Charter Schools Are Better at Retaining Hard-to-Educate Students
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America’s charter schools are proving that education reform can work with even the hardest-to-educate students: students with disabilities and students learning English are more likely to remain in charters than in traditional public schools; low-performing students, as measured by standardized tests, are as likely to remain in charters as in traditional public schools. Charters enroll fewer students from disadvantaged groups because such students are less likely to apply to charters.
Empirical research contradicts the popular myth that charter schools systematically push out their most difficult-to-educate students. Research from multiple urban school systems demonstrates that low-performing and otherwise difficult-to-educate students are at least as likely to remain in charters as they are to remain in traditional public schools.
Charter schools are revolutionizing U.S. urban education. According to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, as of the 2013–14 school year, there were 43 school districts—including New Orleans, Detroit, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Houston—in which at least 20 percent of students were enrolled in charters. Relative to the schools to which they would have otherwise been assigned, students typically make large academic improvements when they attend urban charter schools.
Critics often assert that charters post higher test scores than surrounding traditional public schools because they systematically remove their most difficult-to-educate students. To substantiate this claim, critics note that smaller percentages of charter students are enrolled in special education or are classified as English-language learners (ELL) than in traditional public schools. Critics also cite various anti-charter anecdotes supplied by disgruntled parents of former charter students.
If, indeed, charters systematically pushed out their lowest-performing students to boost test-score rankings, one would expect such students to be more likely to exit charters than traditional public schools. Yet analysis of enrollment and test-score data from New York City and Denver, as well as from an anonymous urban school district in the Midwest, found that low-performing students are just as likely to exit traditional public schools as they are to exit charters.
Empirical research from Denver and New York City also finds that students with disabilities are more likely to remain in charters than in traditional public schools: in Denver, four years after entry into kindergarten, 65 percent of students with disabilities remain in charters, compared with 37 percent of such students in traditional public schools; in New York City, 74 percent of students with disabilities who originally enrolled in charters remained, compared with 69 percent of such students in traditional public schools.
Analysis of New York City charter school enrollment data by the city’s Independent Budget Office, as well as by the Manhattan Institute, found that ELL students are more likely to remain in charters than in traditional public schools. The Manhattan Institute found that 82 percent of ELL students who originally enrolled in charters for kindergarten remained four years later, compared with 70 percent of such students in traditional public schools.
These empirical findings do not disprove the possibility that certain charters have inappropriately pressured students to leave. But to the extent that such behavior exists, the enrollment data confirm that it is the exception, not the norm: charters retain difficult-to-educate students at rates comparable with, or better than, those of traditional public schools. If difficult-to-educate students are less likely to exit charters than traditional public schools, why do charters enroll smaller percentages of such students? The answer is straightforward: difficult-to-educate students are significantly less likely to apply to charters than other students. Efforts to boost charter-enrollment rates among the former should thus focus on encouraging more applications to charter schools.
Marcus A. Winters is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and an assistant professor at the University of Colorado. Follow him on Twitter here.
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