Why this point in time is importantA study of the academic impacts of charter schools on their students is timely. The 2022 results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress removed any ambiguity about student learning after the COVID-19 pandemic. As a country, student academic performance has regressed by two decades in math and fallen steeply in reading, with the most severe performance declines found among minority, poverty and special needs populations that were already struggling before the pandemic. As school and district leaders, policymakers, teachers, families and philanthropists build and implement plans to address pandemic-accelerated declines in student learning, they need an analysis of school and system achievement presented here to guide and support their efforts.
Our work deliberately focuses on a specific outcome: the annual progress that students make over an academic year. In this report, we look at students in charter schools compared to the experience they would have had in the TPS they would have otherwise attended. One notable limitation of this approach is that we have a limited line of sight “under the hood” and into the role that localized environmental, regulatory and organizational factors play on individual school performance. Our contribution to the K–12 education research and practice landscape tests fundamental questions of the effectiveness of charter schools and highlights outcomes and trends rooted in academic progress.
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