Charter schools have been a hot topic of debate this year.
Maxim Institute has conducted a survey of high quality studies of US Charter schools that have evaluated the impact of on four groups of disadvantaged pupils, including low-income students, those with English as a second language, ethnic minority groups and special education students.
Our findings indicate that while the impact of charter schools on different groups of disadvantaged students is mixed, charter schools are far from being the failed model of schooling that the teacher unions, among others, have claimed.
In some cases, charter schools have had positive impact, improving their students’ learning enough to allow them to make up a few months or even a year’s worth of learning.
The challenges
One of the challenges facing the New Zealand school system is the gap between the highest and lowest achieving students.
Partnership Schools targeted at disadvantaged students could help some of the lowest-performing students to catch-up. New Zealand ought to embrace a well-implemented Partnership School system as another tool for helping to eliminate the problem of educational disadvantage.
Steve Thomas is Senior Researcher at Maxim Institute, Auckland, which is the source of the above article.