory attendance who have been absent without valid cause from such attendance for 10 percent or more of the previous 180 regular attendance days.
Graduation Rate
A high school diploma is a prerequisite to success as an adult. Students, simply put, must graduate from high school in order to succeed in college or the workforce. Students who fail to graduate from high school will live a substantial portion of their livesif not their entire livesat or below the poverty level. The Illinois State Board of Education requires every school to report graduation rates according to the following formula: graduates / original freshmen + transfer in – transfer out or died.
ISAT Composite
Students in grades 3 through 8 take a series of tests called the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT). As part of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), state lawmakers have set performance benchmarks at each subject and grade level. These benchmarks, from lowest to highest, are Academic Warning, Below Standards, Meets Standards, and Exceeds Standards. This report compares percentages of students at charter and district schools who meet/exceed standards on all subjects on the ISAT.
One-Year ISAT Change
Good schools get better over time. The one-year change in the percentage of students meeting or exceeding state standards provides a glimpse into the progress being made by schools and entire districts in their various attempts to improve student learning. This report compares the one-year change in the percentage of students meeting standards on ISAT composite.
PSAE Composite
Students in grade 11 are required to take a battery of tests called the Prairie State Assessment Exam (PSAE). The PSAE component tests are: the English, reading, writing, mathematics and science components of the ACT; the ACT WorkKeys assessments for Reading for Information and Applied Mathematics; as well as a science assessment developed by the Illinois State Board of Education. As with the ISAT, lawmakers have created performance benchmarks, called standards, for each test. This report compares the percentage of students who meet/exceed those standards at charter and district schools.
One-Year PSAE Change
As with ISAT scores, the one-year change in PSAE scores provides a glimpse into how schools are improving over time, if they are improving at all. This report compares the one-year change in the percentage of students meeting/exceeding standards on PSAE composite.
Grade-by-Grade, Subject-by-Subject Comparisons
Grade-level results on standardized tests are published for every school and district by the Illinois Interactive Report Card. In grades 3 through 8, almost all students take the ISAT battery of tests. Similarly, in grade 11, most students take the PSAE. In each instance, students take Reading and Math tests. Science is tested during grades 4, 7 and 11. Writing is tested in grades 5, 6, 8 and 11. By publishing the results of each test, the state makes it possible to compare student performance at different ages and in several content areas. Comparing the grade-level results at charter schools and district schools gives parents, policymakers and taxpayers a clearer idea of where and how charter schools are making progress.
Low-Income Student Comparisons
Grade-level results are often available for student subgroups as well. Examining the results of students in the Low-Income subgroup is especially important to examining the impact of charter schools. The percentage of charter school students who come from poor households often varies from the district average: sometimes the number at charter schools is higher, sometimes its lower. If at least ten students in a given grade are classified as low-income, then the grade-level test results for that subgroup are published. When that data was available, direct comparisons were made with the performance of low-income students at district schools on a grade-by-grade basis.