Charter schools can be more useful and focused if they are operated by school districts as part of a cooperative, symbiotic network, rather than under the existing cloak of independence, which creates more problems than it solves
Charter schools are publicly funded, tuition-free, nonsectarian public schools that have been released from many of the laws and rules that govern school districts, including for example, rules pertaining to teacher qualifications, curriculum, and calendar. Funds allocated to the school district follow the student to the charter school, which is expected to take innovative approaches likely to improve student achievement. In practice, many charter schools are indistinguishable from other public schools. However, some charters are run away mavericks, while others feature distinctive and sometimes controversial Waldorf, Montessori, or "back-to-basics" approaches. Still others are not schools in the usual sense. Nearly one third of them are not classroom based. Eight percent operate as home schools, still others are classified as independent-study schools, and there are several dozen "online" cyber charters having no visible physical boundaries or school buildings. There are even some charter districts that have converted all of their schools to charters.
Charter schools, and even private schools that accept vouchers, were sold to the public as a way to improve student achievement. The bargain was better outcomes in exchange for deregulation and independence. In particular, it was understood that if charter schools could not demonstrate improved student achievement they would be shut down. In addition, some advocates convinced legislatures that competition from charter schools would force public schools to improve. The preponderance of evidence has not supported either claim. Yet, both programs remain strongly entrenched in state and federal budgets, largely because they are being promoted by passionate advocates making unsupportable claims based on trivial differences and wildly inconsistent data.
Initially, we were cautiously optimistic about the potentials of charter schools for expanding parents’ choices. However, over the years we reluctantly came to the conclusion that independence for choice schools has been an unproductive dead end. We arrived at that position not from self-interest or ideology, but from years of research and observation. By 1995, Schneider, a former Executive Director of the American Association of School Administrators, was exposing the spread of “cowboy charters” that were popping up in states that allowed anyone with an interest to create and operate a school for children. Meanwhile, my colleagues and I were re-analyzing our data on the so-called “parent contracts” being used by many charter schools. We concluded that some schools were forcing parents to donate time to schools as a formal or informal condition for admission. And worse, the only choice they were giving parents was to leave the public school system for risky, sometimes financially unstable schools with unknown curricula and unpredictable futures.
Learning Outcomes: The Evidence
Advocates, whom we cite in the book, have been saying that Choice schools lead to higher levels of learning; that no study points to substantially poorer performance of choice schools; that there is a “surprising consensus” among studies showing students enrolled in choice programs benefit academically; that data showing charter school students do worse on national tests than other students are “baseless;” that fourth-grade students across the nation are more proficient in reading and math than students in nearby public schools; that competition from a few independent schools produces improved test scores among students in regular schools; and that charters are “re-inventing” public education.
However, in fact researchers whose work we review in detail in our book have concluded that student achievement in general has not been positively enhanced by charter schools; that some studies comparing charter schools and regular schools suggest a positive impact and others a neutral or negative impact; that the majority of charter schools have failed to raise, and sometimes have lowered, student achievement compared to regular public schools in the same area; that with some notable exceptions charter schools are remarkably similar to regular schools; that charter schools are not doing anything regular schools wish to emulate; that there is little going on in charter schools that merits the attention of anyone seeking powerful way to engage children and youth in learning; that innovation in curriculum and instruction is virtually non existent in charter schools; and that charter schools have produced no convincing data to illustrate that, on the whole, they are prudent or productive investments.
Ohio is only one case, but the experience there is illuminating. For 10 consecutive years, public school districts have out-performed charter schools in that state, according to the Ohio Department of Education report card data. In 2007, traditional schools topped charters on all 28 achievement tests administered with an average difference of nearly 26 points in proficiency levels. Significantly, charter schools operated by traditional public school districts outperformed charter schools operated by management companies or other entities on 27 of 28 state achievement tests, by an average of 12 percentage points. Factoring in wide variances among schools paints an even bleaker picture. As Barbara Shaner, chair of Ohio’s Coalition for Public Education, put it, “if your child attends a traditional public school, he or she has an 80% chance of receiving an effective or excellent rating…[but] children attending an Ohio charter school have just a 9% chance of receiving such an education.” (Ohio Retired Teachers Association Quarterly, Fall 2007). The state auditor has ruled 26 of the 213 schools “unauditable” because of improper auditing practices. The largely negative results hardly justify the $2.7 billion spent on charter schools there during the past decade, including nearly half a billion dollars in the past year alone.
Further confounding the picture, some researchers are overstating implications from the data, and in some cases, distorting the data themselves. For example, comparing a sample of charters with nearby regular schools, Carolyn Huxby claims to have found a 3% difference in math proficiency and a 5% difference in reading, which she thinks is a big story. Not only are the differences relatively small, but they were inflated because she excluded the lowest performing charter-school students on the bogus excuse that they attended schools serving “at-risk” students, who she supposes are not comparable to students in nearby public schools—even though a large portion of most public schools enroll the same type of student. Moreover, the study was represented as a national study when in fact the schools included represented only one third of existing charter schools and the students included account for fewer than 12% of charter school students. Advocates on both sides of the question are arguing over inconsistent and often trivial differences. We decided that the public is being duped. Americans are paying for the free-market ideology, not only with hundreds of fraudulent, marginal, and inept schools, but also in loss of control over their local tax dollars.
But what about the many charter schools that do produce good results? First, note that both private schools and charter schools are typically smaller than regular public schools. A growing body of research indicates that small schools of all kinds—not just charter schools or voucher schools—do better than other schools. So, it seems likely that charter schools are being given credit for outcomes that have more to do with their size than anything else. Second, charters are able to skim off some of the best, most creative and dedicated students and teachers, both of whom would probably do just fine in upgraded public schools. True, they usually use a lottery system, but the lowest performing students are less likely to have parents who are motivated to enroll them in a charter. Also, many parents do not have the time and resources to devote time working for schools and attending meetings. In addition, few charters are equipped for disabled students and others with special needs. Finally, remember that there are many award winning schools within public school districts. In fact, over the years several features now incorporated in charters were pioneered by school districts, including school-based management and magnet schools.
There is no evidence that independence causes schools to be better in any respect. We reviewed a number of sources that suggest many schools do not use their independence, and when they do, their "innovations" often resemble what can be found in at least some districts. Some schools are hiding under the cloak of innovation to create risky and hollow programs. At the same time, charters are paying a high cost for this unrestrained freedom. On their own, often with only minimal funding and marginal facilities, they typically are in no position to offer the services and special programs available in most district schools, such as heath professionals, speech therapists, and language specialists, or even school lunch programs. They typically do not provide enrichment activities in the arts and music, and many do not offer a full range of extra curricular programs and activities, ranging from clubs to athletics. Moreover, they cannot call on districts for technical assistance in areas like planning, scheduling, and computer hardware, or for administrative support with routine chores, such as filling out reports and enrolling students. And, there is little evidence that charter schools have had much influence on district schools, at least in part because of their isolation from, and competition with, other district schools. I am not saying that most charters are afflicted with all of these shortcomings. But the pervasiveness of the most serious disorders, ranging from fraud to mismanagement, is itself enough to create serious misgivings about the would-be advantages of independence.
Instead of promoting the creative potential of charter schools, independence has stifled it. Instead of acting as models of innovation and beacons of reform, many charter schools are struggling to stay afloat, and at least some are facing the prospect of bankruptcy, sometimes coupled with fraud. Instead of benefiting from charter schools as they expected, many students are being shortchanged with watered down versions of comprehensive school programs, sitting in substandard buildings and facilities, being taught by inexperienced and sometimes poorly trained teachers, who though sometimes blessed with a creative flair, are themselves isolated from better prepared and more experienced colleagues.
Nevertheless, we have not given up on charter schools. What we object to is the unrealistic rhetoric driving this frenzied movement and the absurd idea that choice schools need to be independent. Charter schools, we believe, would be stronger as part of districts, and conversely as members of districts, they would be in a position to strategically serve and influence other district schools. District-operated charters offer several advantages not available to independent charters.
Variation Among Charter Schools
I am the first to admit that there are some good charter schools. But I know too well that there are many bad ones that the advocates are sweeping under the rug. The deafening rhetoric has been deceptive. Our book hammers away at the frail and contradictory evidence precariously propping up the movement’s shaky tenants—from empty boasts about student achievement, to a convoluted argument that pins hope for improving schools on damaging competition with other public schools, to the lame complaint that phantom bureaucracies have conspired to prevent reform in public schools. Endless bickering among proponents and opponents to school choice over the evidence has been fruitless, largely because that evidence comes from seriously misguided research models based on statistical averages. Choice apologists like to boast about average test scores in the few instances when they make charter schools look good. But, unless it suits their purpose, they don’t tell us about the wide variation in how charter schools actually perform. The truth is that many charter schools do not measure up even to the average public school. Existing studies are preoccupied with averages, which only obscure the wide variations in performance among the schools being compared. For every success story there is a failure. The evidence reviewed in the book demonstrates that overall, charters are not as exceptional as advertised. Not only might they arguably be skimming off some good students and some creative teachers, but also most charter schools are not doing much that is exceptional. And in any case, their most outstanding features already exist as alternatives in many public school districts in the form of specialized schools, magnets, school-based management, small schools, and a variety of other special programs.
Bottom line: there is no convincing evidence to support claims that most choice schools produce superior levels of student achievement. Worse: it is not even possible to prove such claims, because choice schools are not comparable—either in programs or in students’ qualifications. Therefore, they cannot be held accountable to common measures. The only way around this hitch is to limit studies to the choice schools that function just like most regular schools. Some researchers have tried to do that, but most studies are not designed to account for the extreme differences among these schools. And, even when samples include comparable types of schools, selective enrollments in choice schools cast doubt on the validity of the conclusions.
The idea that the success of a national program could be assessed with standardized tests comes from an obsolete industrial model that treats schools as factories processing students as raw materials—with average test scores reflecting the quality of the product. Of course, that is nonsense, because in the first place, a school does not control most of the so-called production process. The way students perform on tests depends on many extraneous forces, such as language proficiency, family structure, parental guidance, peer group influences, job and travel experiences, and the like. More important, standardized tests are constructed to maximize differences among individuals and so are inappropriate measures of higher-level organizational units like schools, school districts, and programs. The greater the variance among individuals at the classroom level, the smaller the differences become when their scores are used to represent schools, districts, or states.
Reporting averages that compare schools, programs, or states can mislead a parent who is trying to find a suitable school for his or her child. Studies typically pool all included charter schools, across all classrooms, districts, and states represented, and then the report the mean for that pool—without breaking out important differences among various types of schools and without taking into account the range of scores. Within a school, many students could be doing poorly even if the mean score reflects well on the school. For example, a school can increase its average score even when the students who improve are the ones in the upper part of the distribution. And among diverse schools, districts, and programs, mean scores only obscure the critical differences among them. Statistical means do not, for example, reveal the fact that many public schools are as good as private schools, and that students who attend the best public schools outperform most private school students.
Given the enormous differences among both choice schools and regular schools, averages and other measures of central tendency are not only meaningless, but also deceptive. Suppose that charter schools within a state or within a school district have higher average scores than regular public schools. That signifies only that some are better; but some may be worse. The question is how many are better? It is always possible that a few schools are pulling up the average, masking the poor performance of most other schools. What is most critical is the percentage of schools in the top, middle, and bottom of the distribution of charter schools, and how those percentages compare with the distribution of public schools. Those distributions are seldom reported, and consequently, parents have no way to assess the risk they are taking in sending their child to a charter school, even when average scores in the area are relatively favorable.
Putting aside inflated claims on both sides of the question, the only reasonable conclusion that can be justified by the evidence so far is this: even if some students are marginally better off in choice schools, the difference is so small and inconsistent that it doesn’t make much difference, certainly not enough to justify massive federal and state programs. The fact that some choice schools may be okay, even exceptional, is little comfort for parents who must make decisions about whether to risk sending their children to a particular school.
The Competition Fantasy
Since school choice was peddled on the basis of the impossible promise that schools would be able to show improved student achievement, choice fans are scrambling to find other ways to justify charters and vouchers—especially the unsustainable claim that they are forcing regular schools to improve. They are not. Are they causing some regular schools to re-evaluate their programs and practices? It’s plausible. Are they giving exceptional teachers working in some choice schools opportunities to teach differently? Yes, in some schools. Are they serving as models and implementing innovations that regular schools are adopting? In a word, no. They are not leading reform in that sense.
The ideology of competition behind the choice movement is derived from laissez faire economics. But the problem is, public education is not a laissez- faire environment. There is no free market. Compulsory education laws guarantee a market for the providers no matter what they may do, and choice schools are underwritten by a vast public system obligated to finish whatever other providers prefer not to do. This includes taking care of the most difficult students needing the most costly services. Moreover, the government, not the market, regulates the competition by setting eligibility criteria and rules governing enrollment practices. Besides, the proposition that competition will force broad-scale reform is couched in language so flabby it is unverifiable. Competition might merely sap the strength of public schools without killing them off. And, what will change, in which directions, and in which schools? How long will it take? Without a time frame, how shall we know whether a flailing school has failed, or is valiantly hanging on, or perhaps is about to be reborn? And, what happens to students left behind in a school coping with even less money?
Carolyn Huxby compares competition among schools to the U.S. Postal Service, which was forced to become more efficient by competition from private sector carriers. But the analogy does not fit. Schools do not simply carry mail. They have many responsibilities, ranging from math to vocational education, from character training to the arts, from sex education to driver training. Test scores reflect only part of what public schools are expected to do. Consequently, a school is not merely good or bad. It can survive by doing one thing well, or several things in a mediocre way, even while failing in other respects. It could survive only because the district supports it and because it is a convenient place to send children.
Choice supporters claim that rivalry causes achievement to rise. They need to explain how that occurs. That a little competition from the few existing choice schools will reform the vast enterprise of public education is sheer whimsy. There are only about 4,100 charter schools enrolling about 3% of public school students, and the entire private sector accounts for merely 11% of school enrollments (and few of those schools will be participating in voucher programs). These few schools are no match for more than 91,000 existing public schools. Besides, school districts have slack resources and can prop up schools that have lost a few students, thus minimizing the threat. Still, these facts don’t faze some writers. Hoxby maintains that it takes no more than 6% of a district’s students transferring to choice schools to scare regular schools enough to somehow produce higher test scores. Marcella Dianda and Ifound in 1993 that few private schools in California seemed willing to jump at the voucher program being proposed at that time. While that could be changing, it is also plausible there will be few entrepreneurs, some low quality startup schools, and many failures—the latter a consequence of the financial instability associated with any new enterprise, along with the absence of experience. About 560 charter schools have been closed, with potentially dire consqences for the affected students. Many others are on the brink, and it seems likely that some charters that should be closed have not been caught.
But, let’s suppose that competition does increase. And, granted that struggle can be a motivating force. Is motivation enough to force public schools to improve? Why should we believe that competition, by itself, can produce reform? That is a stretch, because it does not assure there will be the leadership, skills, and resources required to implement reform. It is not exactly clear how lagging schools being threatened by rivals are supposed to suddenly come up with more effective practices and the resources that may be needed. A study of the impact of charter schools in three states indicated that school principals who felt threatened by the potential loss of students were attempting to introduce more reforms, but they also said that they often lacked the necessary autonomy. And, more important, they need resources to pay for teacher training, materials, and administrative support. This was the unexpected finding from studies of a Florida program that allowed students in lagging schools to transfer out. There is some evidence that these lagging schools were improving, but a reanalysis concluded that competition was not the cause. The improved test scores could be explained by an infusion of new resources and more targeted use of existing resources. Whether that occurred because of competition or because of a general climate throughout the state supporting improvement is hard to say.
Then too, will charters really threaten public schools? How many students have to leave the regular schools before it matters to them? Teachers don’t get paid less, nor do principals. The schools don’t lose significant resources, forego programs, drop athletic programs, or cease having a school lunch program because a few children left to enroll in a charter school. In fact, if the students who left were not happy or satisfied students, or were achieving below grade level, or were not receiving the level of services their parents’ demanded, it’s entirely possible the district wasn’t all that sorry to see them leave. That being the case, the threat of a charter school nearby probably doesn't do much to foster a competitive spirit in the district.
Disentangling the Rhetoric from the Possibilities
School choice is a hoax because advocates promised too much and are conveniently ignoring the failures among the success stories. Whether the product of misplaced idealism or an ideological ruse, the torrents of irresponsible half-truths can only mislead and disappoint many parents, educators, politicians, and taxpayers. However, as Schneider and I point out in our book, we have not given up on school choice. Far from it. The fundamental problem is that charter schools have too much freedom and too little oversight. Those problems would be resolved if charter schools were incorporated into school districts. We maintain that all choice schools must give back to the public school system by participating in networks of schools that strategically address specific types of identified district needs and challenges. In other words, every choice school should specialize in handling a challenging problem area where public school districts need help. Specialized schools would have the advantage of building on existing specialized schools and magnet schools.
We also tackle the fundamental task of improving poverty schools through charter schools created and operated by school districts. Our proposal is to place charter schools in every poverty neighborhood within a district and fund them through special federal grants. Charters would give districts the flexibility needed to give teachers in low-income schools "combat pay" and to use other incentives in connection with training and recruiting teachers to work in poverty schools. Charters compete with other public schools only to the extent they demand independence, and we argue that independence is not essential. We maintain that charters can be more useful and focused if they are operated by school districts as part of a cooperative, symbiotic network, rather than under the existing cloak of independence, which creates more problems than it solves. True, some districts do not seem to care about children at risk, and our recommendations probably won’t work as well in those districts. But there are many districts striving to do better, and we think charters will be helpful to them. Operating under the direction of public school districts, charter schools not only could become compatible with public education, but they also could provide useful services that now overwhelm districts.
In sum, school choice as it stands is a hoax. Independence is a blind alley, and charter schools need to be reined in to make them work for the school districts that most children attend. But our book is not an attack on charter schools per se, but on irresponsible promises and windy boasting that suggests charter and voucher schools work better than they do. It is about the fiction that making some schools independent of school districts will somehow be helpful to parents and to public education. It is about a smug head-in-the sand approach to school reform, which only distracts from the need to overhaul what is going on. It is about calloused free-market advocates who, rather than working to repair the public schools that our children attend, have turned their backs on them. It is about the absurd policies that require parents to abandon the public schools in order to exercise choices. And, it is also about some promising models of choice that are now in play, what they can tell us about reforming the reforms, and why they should be merged with the charter-school model. Most of all, our book is about what needs to be done to fix America’s schools, especially troubled schools badly serving impoverished minority children.
Recent Research
The School Choice Hoax (2005) was based on research published up to five years ago. Since that time, study after study, many of them national in scope, have confirmed our glum conclusions about this bizarre program. In particular, we concluded that while there are come good charter schools, on the whole, they are no better than other public schools, and they are often worse. The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University confirms this conclusion. That 2009 report found that only 17% of charter schools outperformed their public school equivalents, while 37% of charter schools performed worse than regular local schools, and the rest were about the same. A 2010 study by Mathematica Policy Research found that, on average, charter middle schools that held lotteries were neither more nor less successful than regular middle schools in improving student achievement, behavior, or school progress. Among the charter schools considered in the study, more had statistically significant negative effects on student achievement than statistically significant positive effects. These findings are echoed in a number of other studies.
We also criticized the failure of charter school advocates for overlooking the wide variations among charter schools. On that point, it is worth noting that studies by Caroline Hoxby and by the authors of the CREDO report both found that charter schools in the New York City tended to outperform public schools in the city, while a 2009 study by the RAND Corporation found that charter middle schools appeared to be falling short of public middle schools in Chicago (in reading) and in Texas (in both reading and math). Also, Charter school research has also found variation based on student demographics and subject matter. A literature review of studies of charter schools concluded that they frequently produced higher test scores in elementary school reading and middle school math compared to public schools, although the effect sizes were small in the latter case. At the same time, they often scored significantly lower in tests of high school reading and math. The Mathematica study found that charter schools serving the largest proportions of low income or low achieving students had positive effects on students' test scores, particularly in math; conversely, charter schools serving more advantaged or higher-achieving students had negative effects.
We observed that charter schools tend to select out the students who present the most difficult educational problems. Study after study has confirmed that on average, charter schools enroll fewer English language learners, fewer students with disabilities, and fewer homeless students in comparison with public schools. Some of the highest-performing charter schools also lose many students, most likely their lowest performers, who often return to local public schools.
We acknowledged that charter schools often enroll high percentages of low income and minority students, but we pointed out segregation of charters by income and race was responsible. The Civil Rights Project at UCLA recently issued Choice Without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards, which reports that charter schools are more racially isolated than public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the nation. In this analysis of 40 states, the District of Columbia, and several dozen metropolitan areas, they also report that higher percentages of charter school students of every race attend predominantly minority schools (50-100% minority students) or racially isolated minority schools (90-100% minority students) than do their same-race peers in public schools.
Another study, by The Great Lakes Center for Education Research & Practice, found that charter schools operated by Education Management Organizations (EMOs) tend to be more racially and economically segregated than their local school districts. In Schools Without Diversity: Education Management Organizations, Charter Schools, and the Demographic Stratification of the American School System, researchers report that almost three-quarters of EMO-operated charter schools are more racially-segregated than the sending school district, with higher levels of segregation in for-profit EMOs than in nonprofit EMOs. More than half of the EMO schools have greater concentrations of low-income populations than in their local districts, while about a third served greater percentages of high-income students, with for-profit EMOs more likely to be very segregated in favor of high-income students than nonprofit EMOs. They also found that EMO-operated charter schools consistently under-enroll both special education students and English language learners.
Some studies show that teachers in charter school are more dissatisfied than teachers in other schools and are over three times more likely to apply for another job by the end of the school year (the National Center on School Choice entitled Teacher Turnover in Charter Schools, David Stuit and Thomas M. Smith). Teachers who leave are often replaced by inexperienced teachers.
However, notwithstanding nearly two decades of research that consistently undermines the misleading and false claims of charter school advocates, state policy-makers continue to lavish attention and praise on charters, and the Obama administration persists in bestowing unwarranted adulation, rewarding them with competitive grants and proposals for reauthorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act! What is the attraction? Certainly it is not because charters are academically superior. Sadly, it is because charters offer middle-class parents a respectable form of segregation—by simultaneously (a) sifting out low income minorities from regular schools and into segregated schools, and (b) providing a safe haven for middle-class students escaping regular schools.
Corwin, Ronald G. “School Choice.” In Sandra Mathison and E. Wayne Ross (Editors). Battleground Schools: An Encyclopedia of Conflict and Controversy. Greenwich, CT: Greenwood, 2007.
Corwin, Ronald G. Private Schools And Parental Choice: Can Vouchers Reform Public Education?" Occasional Paper Series. Los Alamitos CA: Southwest Regional Laboratory (WestEd), 1993.
Dianda, Marcella R. and Ronald G. Corwin What A Voucher Could Buy: A Survey Of California Private Schools. SWRL Occasional Paper Los Alamitos, CA: Southwest Regional Laboratory, (WestEd), 1993.
Dianda, Marcella R. and Ronald G. Corwin. Vision And Reality: A First-Year Look At California’s Charter Schools. Los Alamitos, CA: Southwest Regional Laboratory, 1994.
Hoxby, Caroline M. Achievement in Charter Schools and Regular Public Schools in the United States: Understanding the Differences. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University and National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2004.
Hoxby, Caroline M. “How School Choice Affects the Achievement of Public School Students.” Paper prepared for Koret Task Force meeting, Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution, 20-21, September 2001.
My colleagues and I published the nation’s first systematic studies of charter schools in 1994, and before that we embarked on a study of the 1992 California voucher initiative. Our results were published in the Phi Delta Kappan, and in monographs titled 
