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Star Ledger - New report gives state's charters high grades, says many outscored other schools..."...Published by the university’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, the report compares test scores from sets of charter and district school students of similar races and backgrounds..."
NJ Spotlight - NJ Charter School Students Learn More Than Their Peers, Says New Report…Newark charters lift statewide averages, while advantages not necessarily shown elsewhere
NJ Spotlight - Two NJ Districts Named as Race to the Top Finalists…Newark public schools and Monmouth County consortium culled from more than 20 applicants from New Jersey
Star Ledger - New report gives state's charters high grades, says many outscored other schools
By Jessica Calefati/The Star-LedgerThe Star-Ledger
on November 28, 2012 at 8:30 AM
Forty percent of New Jersey charter schools outperformed schools in their own districts on annual math achievement tests and 30 percent scored higher on reading between 2007 and 2011, according to a report released Tuesday by Stanford University that examined four dozen charter schools across the state.
Published by the university’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, the report compares test scores from sets of charter and district school students of similar races and backgrounds.
The analysis, the first in-depth look at charter school performance in New Jersey, does not name specific charter schools, but the data was provided to the schools themselves.
"We want people in the schools we studied to look at the results privately and see what opportunities the data present for themselves," Raymond said. "If we name the schools we examined, there could be a cascade of consequences."
The report found New Jersey charter school students receive the equivalent of three more months of math instruction and two more months of readig instruction than their district school "twins" during the same school year, said Macke Raymond, the center’s director and one of the report’s authors.
"The charter school results presented in this report place New Jersey among the highest performing states studied to date," Raymond said. "They show that important foundations for quality are in place and working."
The report also found that charter schools do a better job teaching math to minority and poor students, while students from economically disadvantaged homes enrolled in charter and district school perform about the same on reading.
Because comparatively fewer special education students are enrolled in charter schools, Raymond said it was difficult to draw conclusions about how well charter schools educate that subgroup of students, but added that the statistics she did analyze indicate students with disabilities perform the same in charter and district schools.
Perhaps the most stunning finding in Raymond’ report came from examining urban charter schools exclusively, which comprise a majority of the 86 charter schools statewide.
A typical school year is 10 months long, and Newark charter students receive the equivalent of nine additional months of math instruction and seven and a half additional months of reading instruction compared to the quality of instruction district school students during the same 180-day school year, the report found.
Newark charter school students also performed seven times better than charter school students in Camden, Trenton, Jersey City and Paterson.
The test score analysis, however, may have been influenced by a handful of Newark charter schools whose high test scores exceed those of the district on a consistent basis and may have boosted the difference between the city’s charter and district schools.
Some critics of the report said they questioned its value because Raymond would not identify the schools included in the analysis.
It is impossible to use the report as a tool to model specific schools that teach poor and minority students well because schools with the successful schools are not named, said Bruce Baker, a Rutgers University education professor. Instead, the report reignites a long-simmering battle in New Jersey over charter vs. district superiority, he said.
"We’re asking the wrong question," said Bruce Baker, a Rutgers University education professor. "We should be asking what works for different types of kids, not which is better, charter or district, when neither is a monolithic entity."
The state Department of Education granted Raymond and Devora Davis, the co-author, access to the test score data needed to run their analysis. New Jersey’s test scores were not available when the pair did a national analysis of charter school achievement in 2009 which showed only 17 percent of charter schools performed better than their district counterparts.
Tuesday, the Christie Administration’s top education official said the report validates the value of charter schools.
"The results are clear," Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf said. "On the whole, New Jersey charter school students make larger learning gains in both reading and math than their traditional public school peers."
Star-Ledger staff writer Frederick Kaimann contributed to this report.
NJ Spotlight - NJ Charter School Students Learn More Than Their Peers, Says New Report…Newark charters lift statewide averages, while advantages not necessarily shown elsewhere
By John Mooney, November 28, 2012 in Education|5 Comments
New Jersey’s ongoing debate about whether traditional public schools or charters do a better job educating students got some provocative new data yesterday, courtesy of a study from Stanford University that came down on the side of the charters -- particularly in Newark's embattled school district.
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According to Stanford's Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO), charter school students overall made larger learning gains than their peers in traditional schools on state tests from 2007-2011.
What's more, a third of the charters showed higher achievement levels than the other public schools in their districts, with a fifth doing significantly worse, the report said.
But the details of the long-awaited report also present a more nuanced picture of charter schools in the state, indicating that they are almost as varied as the traditional public schools to which they serve as alternatives.
For instance, Newark's ever-expanding charter school network exhibited some of the highest achievement gains in the country, the report stated.
Specifically, students enrolled in charters in the state-run district made learning gains, on average, almost twice those of their peers in conventional public schools. That finding, the report explains, is the equivalent of gaining an additional seven to nine months of learning each year.
“Charter schools in New Jersey, specifically in Newark, have some of the largest learning gains we have seen to date,” wrote Margaret Raymond, director of CREDO, which has conducted charter school research in more than a dozen states.
But those gains were not replicated by charters in other New Jersey cities -- namely Camden, Jersey City, Trenton, and Paterson -- where the CREDO report said charters had not outperformed traditional schools at all.
“Grouping the other four major cities in New Jersey,” the report read, “charter students in these areas learn significantly less than their [traditional school] peers in reading. There are no differences in learning gains between charter students in the four other major cities and their virtual counterparts in math.”
In fact, outside of Newark, the comparisons statewide were more closely in line with district peers, the report said. Newark charter students represent about a quarter of all charters statewide.
Either way, every charter report comes its own debate, and this one did not disappoint. The stakes are high, as Senate and Assembly leaders continue to work on new legislation to replace the state’s 15-year-old charter law with an eye on adding both flexibility and accountability to the state’s oversight.
The Christie administration seized on the CREDO report’s overall findings, so much so that they will now stand as state Education Commissioner Chris Cerf’s own long-promised evaluation of the state’s charter network, his office said.
“The rigorous, independent analysis of the achievement results of charter schools in New Jersey shows that the results are clear -- on the whole, New Jersey charter school students make larger learning gains in both reading and math than their traditional public school peers,” read a statement from Cerf.
The report also won plaudits from charter school organizations, including the Newark Charter School Fund, which has served as a strong funding and advocacy source for the city's charter community.
“Are all charter schools great? No, but many of the best in Newark are having a transformative impact on the students they are serving,” said Mashea Ashton, the CEO of the Newark Charter School Fund.
“The CREDO report bears that out. Newark has some of the most established and well-run charter schools in the state,” she said. “I’ve visited all of Newark’s charter schools and I can tell you the best ones share similar traits, including a longer school day, a longer school year, Saturday classes, more time on task for learning, data-driven instruction, a focus on results, and an emphasis on recruiting, training, and retaining the best teachers and school leaders.”But critics of charters -- or at least the state’s oversight of them – have argued that they serve a more selective student population, and they were hardly assuaged yesterday.
Much of their focus was on the report’s methodology and continued difficulty in comparing students in charters and traditional schools.
“Any time that children are doing well in school, that’s good news,” said Steve Baker, a spokesman for the New Jersey Education Association, the teachers union.
“But when you look behind the overall numbers, it’s hard to draw clear policy conclusions, because you don’t really have apples-to-apples outcomes as to what is causing the higher achievement.”
Bruce Baker, an education policy researcher at Rutgers University, has been a leading critic of the differing populations in charters and traditional schools. And within a couple of hours of the CREDO release, Baker had posted a lengthy analysis on his blog, School Finance 101, that delved into the details.
He did not discount the CREDO methodology overall, but he raised familiar concerns about comparing students where everything from poverty levels, special education needs, to even the gender makeup of their schools varied.
“We simply don’t know what component of the effect has to do with school quality issues that might be replicated, and what component has to do with clustering kids together in a more advantaged peer group,” Baker wrote.
NJ Spotlight - Two NJ Districts Named as Race to the Top Finalists…Newark public schools and Monmouth County consortium culled from more than 20 applicants from New Jersey
By John Mooney, November 28, 2012 in Education|Post a Comment
Newark Public Schools and a consortium of Monmouth County school districts led by Neptune Township are among 61 finalists for the next round of federal Race to the Top funding, culled from more than 20 initial applicants from New Jersey.
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The finalists were announced by the U.S. Department of Education this week, less than a month after more than 370 districts and groups of districts filed their initial proposals for a share of the $400 million in the Race to the Top competition.
Representing more than 200 districts, the other finalists include New York City, Baltimore, Boston, and St. Louis schools.
“These finalists are setting the curve for the rest of the country with innovative plans to drive education reform in the classroom,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
“This competition was designed to support local efforts to close the achievement gap and transform the learning environment in a diverse set of districts," he said, "but no matter who wins, children across the country will benefit from the clear vision and track records of success demonstrated by these finalists.”
Fifteen to 25 winners are expected to be named by the end of the December.
Much like the Race to the Top program for states held for the past three years, the district competition is focusing on pressing local schools to pursue specific educational reforms and strategies.
For this program, the emphasis is on building “personalized learning” programs and strategies, with a big focus on technology. Each applicant is seeking between $5 million and $40 million, based on their enrollments.
Led by Neptune Township, the Monmouth consortium –- including Belmar, Bradley Beach, and Neptune City -- is seeking $13.2 million that would help build the network for using mobile technology like laptops and handheld devices to create “digital portfolios” that can track students’ work from kindergarten through high school.
“The Coastal Monmouth Education Alliance is deeply appreciative of the federal team's review of so many applications in just one month's time and is gratified to be included as one of the Department's 61 finalists nationwide,” said Neptune superintendent David Mooij.
“Should the consortium be successful, the grant will jumpstart the four partnering districts' efforts to implement personalized learning in a technological environment,” he said. Details of the Newark application were not available yesterday.
