What Michigan's Charter Schools Can Teach the Country
The secrets of reform success include liberal chartering rules and freedom
from teacher tenure.
MICHAEL VAN BEEK
Public charter schools now serve
2.3 million children nationwide and enjoy growing bipartisan support. But they
are still loathed by teachers unions and traditional public-school officials
more interested in protecting their piece of the school-funding pie than in
providing students trapped in failing schools with a chance at a decent
education.
Those familiar with the
controversy over charters have probably heard of the 2009 study by Stanford
University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes. The Credo study,
routinely cited by groups opposed to school choice, analyzed charter schools in
16 states and found that, on average, only 17% were outperforming conventional
public schools while 37% were doing worse.
However, Credo noted that the study's results "vary
strongly by state and are shown to be influenced in significant ways by several
characteristics of state charter school policies." These include laws
determining how many charters can operate in a state, who can authorize them,
and the level of autonomy these schools will have from certain state
regulations.
Although largely ignored, this finding is especially relevant
in light of a more recent Credo study focusing solely on the performance of
Michigan's charter schools. The findings, released in January, portray
Michigan's charter schools as a clear-cut success story and provide lessons for
other states.
Detroit Midtown Academy teacher Rochell Dunson works with
students in 2008.
Credo found that 42% of Michigan's charter schools are
outperforming conventional public schools in math and 35% of charters are
outperforming in reading. Only 6% of charters are underperforming in math and
only 2% in reading. Further, 82% of charters produced growth in average reading
test scores and 72% did so in math.
Of the 56 outcomes for different subgroups of students and
schools the study dissected, 52 showed charter-school students outperforming
their peers in conventional public schools.
Perhaps the most notable finding was that from 2007-11 the
typical Michigan charter-school student made annual academic gains in both
reading and math equivalent to about two additional months of learning,
compared with his or her peers in conventional public schools. The longer a
student stayed in a charter school the greater the annual gains. After five
years the average charter-school student made cumulative learning gains
equivalent to an entire additional year of schooling.
As Cindy Schumacher, executive director of the Center for
Charter Schools at Central Michigan University, told the press after the Credo
report was released, the report "shows that the Michigan Model is working,
with it leading to significant improvements for children, especially at-risk
children who are historically underserved."
The results were even more pronounced in Detroit, welcome
news in a city where an estimated 47% of the adult population is functionally
illiterate, according to the Detroit Regional Workforce Fund. The typical
Detroit charter-school student made annual gains worth about three additional
months of learning in both reading and math compared with their peers in nearby
conventional schools. Of the 100 or so charters in Detroit, 47% did
significantly better than conventional schools in reading and 49% did
significantly better in math. Only one charter school in Detroit did worse in
reading compared with the city's district-run schools.
The Michigan Education Association, the state's largest
teachers union, and other defenders of the public-school status quo have tried
to play down these results. Some point out that the Credo study didn't include
every charter school. In fact, the study included 86% of all charter-school
students in the state and remains the most comprehensive and rigorous study of
Michigan charter schools.
Credo's researchers matched about
85,000 charter-school students to their "virtual twins" in local
conventional public schools based on race, gender, socioeconomic status, prior
test scores and other factors. Individual learning gains made by each set of
students was then measured over time.
Sadly, the media have largely ignored Credo's findings or
grossly distorted them. For example, days after the report was released
Huffington Post ran a story calling it a "cautionary tale" and
emphasizing that a large portion of charter schools' average reading and math
scores were below the state average. This comparison turns a blind eye to the
well-documented impact poverty has on average standardized test scores. Since
Michigan charters—often found in the school districts struggling most—enroll a
far higher percentage of poor students (70%) than do the state's conventional
schools (43%), the finding biases the results against charters.
Credo has analyzed charter-school performance in 19 states to
date. Only Louisiana and New Jersey even come close to rivaling the results
from Michigan. Why? Michigan allows a variety of public entities to authorize
charter schools, the most common being universities and community colleges.
This frees charter schools from needing school-district approval to operate,
which is like requiring new businesses to ask existing competitors for
permission to open. By allowing more charters than most states, Michigan has
developed a functional charter-school market, so much so that lawmakers
recently took the bold step of removing the charter-school cap altogether.
Michigan's charters also aren't subject to teacher tenure
laws and have the flexibility to retain or release teachers based on
performance. This helps keep the best teachers where they belong, in the
classroom, and the worst where they belong—looking for another line of work.
Finally, Michigan has several strong networks of
education-management companies, including National Heritage Academies and New
Urban Learning. These companies are much maligned for operating as for-profits,
but as the Credo study pointed out, the charter schools they run did better on
average than those directly managed by a charter-school board.
It is no surprise then that the Center for Education Reform,
a pro-charter nonprofit, recently gave Michigan one of only four "As"
on its report card of state-charter school laws. If states want to create a
healthy charter-school sector to boost outcomes for students, the Michigan
experience offers valuable lessons.
Mr. Van Beek is
director of education policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a
research and educational institute based in Midland, Mich.
A version of this article appeared May 18, 2013, on page A13
in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: What
Michigan's Charter Schools Can Teach the Country.
