"If this study shows anything, it shows that we've got a two-to-one margin of bad charters to good charters," said lead author Margaret E. Raymond, who directs Stanford's Center for Research on Education Outcomes" (CREDO).

"This study reveals in unmistakable terms that, in the aggregate, charter students are not faring as well as their traditional public school counterparts." (CREDO press release)

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Yesterday, CREDO released a national study on charter schools which suggests that about 3,000 of the nation's 4,700 charter schools are worse than the schools they are designed to replace. 

Of course, this horrible news was not mentioned in any Chicago mainstream media.

And our friends at Catalyst decided to start their story out this way: "Chicago's charters look pretty good."

Well, if you consider this to be good:  

• Illinois Blacks enrolled in charter schools do significantly worse in reading compared to their counterparts in traditional public schools. Black students receive no significant benefit or loss as a result of charter school attendance compared to their counterparts in traditional public schools in math.
• Hispanics enrolled in charter schools do significantly worse in reading and math compared to their counterparts in traditional public schools.
• Special education students and English-language learners in Illinois receive no significant benefit from charter school attendance compared with their counterparts in traditional public schools in reading or math.
• The effect of charter school attendance on growth results in math is mostly positive across the lower deciles. However, charter schools are not creating significantly different results for students compared to their virtual peers from traditional public schools in reading.
• Charter schools are more likely to retain academically low-performing students.
• The results suggest that new charter school students have an initial loss of learning in reading and math compared with their counterparts in traditional schools. In subsequent years, charter school students continue to incur a loss of learning in reading from charter school attendance while the impact on math becomes insignificant. By the third year of attendance, there is no significant impact from charter school attendance on either reading or math.

The Illinois data does show some benefit for students across the board in math, and for low-income students in charters.   

Here's the full report on Illinois' charters.

The untold story

No one mentions that charter schools were designed by law to be better than traditional public schools, not on a par with them. 

No one stacks this study up against Arne Duncan's claims that Chicago's charters are dramatically better than neighborhood schools. 

And no one mentions in this context what was so well put by Marcia Williams, a teacher who posted on the Catalyst notebook site: 

"One of the advantages that charter schools have over public schools is that any student who is enrolled in a charter school, that charter school can drop a student if the school feels that student is not an 'asset' to the school. They can transfer a student out of their school anytime of the school year and that happen before testing occurs. Believe me, this happens more than the press is aware of. Several students who sat in my classroom and were new to the school were dropped from the charter school they attended for a variety of reasons. But two of the main reasons were for academic or behavioral issues. So now these students enroll in the good old public schools. Public schools can't just decide to drop a students because of behavorial or academic problems."

At some point, this reality needs to be factored in by researchers evaluating charter schools.

Poor accountability

While one might logically conclude that charters are not a viable strategy to improve schools, and that we should turn to more successful programs, CREDO instead urges more accountability both in the authorization and possible revocation of charters.

The Illinois legislature just increased the number of charters allowed in the state, and the claim has been made that they demanded "increased accountability" to go with the increased numbers.

But a close look at HB 612 reveals very little support for this claim. Here's what's new:

• Charters must submit an audit and federal tax form to the state board, but that's nothing more than any non-profit must do.
• Charters schools will get up to two years to remediate themselves once they are notified that their charter may be revoked. The charter school creates its own remediation plan (unlike regular schools, where CPS writes the plan), and is then held accountable for carrying out that plan (you know, the one they wrote themselves).
• The state will now prepare a report on charter school progress every two years, instead of every year. As is the case now, the state evaluation wil be based on reports from the districts (in other words, whatever CPS tells them).
• A task force will be formed to look into whether or not the state needs new charter authorizers. Currently local districts and the state are authorizers. It may be that charter supporters want to take that decision away from some local districts which have not approved charter applications.

But all in all, not an impressive set of "accountability" requirements to trade for double the number of charters.