Charter school backers and detractors often debate research that compares their effectiveness with that of traditional public schools. Where are test scores higher? Where do students make larger gains?
Mike McShane of the American Enterprise Institute argues this horse-race debate is wrong to ignore another central purpose of charter schools: Increasing the diversity of learning options available to students.
To date, much of the prominent research on charter schools has been devoted to trying to determine if charter schools outperform traditional public schools. Charter schools exist in a political context, so backers have had to prove that their schools can do as well or better than traditional public schools on the measures states use to hold schools accountable.
But academic superiority (measured by test scores) isn’t the only goal of charter schools. Charter schools are also designed to give parents more options in the type of education that their child receives. They have the ability to specialize, and because students only attend charter schools by their free choice, schools have the opportunity to create unique learning communities organized around particular principles.
McShane co-authored a recent paper that looked at the diversity of charter schools from one city to the next, and found some interesting variation. The study examined 17 cities and found a fairly even split between the number of charters that offered specialties — a focus on STEM or the arts, a language immersion program, a “no-excuses” model — and those that did not.
The amount of specialization also appeared to vary from city to city. Cities where entities other than the school district could authorize charter schools tended to have more students in specialized schools. Cities with large black populations tended to attract more “no excuses” schools, while those with large Hispanic populations often had more STEM schools.
McShane and co-author Jenn Hatfield wrote in their conclusion:
There is no ideal mix of schools for a given community—or, at least, there is no ideal mix that can be determined by people outside of the community. There is, though, evidence that parents want more diverse options, and there are examples of communities across the country where schools are forming to meet these demands.
Some of the most sophisticated horse-race studies have also found major variations in how charter schools fare from one city to the next. It’s worth looking at which school systems around the country are providing their communities with diverse options that also get strong academic results, and how others can better do the same.
