The New York City Charter Schools Evaluation Project is a multi-year study on the effects of charter schools on student achievement. Below are the major points from the Executive Summary.
- Charter school applicants are much more likely to be black and much less likely to be Asian or white than the average student in New York City’s traditional public schools. [Chapter II]
- Charter school applicants are more likely to be poor than the average student in New York City’s traditional public schools. [Chapter II]
- Charter schools’ lotteries appear to be truly random, as they are designed to be. Our tests for randomness are based on students’ race, ethnicity, gender, prior test scores, free and reduced-price lunch participation, special education participation, and English Learner status. [Chapter II]
- Students who actually enroll in charter schools appear to be a random subset of the students who were admitted. [Chapter II]
- Lottery-based analysis of charter schools’ effects on achievement is, by far, the most reliable method of evaluation. It is the only method that reliably eliminates “selection biases” which occur if students who apply to charter schools are more disadvantaged, more motivated, or different in any other way than students who do not apply. [Chapter III]
- On average, a student who attended a charter school for all of grades kindergarten through eight would close about 86 percent of the “Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap” in math and 66 percent of the achievement gap in English. A student who attended fewer grades would improve by a commensurately smaller amount. [Chapter IV]
- On average, a lotteried-out student who stayed in the traditional public schools for all of grades kindergarten through eight would stay on grade level but would not close the “Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap” by much. However, the lotteried-out students’ performance does improve and is better than the norm in the U.S. where, as a rule, disadvantaged students fall further behind as they age. [Chapter IV]
- Compared to his lotteried-out counterpart, a student who attends a charter high school has Regents examination scores that are about 3 points higher for each year he spends in the charter school before taking the test. For instance, a student who took the English Comprehensive exam after three years in charter school would score about 9 points higher. [Chapter IV]
- A student who attends a charter high school is about 7 percent more likely to earn a Regents diploma by age 20 for each year he spends in that school. For instance, a student who spent grades ten through twelve in charter high school would have about a 21 percent higher probability of getting a Regents diploma. [Chapter IV]
- The following policies are associated with a charter school’s having better effects on achievement. We emphasize that these are merely associations and do not necessarily indicate that these policies cause achievement to improve.
- a long school year;
- a greater number of minutes devoted to English during each school day;
- a small rewards/small penalties disciplinary policy;
- teacher pay based somewhat on performance or duties, as opposed to a traditional pay scale based strictly on seniority and credentials;
- a mission statement that emphasizes academic performance, as opposed to other goals. [Chapter V]
