The report, released Tuesday morning by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, provides perhaps the most thorough perspective available of the landscape of charter schooling, which has grown significantly in recent years.

Macke Raymond, CREDO’s founder and director, said that the report sketched a picture of continuous improvement for the charter sector over the last 15 years. The center’s first national analysis, issued in 2009, showed charters under-performing traditional schools in both core subjects; in a 2013 follow-up, they slightly bested traditional schools in English while still lagging in math. That movement represents a modest silver lining for American education, she said, after a prolonged period during which learning — as measured by standardized tests like the National Assessment of Educational Progress — largely stagnated even before the pandemic. 

“When you compare [our findings with] the results of NAEP — which, over an equivalent period, have completely flatlined — what you’re looking at is really the only story in U.S. education policy where we’ve been able to create a set of conditions such that schools actually do get better,” Raymond argued.

The new study focuses on charter school performance in 29 states, as well as Washington, D.C., and New York City, incorporating standardized test scores between 2015 and 2019. All told, over 80 percent of tested public school students were included in CREDO’s data set. More than 1.8 million charter students were each paired with a “virtual twin” (i.e., a nearby pupil possessing similar demographic traits and prior test scores) enrolled at the district school that the charter student otherwise would have attended.

The research team calculated that charter school students gained the equivalent of an additional 16 days of learning (based on a traditional 180-day school calendar) in English compared with similar kids at district schools. Their six-day edge in math was smaller, though still considered statistically significant.

But even those averages, comprising millions of student measurements across the country, contain significant variation. Black students attending charter schools gained 35 days of growth in reading and 29 days in math — as if they’d attended school for an extra 1.5 months over a single school year. Hispanics enjoyed 30 extra days of reading and 19 in math. By comparison, white and multiracial students lost the equivalent 24 days of annual math learning in charter schools. 

Smaller sub-groups experienced similar divergences. Poor students saw much higher gains in charters than in traditional public schools (23 extra days of reading growth, 17 extra days in math), as did English learners (six extra days of reading, eight in math); students with overlapping designations (such as both African American and low-income, or both Hispanic and English learner), also made considerable strides

By contrast, special education students were seriously stymied, losing 13 days of reading growth and 14 days of math at charter schools relative to kids receiving special education outside of charters. Raymond called that inequity one of the few sore spots revealed by the study, adding that charter schools should be “taken to task” for the collective failure.

“With the exception of very few charter schools that specialize in particular kinds of special education, the sector has basically thrown up their hands and said, ‘This isn’t our job,’” she said.

Even among charters, some types tend to yield better results than others. Specifically, those grouped within a charter management organization (CMO) — a network, either non- or for-profit, that operates multiple schools, such as the well-known KIPP or Success Academy organizations — provide 27 extra days of instruction in reading, and 23 extra days in math, than traditional schools. Stand-alone charters, which encompass roughly two-thirds of all charter schools, generate 10 extra days of reading growth and negative-three days of growth in math.

Douglas Harris, an economics professor at Tulane University the impact of charter schools on surrounding public school districts, said that the results of the CREDO report largely dovetailed with those of in New Orleans and elsewhere. He also said that the especially impressive findings from CMO-affiliated schools were somewhat predictable given that many cities and states only consider top-performing charter schools as candidates for replication.

“Some of this is kind of mechanical — not in a bad way, it’s just how the sector operates. If you’re a stand-alone, and you do well, you can open another school,” Harris said. “Then you become a CMO, and they’re better because they were selected to build on their own success. That’s a positive aspect of the charter model.”

Even more distinctive was the dividing line between what might be deemed “traditional” charters and those offering instruction virtually, which had already earned an ugly reputation for low academic quality even before the pandemic began. The popularity of the virtual charter sector has grown substantially since the emergence of COVID — by the Network for Public Education found that fully or mostly online programs enrolled 13 percent of all charter students during the 2020–21 school year — even as they delivered a staggering 124 fewer days of math growth than traditional public schools, along with 58 fewer days of growth in English.

If virtual initiatives were excluded from the national sample, the average charter school advantage would jump from 16 extra days of reading instruction to 21, and from 6 extra days of math instruction to 14. 

Martin West, the academic dean at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, called the report “easily the most comprehensive analysis of charter school performance to date” and echoed concerns about the performance of virtual charter schools.

“The results continue to raise questions about the regulatory environment for virtual charter schools, whose results drag down the overall performance of the broader sector,” West said. “These schools may provide an essential option for students for whom in-person learning truly isn’t possible, but state policymakers should look carefully at who is attending these schools and how well they are being served.”

An additional state-by-state analysis showed that individual jurisdictions have built particularly effective charter school sectors. Across New York State, charter students receive the equivalent of 75 extra days of growth in reading, and 73 extra days in math, compared with demographically similar students at district schools. Massachusetts (41 extra days in both subjects), Maryland (37 extra days in both subjects), Tennessee (34 extra days of reading and 39 in math), and Rhode Island (90 extra days of reading and 88 in math) offered similarly impressive statewide results. Charter school students only experienced significantly weaker reading growth in one state, Oregon.

An additional lesson came with respect to new charter entrants versus existing options. New schools opened by existing CMOs tended to outpace their district competitors, but also to be out-performed themselves by older schools within their own CMO.

“The new schools that have come in since the second study are strong, but they’re not as strong,” Raymond observed. “So it’s not that new schools are coming in and kicking butt and dragging the sector along with them. It’s that, over this period, individual schools around the country are making incremental changes that lead to this trajectory of upward performance.”

Foremost among them: expanding career and technical education.

Andy Smarick, a senior fellow at the conservative , scoured the websites of all 72 major-party candidates in 2022’s gubernatorial races. In all, he found 27 education issues supported by at least one candidate.

The data suggest clear partisan divides: Among Democrats, the top two issues mentioned were increasing K-12 funding and expanding Pre-K. Among Republicans, it was school choice and curricular reform.

But one issue rounded out the top three among both Democrats and Republicans: CTE. Along with greater funding, it was mentioned more frequently than any other topic. In all, 30 candidates, or 42%, featured it on their websites.

Higher funding held a distant fourth place for Republicans, far below CTE. An equal percentage of GOP candidates — 22% — expressed support for charter schools and better reading instruction.

Smarick, a member of the University of Maryland System’s Board of Regents who has also served as chair of the state’s Higher Education Commission and president of its State Board of Education, said he wasn’t surprised to find CTE hold such a prominent place.

“So many people have pushed for so long for a ‘college for all’ mentality, which was good and important, that now a lot of elected officials are saying we also have to do something on certificates and certifications and apprenticeships” and other career-driven outcomes.

He also noted that many college-going students don’t end up with a four-year degree. “So state legislators and governors have to think in terms of ‘How do we serve all of these adults?’”

The findings resonate with those of a survey released earlier this month that found Americans now want K-12 education to focus on “practical, tangible skills” such as managing one’s personal finances, preparing meals and making appointments. Such outcomes now rank as Americans’ No. 1 educational priority.

U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona is already signaling that CTE is a priority: Last week he previewed the administration’s “Raise the Bar: Unlocking Career Success” initiative, which seeks to overhaul secondary education with an eye toward granting students the skills and credentials necessary to enter college or the workforce after 12th grade. 

Designed in concert with First Lady Jill Biden as well as the secretaries of commerce and labor, it urges colleges to offer dual-enrollment coursework to high school juniors.

The National Student Clearinghouse has estimated that the number of students with “some college, no credential” in 2020 grew to , roughly the .

It may be a surprise, then, that while 28% of Democratic candidates in Smarick’s analysis mentioned expanding community college, not a single Republican did.

Big differences between incumbents, challengers

Smarick also broke out mentions between incumbents and challengers, finding that non-incumbent Democrats discussed several issues that no incumbent did: One in four articulated what he called an “anti-school choice position,” and more than one in five argued for less school testing. 

He theorized that perhaps these challengers “believed taking these positions would help them win primaries and garner support of teachers’ unions.”

Likewise, 38% of Republican non-incumbents expressed support for charter schools, while not a single Republican incumbent did. Non-incumbents were about twice as likely as incumbents to say they supported school choice more generally (81% to 40%). Smarick suggested that this is because these non-incumbents, like their Democratic counterparts, were also focused on winning primaries and earning the support of base voters who support more ideological causes.

Incumbents, he said, zeroed in on more practical day-to-day issues like early childhood and funding and, in red states, expanding the number of choices available to families. “It just seems like once you’ve been in office for a while, a lot of these incumbents realize that lots of families like their traditional public schools and they want to make sure that they’re well-funded.”

That may especially be true of schools in the “COVID era,” he said, which need extra funding so students can recover academically. 

More broadly, Smarick said, public opinion polls consistently show that the public “likes the idea of well-funded schools. So it’s not really a surprise that incumbents, including Republicans, put that on their list of things that they want to make sure they accomplish.”

Harvard University education scholar Martin West, a co-author of the annual public opinion survey on school issues, said the differences between incumbents and non-incumbents are “fascinating” and suggest that “the experience of running a state school system, or perhaps the responsibility of having run one, has a moderating effect on candidates’ views.”

He also noted that the striking differences in positions taken by Democrat and Republican candidates are consistent with the most recent EdNext findings showing greater partisan polarization overall.

Blue state, red state, swing state divides

When it came to the states candidates were vying to lead, Democratic nominees didn’t offer many surprises: Those in blue states supported traditional “higher-dollar” initiatives such as expanding pre-K and community college, and raising K-12 funding levels and teacher pay. And while blue-state Democrats talked about investments in community college and university systems, swing-state Democrats were much more likely to discuss CTE.

As for Republicans, red-state GOP candidates were actually less likely to advocate for more red-meat Republican positions such as a parents’ bill of rights or measures to block so-called critical race theory in the classroom. Just one in five GOP nominees in red states advocated for these policies, fewer than in blue or swing states.

Perhaps most striking: In blue states, more than half of GOP nominees took a pro-charter position, but in red states, not a single GOP nominee did. They were also four times more likely to advocate for more K-12 funding than their blue-state GOP counterparts.

Smarick said that perhaps red-state GOP nominees saw less of a need than their blue-state counterparts to fret about instructional crises in schools — or that perhaps their states’ public schools perform well enough to lessen the need to advocate for school-choice and charter reforms.

But it may also suggest a kind of “remarkable” generational change around charter schools, he said.

“If we go back 10, 15, 20 years ago, lots of Republican candidates were more willing to talk about charter schools than school choice,” Smarick said. “Now it seems to have flipped.”

And since many of those pro-school-choice Republicans won their races, he said, “in red states, we’re going to see the tax credits, more ESA [Education Savings Account] stuff. And this is different than it was, certainly, a generation ago.”

Overall, nearly two-thirds (64%) of Republicans in Smarick’s analysis talked about supporting school choice, while just one Democrat, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, mentioned it.

When it came to how these issues played out, Smarick found a few surprises: Increasing K-12 funding was a “top-five” issue among winners in blue, swing, and red states.

Matt Hogan, a partner at the Democratic polling firm , said he wasn’t surprised. He said Impact’s polling has consistently shown that increasing K-12 funding “is very popular and its continued popularity is consistent with voters’ desire a focus on bread-and-butter issues when it comes to education, rather than engaging in culture war fights.” 

For Democrats, Harvard’s West noted, the push for more K-12 funding was paired with expanding Pre-K and community college, two investments “with which K-12 funding will have to compete.” That may help to explain why states that switch from Republican to Democratic control have traditionally on K-12 schools, he said.

In the end, what might be most significant in Smarick’s findings is what’s not mentioned: teacher shortages. They got “minimal attention” from candidates, with just three of 72 even mentioning the issue.

“I kept looking through these websites, expecting half or three-quarters of candidates to talk about it, and they just didn’t,” Smarick said.

Though the issue was , “It was the dog that didn’t bark” on candidates’ websites. “Which makes you think maybe we ought to take a look at what’s happening in states as opposed to just following national narratives about education policy.”

The results of the benchmark federal exam, referred to as the “Nation’s Report Card,” revealed startling declines in student performance, including the first-ever drop in long-term math scores. Nine-year-olds, who have made steady progress since the test was first administered in the early 1970s, saw roughly twenty years of measured growth evaporate between 2020 and 2022. 

Using the results of state standardized tests, as well as private assessments like the MAP or iReady exams, a growing cadre of academics have offered evidence of K-12 learning deficits produced COVID’s disruption to school operations — including signs that Democratic-leaning states and districts, which were more likely to close schools longer, saw less instruction and steeper hits to achievement. But NAEP provides the first nationally representative data confirming those suspicions and charting the diverging effects on distinct student groups.

While average math and English scores fell for virtually all students, historically disadvantaged children — among them African Americans, Hispanics, the poor, and academically struggling students — generally saw larger drops, widening the gaps with their higher-scoring peers. 

Martin West is the academic dean and Henry Less Shattuck professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. As a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, an independent, nonpartisan body that sets policy for NAEP, he also has a unique perspective on the test and the data it generates.

In an email exchange Thursday with ����Ӱ��’s Kevin Mahnken, West spoke about the results, the possibility of growing educational inequity as a result of the pandemic, and public perception of schools in its wake. Asked whether the steep drop in performance could be remedied with time and more resources, his answer was stark.

“The honest answer is that we don’t know, as we’ve never seen a decline of this size and scope before,” West said.

The interview was edited for length and clarity.

����Ӱ��: The public reaction to these results has been huge — almost surprisingly so, given that prior studies have indicated significant learning deficits resulting from the pandemic. Do you think NAEP’s role as the authoritative national exam just makes these trends un-ignorable?

Martin West: It has certainly been gratifying, as a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, to see the strong reaction to the results. And I do think that reaction speaks to NAEP’s reputation as the authoritative source for tracking the achievement of American students over time. The NAEP Long-Term Trend, in particular, has remained essentially unchanged for more than fifty years. NAEP assessments are also the only tests that are routinely administered to samples that are truly representative of the nation as a whole. I think the latter factor in particular helps explain why NAEP results garner so much national media coverage. Reports based on state tests are inherently local stories. Reports based on interim assessment data leave room for doubts about whether they are truly representative. NAEP releases are national stories.

Do you think the steady trickle of bad news, whether from NAEP or other tests, is related to the diminished perceptions of public schools found in the EdNext poll, among others?

I think it is impossible to separate the role bad news about test scores has played in shaping public perceptions from the role played by factors like prolonged school closures that caused test scores to decline in the first place. So the bad news is definitely related to the diminished perceptions of school quality, but I don’t think we can say for sure that it has an independent effect.

It sounds pretty bad for students to be scoring at levels that were last seen 20 or more years ago. But what should we expect in terms of bounce-back achievement now that schools are essentially all offering in-person learning? In other words, while this is a very sharp one-time decline, is it likely to reset the learning trajectory for millions of kids permanently?

The honest answer is that we don’t know, as we’ve never seen a decline of this size and scope before. Recent reports based on interim assessments suggest that, as students resumed in-person instruction, they have generally demonstrated rates of achievement growth that were typical before the pandemic. That is encouraging as far as it goes, but it would not be enough to help the students whose educations have been disrupted return to where they would have been absent the pandemic.

This is one reason why I think it is critical to be clear about what we mean by recovery. Over the next decade, as students whose learning was not disrupted by the pandemic begin to move through the K-12 system, I’d expect NAEP results to revert back to pre-pandemic levels. We might then be tempted to say that the system as a whole has bounced back. But there are roughly 50 million students whose educations were disrupted — including two of my sons — and I would not want us to declare success unless we’ve also helped the specific students who were impacted make up lost ground. We have an obligation to help them experience accelerated rather than typical growth going forward.

On the other hand, these large scoring drops are presumably also interacting with the long-term stagnation or declines that we saw in last year’s release of long-term trends data from before the pandemic. If the pre-COVID situation was essentially one of weak growth, is it fair to say that the mere return to in-person learning won’t be enough to get students back on track?

That’s exactly right. From 2009 to 2019, we’ve seen the unfortunate combination of stagnant average scores and growing inequality between higher- and lower-achieving students. Today’s release confirmed that those lower-achieving students were also hardest hit by the pandemic. A return to business as usual would therefore only reinforce the pandemic’s unequal effects rather than offset them.

My impression is that the Long-Term Trend results since the early ’70s have essentially shown slowly shrinking performance gaps between students in different subgroups. But yesterday’s release indicated that the math disparity between white and African American students is now growing, and I believe Hispanic and students in the National School Lunch Program (a common metric of poverty) also experienced larger declines in math than white and non-NSLP students, respectively. How concerned should we be that COVID has not only led to general learning loss, but also hindered the progress of historically disadvantaged subgroups?

One legitimate (if clearly partial) success story of American education that is well documented by the Long-Term Trend NAEP is the gradual narrowing of achievement gaps between racial and ethnic groups. It is therefore jarring to see the math gap between Black and white students increase sharply in this year’s data. The other differences you note across groups were not large enough to be statistically significant, but they do point in the same direction of greater inequality. This is not necessarily surprising given what we know about the pandemic’s impact on historically disadvantaged subgroups generally, but it is certainly concerning.

Were you as surprised as I was by the reading scores, which didn’t show widening racial gaps between white, Hispanic, and African American students? Given what existing studies have shown about literacy setbacks during the pandemic, I was expecting a different result. It also seemed noteworthy that schools in cities, which obviously enroll disproportionate percentages of non-white students, didn’t see lower reading scores for nine-year-olds. How much faith should we put in these figures?

I agree that this pattern in reading is a bit unexpected, all things considered, but I find it hard to be too encouraged by results showing an equally large decline across these three racial groups. I’ll also be curious to see if this pattern is confirmed on the “main NAEP” results set for release this October. The lack of a decline for city schools is also a puzzle. Here, though, it is important to keep in mind that the NCES [National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the NAEP test] definition of “city” schools is not limited to large urban districts. 

For example, my own local district in Newton, Massachusetts, is classified as a “city” district despite the fact that most Boston-area residents would think of it as a suburb. The results for the 26 school districts that participate in the Trial Urban District Assessment and will be included in the main NAEP release will provide a clearer picture of what’s happened in the nation’s big-city schools.