CHARTER SCHOOLS FACE NEW CRITICISM.

Byline: Jennifer Radcliffe Staff Writer

Fueling the politically charged debate over the merits of charter schools, a study released Wednesday finds the innovative campuses perform no better than traditional public schools, and they may actually have a negative impact.

The report by the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C., and generally regarded as progressive, collated data from 19 studies in 11 states, including California, about charter schools - tuition-free public campuses that operate under fewer federal and state regulations.

``Overall, we conclude that charter school students certainly did no better, and in many cases did worse,'' said Martin Carnoy, a Stanford University professor of education and economics who helped compile the research results.

And while charter advocates might attribute lower test scores at some charter schools to a higher proportion of students living in poverty, EPI researchers said their study showed that charter schools attract slightly more affluent students than traditional campuses do.

``If you look at comparable groups, charter school students are not more disadvantaged,'' Carnoy said. ``(That argument) has no merit.''

The study advises the charter movement to progress slowly and cautiously. Researchers said that stronger charter accountability is needed and that educators shouldn't assume that reducing or removing regulations, bureaucracies and unions solves all problems.

The research piggybacks on an American Federation of Teachers' analysis from last summer that showed charter students were one-half grade level behind on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Charter school advocates, however, disputed the new study, saying it didn't take demographic differences into account and was too narrowly focused on test results from a fraction of students.

In their artillery is a Harvard University study, released last fall, which showed that charter students are 3.8 percent more likely to score as proficient readers on state standardized tests and 1.2 percent more likely to be proficient in math.

The anti-charter reports attack an alternate system that some fear is undermining traditional public schools, charter proponents said.

``It's a public-relations stunt,'' said Gary Larson, a spokesman for the California Charter Schools Association. ``There's a fear that parents are going to continue demanding more and more charter schools.''

With a report last week showing that in the Los Angeles Unified School District - California's largest public school system - less than half of high school freshmen earn diplomas in four years, all educators should be open to innovation, Larson said.

``There is plenty of room here where we don't need to attack one segment of public education,'' he said. ``We all have a long way to go.''

Currently, 180,000 students are enrolled in 510 charter schools in California - about 3 percent of school-age children. About 65 of those charter schools, including some of the oldest in the state, are in Los Angeles Unified.

Montague Street School Principal Diane Pritchard said her Pacoima campus has made tremendous gains since converting to a charter eight years ago.

The school has increased nearly 400 points on the Academic Performance Index over the past few years and is now just 92 points shy of hitting the state's API goal of 800 points.

About 92 percent of Montague's 1,300 elementary students are from poor families, and 97 percent are Latino.

``This is a low, low, socioeconomic area, and we took the same kids we had before,'' Pritchard said.

As a charter, Montague has added a comprehensive intervention program, including high school-equivalent classes for parents, home-based literacy projects for preschool children and an extended-day program for new immigrants.

Parents of kindergartners are asked to spend an hour a day on campus, reading to and working with their children.

Pritchard said she welcomes researchers' scrutiny.

``I do think charter schools need to be accountable because we're using public funds,'' she said.

Among other EPI findings:

--Charter schools in California draw disproportionately higher numbers of African-American students, representing 16 percent of charter students compared with 8 percent of all students statewide.

--White students are overrepresented in California's charter schools, representing 42 percent of charter students, compared with 34 percent in all California schools.

--Conversion charter schools in California tend to outperform startup charter schools.

Some EPI researchers said charter schools shouldn't necessarily be expected to outperform traditional schools. Many were created with special niches in mind, such as arts education.

Also, the charter school movement is still relatively young, and experiments always start off slow, they said.

``In any field, when you do experiments, there are a lot more failures than successes, especially at first,'' said Richard Rothstein, an EPI research associate and a visiting professor at the Teachers College at Columbia University.

Jennifer Radcliffe, [phone]

jennifer.radcliffe(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

photo, 2 boxes

Photo:

Fourth-graders Juan Gonzalez, left, and Jennifer Ramirez work on math at a successful charter school, Montague, in Pacoima.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer

Box:

(1) EDUCATING POOR CHILDREN

SOURCE: Economic Policy Institute

Daily News

(2) How good are charter schools?