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Contact:
Francesca López, (520) 621-0307, falopez@email.arizona.edu
Dan Quinn, (517) 203-2940, dquinn@greatlakescenter.org

Charter Meta-Analysis Report Overstates Conclusions

Review finds overall outcomes for charters and public schools are largely indistinguishable

EAST LANSING, Mich. (Sept. 30, 2014) – A recent report from the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) attempted to examine whether charter schools have a positive effect on student achievement. The report reviewed 52 studies selected by the authors and found charters to be serving students well, particularly in math. An academic review out today finds the conclusions of the report to be overstated.

Francesca López, University of Arizona, reviewed A Meta-Analysis of the Literature on the Effect of Charter Schools on Student Achievement for the Think Twice think tank review project of the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), with funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

The CRPE report is an update of prior reports that examine the achievement of charter schools as compared to traditional public schools.

In her review, López says, "The report does a solid job describing the methodological limitations of the studies reviewed, then seemingly forgets those limits in the analysis."

Specifically, López finds fault with the authors' use of lottery-based studies, cautioning that inclusion limits the study's usefulness in broad comparisons of all charters vs. public schools.

Her review finds several problems that prevent it from being of use to policymakers:

  • Claims of positive effects when they are not statistically significant
  • Exaggeration of the magnitude effects
  • Reliance on simple vote-counts from a selected sample of studies
  • Unwarranted extrapolation of the available evidence

López concludes her review with, "A more honest reading of the results would be that they are consistent with the large body of charter school studies: the overall outcomes for charters and public schools are largely indistinguishable."

Read the full review at:
http://www.greatlakescenter.org

Find A Meta-Analysis of the Literature on the Effect of Charter Schools on Student Achievement on the web:
http://www.crpe.org/publications/meta-analysis-literature-effect-charter-schools-student-achievement  

Think Twice, a project of the National Education Policy Center, provides the public, policymakers and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. The project is made possible by funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

The review can also be found on the NEPC website:
http://nepc.colorado.edu

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