North Carolina charters.

Renowned pollster George Gallup once referred to data gathering this way: "Not everything that can be counted counts; and not everything that counts can be counted." This comment is apropos to any discussion of charter school research, especially recent findings from Robert Bifulco and Helen Ladd ("Results from the Tar Heel State," research, Fall 2005). Their study, sharply critical of North Carolina charter schools, is flawed and fails to "count" what matters most to parents and students.

The authors conclude that charter schools negatively affect performance, and that the public interest is not "well-served" by these schools. Consider, though, that only students who either entered a charter school after 4th grade, or exited a charter school before 8th grade, were included in their main analysis. This means that longer-term charter-school attendees (and, presumably, those students deriving the greatest benefit from these schools, since they stayed put) were excluded. In addition, the data used to assess performance came from state end-of-grade tests measuring knowledge of state curriculum--a seemingly obvious bias against innovative charter schools exercising their freedom to employ alternative curricula.

Bifulco and Ladd's data also differ from recent Department of Public Instruction statistics. In 2004-05, 63 percent of regular North Carolina charter schools made adequate yearly progress under federal accountability guidelines, compared with just 58 percent of traditional public schools. Charter schools were also more likely to earn the label "school of excellence" than traditional public schools (33 percent compared to 24 percent).

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And what about those intangibles that aren't easily "counted"? Charter schools (and choice programs) empower parents--not school boards--with the freedom to select the best school for their child. In the final analysis, Bifulco and Ladd's study demonstrates what parents have known all along: no one school can possibly meet the needs of all students, be it public, private, or charter. But charter schools do provide valuable and much-needed options, often to poor and disenfranchised families who cannot afford private school tuition. Doesn't it make sense to let parents be the ultimate arbiters of whether their interests are "well-served" by charter schools?

LINDALYN KAKADELIS

Director, North Carolina

Education Alliance

Bifulco and Ladd's negative conclusion about North Carolina charters is much less certain than it appears. For instance, despite their finding that students in charters make less academic progress than students in regular public schools, enrollment in N.C. charter schools persists, and grows.

It's also troubling that the negative effect of charters that they report depends upon charter age. My research shows that the apparent negative effect of charters in their third year, or older, was small--.01 to .03 standard deviations--and in some instances insignificant. I also find that the negative effect varied by grade level: larger for 3rd through 5th graders and statistically insignificant for 6th through 8th graders.

The authors also tout their method as addressing the problem of self-selection. It does, but at a cost. The method can mislead unless we understand why students enter charters and why students leave. Some students enter because they are having difficulty in the regular public schools, difficulty that continues to affect them, even worsen, while attending charters. As for students leaving charters, charters may simply not be a good fit for everybody. No doubt some students leave Ivy League colleges and do better elsewhere. Does that mean the Ivy League schools are teaching poorly?

Finally, the effect of charters on students who leave is likely a worst-case estimate; it should be complemented by one comparing the academic growth of students who stay in charters with the effect of students who stay in regular public schools. My research finds that math-score growth for North Carolina students who stay in charters is not significantly different from students who stay in regular public schools; reading-score growth is higher, significantly so, for students staying four or five consecutive years.

CRAIG NEWMARK 

Associate Professor of Economics

North Carolina State University 

Bifulco and Ladd reply:

We agree with Ms. Kakadelis that test scores don't count for everything. At the same time, they clearly matter, especially in a state such as North Carolina that has long had a statewide course of study and a set of state tests aligned with that curriculum. Given that state taxes are used to pay for charter schools, the public has a valid interest in the extent to which the students in those schools are meeting state achievement goals.

Like Kakadelis, we support the idea of more schooling options, especially for students in low-income families. We differ, however, in wanting those new options to be as effective in promoting student achievement, at least on average, as the traditional public schools. Our study indicates that North Carolina charter schools are not meeting that standard.

Newmark, whose own detailed study of North Carolina charter schools also finds negative achievement effects, suggests our results are misleading because students who choose charter schools may be on a downward achievement trajectory before they switch to a charter school. The full version of our paper reports an additional test to rule out this hypothesis.