Shawn Stelow Griffin, The Finance Project

Some argue based on recent policy changes and press coverage that there is a bias towards charter schools run by Charter Management Organizations (CMOs). Based on a new report, those favoring CMO’s on the basis of academic achievement should reconsider their position. The National Study of Charter Management Organization (CMO) Effectiveness: Charter School Management Organizations: Diverse Strategies and Diverse Student Impacts shows that CMO charter schools are not performing significantly better than their district school, or their independent charter school peers.

The study, co-written by Mathematica and the Center for Reinventing Public Education, took a comprehensive look at student achievement in schools run by 40 CMOs. The study dug into five key “drivers” the study’s authors hypothesized would have the most significant impact on student achievement:

•  An emphasis on school-wide behavior policies;
• Teacher coaching and mentoring;
•  Increased instructional time;
•  Regular use of formative assessment; and
• Performance-based compensation.

The study found that of the drivers only the emphasis on school-wide behavior policies and teacher coaching and mentoring had statistically significant impact on student achievement. 

So What?  

While this study focused on CMO charter schools, there are some takeaways for leaders of independent charter schools. The successful strategies, as is often the case with education reform approaches, can be widely implemented.

Successful Strategies: 

• Comprehensive Behavior Policies—Zero-tolerance policies, behavior codes or specific interventions that offer incentives and clear consequences, engaging parents as partners to manage school and individual student behavior netted an increase both in reading and math scores.
• Expanded Teacher Support and Review—Charter management organizations that conducted frequent review of teacher lesson plans, classroom observation, and teacher mentorship and coaching appear to correlate to increased student achievement.

These two achievement-boosting strategies can be implemented in any charter school, regardless of structure.

Strategies that did not net significant differences:  

• Defining a CMO-wide educational approach and/or curriculum
• Performance-based teacher compensation
• Frequent formative student assessments
•  More hours of annual instruction (there were positive results in math achievement, but its hard to separate this variable from comprehensive behavior policies for causality).

As with the successful strategies, the above strategies, that did not show significant improvement in student achievement, are implemented by district schools and independent charter schools as well as CMOs.

The study’s authors noted that a comparison of successful strategies in independent charter schools as well as CMO charter schools is a future direction they will pursue in their research. It will be interesting to see what the data show in relationship to this question.

What’s the Takeaway?

The data collected in this study support those who posit that without an orderly and safe environment and high-quality challenging instruction; curriculum, testing programs, and time on task do not make a significant positive impact on student achievement. These two variables are within every leader’s ability to control.

The views expressed in Charter Notebook blogs represent the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Center for Educational Innovation-Public Education Association or the U.S. Department of Education.