Matt Di Carlo here reviews the new national CREDO study of charters.

The findings are not much different from those of 2009, mainly, that charters vary widely in their ability to produce higher test scores and that on the whole the test scores of students in charters are not significantly better than students in public schools.

Ever the patient social scientist, Di Carlo is impressed that the charters seem to be getting better results than in 2009 (but could it be because of the number of low-performing charters that were closed? What happened to the students in those charters? Did they get sent back to the public schools? Is there “survivorship bias,” in which only the better charters survive?).

Di Carlo scrutinizes the data about test scores in math and reading. But he does not address the questions that Wendy Lecker asked when she reviewed the same study. Lecker, a senior attorney and director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, wrote this:

“In Connecticut, the human toll of charter schools includes severe discipline policies, such as shockingly high suspension rates of elementary school students as young as 5; mistreatment of those few students with disabilities in their schools so extreme it necessitates a civil rights settlement; high attrition rates; and exclusion of Connecticut’s neediest students.

Charter schools exact a toll on parents, as well. Public schools are overseen by elected school boards that hold public meetings. When charters replace public schools, parents lose their voice in education. Charter boards are not democratically elected. There is no requirement that board members live in the community or answer to parents. Often, members are corporate executives with no children in charter schools.

The cost of charters extends beyond the individual family. In neighborhoods across this country, public schools are community hubs. Funding a parallel school system starves the existing public schools and dooms vital community institutions. In Chicago and Philadelphia, officials de-funded public schools to fund charters, then closed an unprecedented number of neighborhood schools, despite dramatic protests by parents and students. In New Orleans, charter school expansion increased segregation, with children of color concentrated in low-performing schools and white students in higher-performing ones. In these cities, the negative effects of charter expansion fall hardest on poor children of color.

At the same time states shell out billions of dollars on charter schools, courts have ruled that states have deprived public schools of billions of dollars owed to them. Since 1997, Connecticut taxpayers have spent more than a half a billion dollars on charter schools, not including special education, transportation and other expenses host districts pay, while the state has consistently underfunded Connecticut’s public schools.

Taxpayers pay billions to fund parallel charter school systems that lack public oversight, exclude our neediest children, increase segregation, starve existing schools and decimate communities. As a nation and a state, it is time to question whether this price is too high to pay for an average of eight days extra in reading.”