State Sen. Erik Wells, D-Kanawha, led an uphill battle to push through a bill that would have created a charter school program in West Virginia.

After pressure from Gov. Joe Manchin to wait until a special session on education, Wells pulled the legislation on second reading. Negative pressure from the West Virginia Education Association (which helped develop the bill but was still unhappy it) and the West Virginia Chapter of the American Federation of Teachers (which has endorsed Well’s primary opponent and threatened to pull endorsements from the co-sponsors of Well’s bill) also helped stall the measure.

During a meeting of the Senate Education Committee last month, Bob Brown, Executive Director of the West Virginia School Service Personnel Association (which is a partner of the WV-AFT) cited a study by Stanford University‘s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO), which says the there are more bad charter schools than good. But a Wall Street Journal piece by Paul E. Peterson says that study isn’t complete yet.

(Credo)…found that there are more weak charter schools than strong ones…Its results are dominated by a large number of students who are in their first year at a charter school and a large number of charter schools that are in their first year of operation.

Credo’s work will be more informative when it presents findings for students in charters that have been up and running for several years. You can’t judge the long-term potential of schools that have not amassed a multi-year track record.

Peterson is a professor of government at Harvard University, a Hoover Institution senior fellow, and will have a book out titled “Saving Schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning.” Peterson’s editorial, titled “Charter Schools and Student Performance,” instead shines light on more accurate studies that show charter schools do far more good for increasing student performance.

Stanford University’s Caroline Hoxby and Harvard University’s Thomas Kane have conducted randomized experiments that compare students who win a charter lottery with those who applied but were not given a seat. Winners and losers can be assumed to be equally motivated because they both tried to go to a charter school. Ms. Hoxby and Mr. Kane have found that lottery winners subsequently scored considerably higher on math and reading tests than did applicants who remained in district schools.

In another good study, the RAND Corp. found that charter high school graduation rates and college attendance rates were better than regular district school rates by 15 percentage points and eight percentage points respectively.

Peterson also takes issue with a study conducted by the AFT.

…Charter critics rely heavily on a report released in 2004 by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The AFT is hardly a disinterested investigator, and its report makes inappropriate comparisons and pays insufficient attention to the fact that charters are serving an educationally deprived segment of the population.

Click the link below to read Peterson’s full article:

Paul E. Peterson: Charter Schools and Student Performance – WSJ.com

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