Fordham report on constraints to charter school autonomy never provides evidence that unconstrained operations enhance performance

Contact: Charisse Gulosino, (617) 287-7583; charisse.gulosino@umb.edu

BOULDER, Colo. and TEMPE, Ariz. (May 26, 2010) - A new review released today by the Think Tank Review Project finds that a recent report contending that constraints on charter school autonomy undermine the schools' effectiveness merely assumes the benefits of such autonomy. It fails to provide supporting empirical evidence.

The report, Charter School Autonomy: A Half-Broken Promise, was reviewed for the TTRP by professor Charisse Gulosino of the University of Massachusetts-Boston.

The report was written by Dana Brinson and Jacob Rosch and published by The Thomas B. Fordham Institute. It examines state charter school laws and then hands out letter grades to states on the basis of how much autonomy their enabling laws grant charters.

In her review, Gulosino finds numerous flaws in the report, the most obvious and important of which is "the arbitrariness of the report's scoring, weighting and grading system." She writes: "The report's interpretation of the effects on autonomy of each state's statute language leaves a lot of room for arbitrariness in the metric scores and grade ranges."

In addition, she writes, the report "is missing evidence establishing the level of constraints on charter autonomy or how such constraints adversely affect school performance." The report's rationale "is largely rhetorical, not empirical," Gulosino writes. It simply assumes the benefits of greater freedom for charters. At the same time, she notes, it ignores the point "that charter school autonomy comes at a price: state educational bodies that may authorize charter schools bargain autonomy for accountability."

Gulosino also refutes the report's claim that local education agencies and higher education institutions are associated with low levels of autonomy. Her own examination of the data finds that the level of school autonomy is not in fact associated with the type of charter authorizer; instead, it is states with more authorizing options that are linked to higher "grades" for autonomy and greater numbers of charters. "With multiple types of chartering authorities, charter applicants may have fewer barriers to entry and more opportunities to self-select based on preferred authorizing standards/practices."

Gulosino concludes: "The report does not further our understanding of this issue and is of little or no help in guiding policy for charter school authorizers, state legislators, school district leaders, donors, school leaders, teachers, parents, or even charter school supporters."

The Think Tank Review Project (http://thinktankreview.org), a collaborative project of University of Colorado at Boulder's Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC) and the ASU Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU), provides the public, policy makers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected think tank publications. The project is made possible by funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

Find Charisse Gulosino's review on the web at:
http://epicpolicy.org/thinktank/review-charter-school-autonomy

Find Charter School Autonomy: A Half-Broken Promise, by Dana Brinson and Jacob Rosch and published by The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, on the web at:
http://www.edexcellence.net/index.cfm/news_charter-school-autonomy-a-half-broken-promise

Think Tank Research Quality: Lessons for Policy Makers, the Media, and the Public, our new book based on the work of the Think Tank Review Project, is now available from Information Age Publishing at http://www.infoagepub.com/products/Think-Tank-Research-Quality, or from Barnes & Noble at http://tinyurl.com/TTRQ-B-N.

The Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC) at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU) at Arizona State University collaborate to produce policy briefs and think tank reviews. Our goal is to promote well-informed democratic deliberation about education policy by providing academic as well as non-academic audiences with useful information and high quality analyses.

Visit EPIC and EPRU at http://www.educationanalysis.org/

EPIC and EPRU are members of the Education Policy Alliance
(http://educationpolicyalliance.org).

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