Roland Fryer and Will Dobbie just published an excellent study on the Texas charter school sector.
But it’s unclear to me that they captured a very important implication of their research.
I. Study Overview
The study found that charter schools in Texas, on average, have no impact on test scores and a slightly negative impact on earnings.
More interestingly, the study found that No Excuses charter schools increase test scores but only have a small and statistically insignificant impact on earnings.
Their paper ends with this cautionary statement:
II. Walking Through Low Effect Size and High Effect Size Schools
The famous Anna Karena quote goes something like this: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
I think the opposite is true of schools.
When I visit low effect size schools, I am often saddened by the level of dysfunction. Students walk the halls aimlessly, teachers seem woefully unprepared for working in a low-income environment, and the principal generally spends her day putting out fires.
When I visit high effect size schools, I’m often struck by how different they are. While most hit the basics of a calm culture and thoughtful instruction, they vary greatly in atmosphere, curriculum, and staffing models – as well as the overall student experience. A Summit school is very different than a Collegiate Academies school, despite both achieving high effects. Even No Excuses schools can feel fairly different from each other, though they do tend to gravitate around some core practices (that Fryer has helped illuminate).
I also think I would struggle mightily in a blind walk through of .1 and .2 effect size schools; it is highly unlikely I would be able to tell you which school has which effect.
So while it’s easy to identify schools that are a total mess, it’s a little difficult to tease out what’s going well in non-dysfuctional schools, as well as to distinguish between high-performing and very-high-performing schools.
III. Bad Schools Have Bad Effects on Earnings, Good Schools Have Neutral Effects on Earnings
I found this to be the most interesting chart in the study:
What you see here is that going from (-.2) to (0) effect really matters for earnings. This is indicated by the rising slope in the bottom left quadrant.
Interestingly enough, once you hit (0) effect, going to (.2) effect has little effect on earnings. This is indicated by the relatively flat slope in the the bottom right quadrant.
In short, getting rid of bad schools could have a major effect on the earnings of graduates in an education system (assuming our economy is not a zero sum signaling game).
In a sense, this fits my experiences in spending time in schools. It’s very easy to see how a totally dysfunctional environment could negatively impact students, whereas it’s a little more difficult to tease out the additional impact on students once the basics are in place.
IV. Portfolio Management: What Happens When Charter Schools Grow?
In a world where states and districts are managing their portfolio of schools, the growth of functional schools will be accompanied by the phasing out of dysfunctional schools.
In the best possible world, the growth of new effective charter schools will be accompanied with a reduction in under-performing traditional and charter schools.
Overtime, a system can potentially rid itself of failing schools.
This is what happened in New Orleans.
While the above analysis is more weighted toward absolute scores (rather than effect sizes), my hunch is that the story would stand with effect sizes as well (I have not run this data yet).
I think much of New Orleans’ gains were driven by the phasing out of failing schools.
It is much less clear to me that schools in New Orleans, to date, have figured out to crack the code of creating schools that are radically superior to your average functioning traditional school.
Hopefully they will.
V. No Excuses Charter Schools May Allow Us to Eliminate Failing Schools and Raise the Aggregate Earnings of Low-Income Students in the United States
So another way to interpret this study is that the growth of No Excuses charter schools could be the key to eliminating failing schools and raising wages of low-income students who would have otherwise have attended failing schools.
Two things would have to hold true for this to be the case: (1) government action or family choice lead to the phasing out of failing schools and (2) No Excuses schools can maintain their neutral effects on earnings even if they enroll the most challenging students from the phased out failing schools.
In other words, for now, the importance of charter school growth might be much more directly tied to eliminating failing schools rather than vastly outperforming functional district schools.
If this is right, No Excuses charter schools might still very well be the most important education reform of the past quarter century.