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But before we rush to make conclusions from that information, we must consider a key fact: There are two kinds of charter schools. Some are privately operated, but others are operated by public school districts.
In La Crosse, all the charter schools are operated by the La Crosse School District. There are no privately run charter schools here.
In the national study for the U.S. Department of Education, there was no statistically significant difference in student performance on math and reading tests from publicly run charter schools versus traditional public schools.
Publicly run charter schools did just as well as traditional public schools.
But there was a difference between privately run charter schools and traditional public schools. The private charter schools performed worse than traditional public schools on math and reading.
It’s an important distinction to make. In La Crosse, for example, children in the district-run charter programs do as well or better than students in the traditional public schools.
This latest study mainly showed the differences between public schools and privately run charter schools.
What should be done about it? This was a preliminary study and there will be followups, so it’s hard to answer this question.
But one very real possibility is that charter schools must be subject to the same scrutiny and the same standards as traditional public schools.
Charter schools — both public and private — offer choices to students and parents they would not have had in the past. This is a positive trend.
We need to have alternative approaches to education. They might be for high performers who are not challenged enough in traditional programs. Or they could be for at-risk students who have not done well in traditional programs.
Even though this latest report seems to put charter schools under a cloud, there are differences between privately run schools and those that are part of public school districts.
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