Charter Schools and Student Achievement

Charter administrators have to face tough choices every day, some of which will never trouble their counterparts in legacy neighborhood schools.

What High-Performing Charter Schools Do Differently

Charter schools may feel like they balance precariously on the high wire, like a trapeze artist who also provides dyslexia interventions. One charter leader I know has a sign in her office that says “Being a leader is easy, it’s like riding a bike. And the bike is on fire.” In a charter school you’ve got to do more than a traditional school, with less resources than a traditional school; it’s not for the faint of heart. That old nugget about “past returns are not indicative of future gains” can be true in charter schools. Stunning test scores (in a good way) can turn into stunted results the following year. But, take heart! Charter schools that do work, work incredibly well and lead to great outcomes for students.  You have an opportunity to create generational impacts with your work in a charter school.

What Does the Research Say About Charter School Success?

In today’s dispatch, we’re taking the time to dig in on high-impact practices from the research on charter schools. First of all, let’s start with the landmark Stanford 2023 research which indicates that Charter Management Organization (CMO)-affiliated charter schools perform better than either traditional public schools or stand-alone charter sites. The report notes that, “CMO-affiliated students advanced by 27 additional days in reading and 23 more days in math over TPS [typical public schools], which is statistically significant.” Mathematica then adds important context to this: “CMOs with positive student achievement impacts have schools that emphasize two practices: (1) student behavior policies, and (2) intensive teacher coaching and monitoring.”  Let's break both of these down.

Student Behavior Policies

I’m not surprised that schools that require students to attend and work hard to learn have higher student achievement. I mean, it’s got to be easier to teach a student who is present and listening than a kid who’s truant or a trouble-maker, right? Student behavior policies don’t have to be punitive; they can be commonsense ways to promote learning by making expectations around behavior explicit. However, student behavior policies must be monitored as well as implemented. It’s essential to disaggregate the data on student suspensions and expulsions. Richard Reeves has an excellent book detailing, among other things, the impact of behavior policies on school-aged boys. In an interview for Education Week, he noted that boys have both lower academic achievement and higher disciplinary infractions than girls. You can address these disparities, but only if you know about them first. 

Intensive Teacher Coaching and Monitoring

Charter Management Organizations with outsized impacts have organization-wide policies around teacher professional development, and how student achievement-results are tracked, tied to teachers, and monitored over time. This may on its face seem like a philosophical question: what do I need to teach my teachers to make them more effective? I’d like to poke at this. When you scratch the surface of this question it’s primarily a data infrastructure issue. You can have the best policy to coach teachers, but unless you tie student data to teachers, you will never know what policies to double-down on and which to sunset. 

A great, user friendly tool  for Charter Schools is the Cohort Achievement Tracker (CAT). With the CAT, you can view data for individual students in a classroom or summarized  by teacher over time. The CAT enables you to understand which teachers are succeeding, as well as what kind of classrooms they have. You can filter by demographics as broadly or specifically as needed, creating exactly a granular or birds eye view, depending on which you need to set meaningful, achievable goals. It's the solution many of us wished we had in our sites to better support our students' learning journeys. Watch the Cohort Achievement Tracker in action to see how it might help you monitor teacher development.

Ready to See What Your Data Can Do? 

What are your thoughts on the institutional cultures that support high-quality charter schools.  Join the conversation on social media and share your thoughts! Want to learn more about how you can create the data infrastructure for high quality culture? We invite you to view our video tour of the CAT or sign up for a free one-on-one tour here. What are you looking to do with your data collection and analysis?

About Instructional Data Solutions: Our mission is to remove barriers to enable education organizations to focus on what matters most. We assist school systems and education organizations of all sizes by collecting, analyzing, and clearly communicating data. We are committed to empowering educators through comprehensive data analytics and tailored support. Additionally, we provide dedicated support for operational needs, process improvement, and special projects, offering customized solutions to enhance effectiveness and success. Our solutions bridge the gap between data collection and instructional improvement in PK-12 settings.