“As policies are debated, we often have to rely on research that is ill-suited to the task. Its methodology is frequently too weak to form a firm foundation for policy,” write Sarah Cohodes and Susan Dynarski in this Brookings brief on Massachusetts’s ballot proposal to lift the state’s charter cap. “This is not one of those times.” To the contrary, they note, “it is hard to think of an education policy for which the evidence is more clear.”
Well, thanks for clearing that up.
Like many states, Massachusetts sets a cap on the number of charter schools, as well as the share of district funds that can be spent on charters. A “smart cap” established in 2010 prioritizes applications from charter operators with a proven track record that wish to expand in low-performing districts. At present, there are seventy-eight charter schools in Massachusetts, while tens of thousands of students languish on waiting lists. The ballot initiative would raise the cap, allowing twelve new charters to be approved and opened each year.
If improving outcomes for underserved kids is your goal, voting to raise the cap would appear to be a no-brainer. Massachusetts is home to some of the nation’s highest performing charter schools, with gold-standard data to prove it. “Charter schools in the urban areas in Massachusetts have large, positive effects on educational outcomes, far better than those of the traditional public schools that charter students would otherwise attend,” Cohodes and Dynarski attest. “The effects are particularly large and positive for disadvantaged students, English learners, special education students, and children who enter charters with low scores.” The duo cite ample “natural experiment” studies comparing lotteried-in students to those who failed to win a seat that make it indisputable that urban charters in the Bay State are producing “very large increases in students’ academic performance.”
Note that Dynarski and Cohodes cite urban charter schools as runaway successes. Elsewhere, it’s a very different matter. “We find that the effects of charters in the suburbs and rural areas of Massachusetts are not positive,” they write, explaining this is unsurprising since many students in non-urban districts have access to excellent schools. Thus charters are hard-pressed to improve upon their already strong results. Of course even where charters run up the score, some may still oppose charters as a matter of principle, favoring the governance and structure of traditional public schools. “That’s their prerogative,” the authors conclude. “What we find distressing and intellectually dishonest is when these preferences are confounded with evidence about the effectiveness of charter schools. The evidence is that for disadvantaged students in urban areas of Massachusetts, charter schools do better than traditional public schools.”
Any questions?
All that remains is to be seen is if the voters of Massachusetts—famously our highest achieving state—are, for all their educational attainment, swayed by data and evidence, or something else.
SOURCE: Sarah Cohodes and Susan M. Dynarski, “Massachusetts charter cap holds back disadvantaged Students,” Brookings (September 2016).
