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Stanford CREDO study Archives - North Carolina Coalition for Charter Schools

Aug 03
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National Review Op-Ed: ‘Gap-buster’ Roger Bacon Academy

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Baker Mitchell, founder of the Roger Bacon Academy, has a new op-ed in National Review about RBA as a “gap-busting” charter network. The Roger Bacon Academy earned this national recognition in a new landmark study from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO). The third of its kind, the CREDO study assessed nearly 2 million charter students over a period of four years, comparing them to matched students in district schools.

Read more about the CREDO study on the Coalition blog (here, here, and here).

The Roger Bacon Academy operates four classical charter schools–all of them Coalition member schools— in Southeastern North Carolina.

Here’s an excerpt from Baker Mitchell’s National Review op-ed:

[CREDO] researchers found that “in both reading and math charter schools provide students with stronger learning” than the traditional public schools they ordinarily would have attended. Among charters, those in group networks administered by charter-management organizations generally did best.

…While the overall results should be enough to shake up the education bureaucracy, “the real surprise of the study,” the researchers reported, was “the number of charter schools that . . . achieved educational equity for their students” — eliminating, for all practical purposes, the achievement gap between white students and “minority and poverty students.” They coined the term “gap busters” to describe such schools.

Charter-management-organization networks were credited with being “gap busters” if (1) the network’s average achievement percentages were above their state’s traditional school averages, and (2) the added days of learning above the traditional schools was as strong for disadvantaged students as for non-disadvantaged students. Of the 378 networks the researchers evaluated, the Roger Bacon Academy, I’m proud to say, was among the highest rated.

Congratulations to Baker Mitchell and Roger Bacon Academy!

Find a pdf of the op-ed here.

Aug 01
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National charter group: Top takeaways from Stanford study

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Analysis of Stanford’s landmark CREDO study, revealing impressive learning gains for charter students, continues to accrue.  Yueting (Cynthia) Xu of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has developed an excellent list of seven top takeaways from the study. We’ve covered results from the CREDO study in some earlier posts (here and here), but one finding, highlighted in Xu’s post, deserves special attention. Not only does it affirm the value of the charter model for student performance right now, it also offers reason for even greater optimism as the movement continues to grow. Why? As Xu notes:

The charter school sector is demonstrating improvement over time.

From 2009 to 2023, charter school students consistently demonstrated substantial positive learning gains. In the 2009 CREDO study, charter school students showed less growth in reading (6 days less) [and] math (17 days less) compared to their district school peers. In the 2013 study, charter school students had stronger learning growth in reading (6 more days) and similar learning growth in math compared to their peers in district school. In 2023, charter school students gained an average of 16 additional days of learning in reading and 6 extra days of learning in math.

… This latest report from CREDO is one of the strongest pieces of evidence of charter school success in recent history. Between the 2009 and 2023 studies, amidst stagnant overall performance across the nation, the trend of learning gains for students enrolled in charter schools is both significant and positive. These results show that “the framework of charter schools helps current students and strengthens public education overall.”

Read more about the CREDO study in the Wall Street Journal and New York Magazine.

Jul 28
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U.S. Rep. Foxx: Charter schools are ‘conduits of opportunity’

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Publication of groundbreaking research from Stanford University has prompted renewed discussion in Congress about charter schools as avenues for educational opportunity. Citing a new study from Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO)–revealing significant achievement gains for students attending charter schools–U.S. Congresswoman Virginia Foxx  of North Carolina noted the following on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives:

At a time when the reading and math scores of our nation’s students have plummeted, the results of this study serve as a beacon of hope for millions of American families. Simply put, charter schools serve as conduits of opportunity.

Rep. Foxx, who represents North Carolina’s 5th District, chairs the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Watch her full remarks below:

The 2023 study is CREDO’s third national evaluation of charter schools. Take a deeper dive in CREDO’s 2023 digital report. Read more about the CREDO study here and here on the Coalition blog.

Jul 14
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“Gap-busting” N.C. Charter Organizations Recognized in Landmark National Report

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Several North Carolina charter management organizations (CMOs) have earned recognition as “gap-busting” schools in a landmark national study comparing charter and traditional public school performance. Coalition members Roger Bacon Academy (RBA), National Heritage Academies, and KIPP Eastern North Carolina were among CMOs nationwide commended for their success in closing achievement gaps. The report was released by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO). Congratulations to these CMOs!

Criteria for inclusion as a “gap-buster” were rigorous, requiring high performance for schools overall as well as for subgroups of disadvantaged students. However, numerous charters are making the grade, as CREDO notes (p. 69):

We found hundreds of schools that satisfy dual criteria: (1) the average achievement of the school exceeds the state average, and (2) their disadvantaged students (Black, Hispanic, in-poverty, ELL) have growth as strong or stronger than their non- disadvantaged peers in the same school.

Significant achievement gains for charters, with CMOs leading performance

Overall, the CREDO study revealed significant achievement gains for students attending public charter schools. Researchers reported learning outcomes in terms of days of learning–gained or lost, across the academic year. Compared to traditional public schools, charter schools advanced the learning of their students by an average of 16 days in reading and 6 days in math.

Charter schools were particularly effective in producing learning gains for disadvantaged students, CREDO found. However, charters run by CMOs produced even bigger gains than stand-alone charter schools–27 days in reading and 23 days in math.

Policy implications from the report

The success of gap-busting schools has big and exciting implications for education, as CREDO’s researchers write (p. 151):

The real surprise of the study is the number of charter schools that have achieved educational equity for their students: we call them “gap-busting” schools. Ensuring equivalent yearly growth across student groups has two critical consequences. First, ensuring minority and poverty students learn on par with or better than their White peers interrupts or reduces the achievement gap. It happens regularly in a large swath of charter schools. More critically, there is strong evidence that these gap-busting schools can be scaled. Added to the traditional district schools that achieve similar results, this is the life-transforming education that so many students need. Second, these schools deliver hundreds of independent proof points that learning gaps between student groups are not structural or inevitable; better results are possible.

Find detailed information about CMOs in the report appendix, which begins on page 122. Specific information can be found for KIPP ENC (p. 129), National Heritage Academies (p. 130), and Roger Bacon Academy (p.132).