Getting Inside the Black Box: Examining How the Operation of Charter Schools Affects Performance

Abstract

In recent years, a series of articles have examined the performance of charter schools with mixed results. Some of this research has shown that charter school performance varies by charter type or the age of the school (Bifulco & Ladd, 2006 Bifulco, R. and Ladd, H. 2006. The impact of charter schools on student achievement: Evidence from North Carolina. Education Finance and Policy, 1: 50–90. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Buddin & Zimmer, 2005 Buddin, R. and Zimmer, R. 2005. A closer look at charter school student achievement. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 24: 351–372. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 2002 Hanushek, E. A., Kain, J. F., & Rivkin, S. G. (2002). The impact of charter schools on academic achievement. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved May 19, 2006, from http://http://www.nber.org/∼confer/2002/hiedf02/KAIN.pdf [Google Scholar]; Sass, 2006 Sass, T. R. 2006. Charter schools and student achievement in Florida. Education Finance and Policy, 1: 91–122. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). However, this research has not examined the school attributes that lead to high- or low-achieving charter schools. In this article, we examine how student achievement varies with school operational features using student-level achievement and survey data for charter and a matched-set of traditional public schools from California. We did not find operational characteristics that were consistently related with student achievement, but we did identify some features that are more important at different grade levels or in charter schools versus in traditional public schools. We also examined the relationship between greater autonomy within schools, which is a major tenet of the charter movement, and student achievement and found very little evidence that greater autonomy leads to improved student achievement.

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