For Immediate Release
Contact:  Bill Kopsky at 501-658-8815

2008-09 Benchmark Scores Show Charter School Success Driven by Demographics Rather than Educational Strategy

(Little Rock, March 7, 2011) – Demographic characteristics of open enrollment charter schools, rather than advantages of educational strategy, drive the schools’ success in attaining higher scores on standardized tests, according to an analysis of Arkansas benchmark test scores from the 2008-09 academic year released by the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, Arkansas Advocates for Children & Families and the Arkansas Education Association. The complete report is available electronically at www.arpanel.org.

“Expanding charter schools under looser restrictions as proposed in the current legislative session is just not supported by the data,” said Regina VonTungeln, a grassroots parent from Pine Bluff working with Arkansas Public Panel on education reform. “We must hold all schools accountable to become high quality–whether charter or traditional–and enhance opportunities to learn for all children. That must be our goal.”

A few models of charter schools do outperform their public school peers for low income and children of color–such as the KIPP Charter School in Helena–but these are not the rule.

“Any expansion of charter schools should be tied to proven, research based models and a strong process for ensuring that charter schools are held accountable for their performance,” said Rich Huddelston, Arkansas Advocates for Children & Families Executive Director. “Every school in Arkansas should be learning what is working in these few successful charter schools, but loosening the rules for them is not warranted.”

AEA President Donna Morey said, “It is important that Arkansas not make the mistake that other states have made by loosening the safeguards in our charter school law.”

Arkansas open enrollment charter schools, on average, have student populations that have fewer children of color and substantially fewer low-income children than their peer traditional public schools. Once these factors are controlled, most of Arkansas’s charter schools do not outperform their traditional school peers.

There are several demographic factors that have been shown consistently to correlate with lower academic achievement—race, ethnicity, and poverty—because of persistent opportunity to learn and corresponding achievement gaps. According to the report, open enrollment charter schools, by catering to higher income and fewer students of color, could in fact exacerbate this opportunity to learn gap.

Arkansas has a relatively small number of charters and has a careful screening process for the creation of new open enrollment charters that involves analysis by the state Board of Education. This has protected the state from some of the worst examples of charter school mistakes in other states, but it still has not produced a statistically significant improvement in school performance.

The Arkansas Public Policy Panel is a statewide organization dedicated to achieving social and economic justice by organizing citizen groups around the state, educating and supporting them to be more effective and powerful, and linking them with one another in coalitions and networks. The Panel seeks to bring balance to the public policy process in Arkansas.