by Celeste Bott
South Bend Tribune
March 11, 2013
An average Michigan charter school student will learn more in a year than his or her public school peer, according to a new report by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes.
The study found that students from Michigan charter schools learn an average of two month’s more of math and reading per academic year.
Twenty-seven percent of the state’s charter school students are from Detroit, and Detroit charter school students gained up to three months’ worth of additional education, it said.
Charter schools are publicly funded but can be privately run. They were established in part so that individual schools could have more independence over curriculum and teaching staff.
Margaret Raymond, director of the center, praised Michigan’s charter school practices, especially given problems that districts like Detroit face.
“These findings show that Michigan has set policies for charter schools to produce consistent high quality across the state,” Raymond said. “The results are especially welcome for students in communities that face significant education challenges.”
It is the center’s first in-depth study of charter schools in the state. A total of 85,650 students attend 276 charters in the state. For the study, 61 schools were too small to be analyzed, resulting in a total study sample of 212 charters.
Not all of the findings were favorable to the alternative public schools, however.
For example, 14 percent of Michigan charter schools showed below average growth and achievement, and 25 percent of students perform below average in math.
Devora Davis, a co-author of the report, attributed those conflicting numbers to the use of averages — there are both struggling charters and high-performing charters that distort the data.
The poor performances are offset by the growing proportion of charters with high-level achievement, Davis said.
“Should these trends continue, the share of schools which currently lag