Charter School Achievement Studies

Impact of Charter School Attendance on Student Achievement in Michigan

Proponents of school reform have argued that charter schools and vouchers can provide adequate market pressure to improve the performance of traditional public schools. While the number of charter schools and student enrollment have burgeoned, relatively little attention has been paid to their effects on student achievement. Proponents of charter schools suggest a direct effect on student achie...

Charter School Growth and Replication

“Does Charter School Attendance Improve Test Scores?”: Comments and Reactions on the Arizona Achievement Study

In a recent report, Solmon, Paark, and Garcia (2001) seek to identify the impact of attending charter schools on student achievement using data from Arizona. Based on a sophisticated statistical analysis, these authors report that charter school attendance increases test score gains of students. This note raises some questions about the interpretation of the results reported and some questions ...

Are Charter School Students Harder to Educate

One point of debate in the recent controversy in the media and among policy analysts over the academic achievement of charter school students is whether the charter students are in some way harder to educate than their counterparts enrolled in traditional public schools. In this paper we examine this question using data from the 2002-3 school year in Washington, D.C. We begin by examining a sim...

Twice Considered: Charter Schools and Student Achievement in Utah

A relatively small state, Utah presents an interesting case to study charter schools given its friendly policy environment for charter schools and its significant growth in both the number and the enrollment of charter schools. Although the population in Utah is increasingly diverse, charter school enrollment reflects a significantly lower portion of students of color and students from low-inco...