Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The typical American charter school exists as an independent, non-profit organization. However, some charter school operators have expanded their reach to include multiple schools and thousands of students. The existence of large networks of charter schools has the potential to spread tested, effective practices across a larger portion of the community. However, the demonstration of positive student impacts is not always a necessary requirement for expanding from a single school to a charter network. Since education is a states’ right, each state has different policies in place for if and how charter school operators are allowed to expand their practices to multiple schools. This study undertakes an exploration into the student growth outcomes of the charter networks operating schools in 24 states, New York City , and Washington DC.

In addition to independent charter schools and charter networks, the report will also examine the operations of super-networks. Super-networks are large charter networks which usually span across large physical areas which often include multiple states. These super-networks usually consist of multiple regional-level organizations which operate as separate CMOs/EMOs but have an overarching national management organization. A network may also be classified as a super-network if it operates multiple “brands” of charter schools.

The overarching question of this analysis is, “Do schools which are part of a larger management structure have differential impacts on student academic growth when compared to the impacts of independent charter schools?” This question is a very broad and unsophisticated look at charter school network impacts. By using more nuanced analyses, we can tease out much more detail about which students have better outcomes from different management structures. For some subpopulations, network benefits from economies of scale in services, personnel, or facilities may lead to improved or weaker academic growth when compared to their peers. To this end, the report includes breakout analyses by student racial/ethnic subpopulations, English language learners, students in poverty, and student receiving special education services.

Inclusion in a charter network may also effect schools differently based on the characteristics of the school. In this study we look at the academic growth of students attending new charter schools to determine if students attending new schools in a charter network have different growth from students in new charters which are not part of a network. We also include an analysis of full-time online charter schools in a network compared to brick-and-mortar schools and non-profit vs for-profit networks.

The previous CGAR study demonstrated wide variation in the performance of charter school networks. This report will again examine and report on the distribution of average student academic growth by network.

The results from the study will indicate how measurement of student growth can be an effective means of estimating the value of institutional learning and large-scale organizational structures in the charter sector.