Giving Compass' Take:

• Marcus Winters argues that comparing charter schools' and district schools' test scores, as the National Center for Education Statistics did, is not sufficient to determine how the schools shape students. 

• How can funders help to support robust and impartial research in this area? Charter schools vary greatly, how can funders help to identify the practices that make successful charters? 

• Find out why charter school donors should consider funding an evaluating organization. 

The National Center for Education Statistics, the statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Education, released a report with the headline finding that there is no difference in the test scores of students attending charter and traditional public schools. The finding is technically correct but highly misleading.

NCES simply compared the average test scores of students who are enrolled in charter schools with those of children who attend traditional public schools. That analysis literally answers the question: Do the test scores of kids in charter and traditional public schools differ? The answer isn’t remotely interesting. The policy-relevant research question is: What is the difference in later outcomes for students who enroll in a charter school compared with the outcomes that the same students would have achieved had they instead attended a traditional public school? Answering that question requires research design.

In a recent review of the evidence that uses such a randomized field trial approach, researchers from MIT, Columbia and Toronto University found that the research tends to find that students do better when they enroll in a charter school than if they had attended a traditional public school. The biggest benefits from attending a charter are reaped by students in urban areas and those who enroll in so-called no-excuses charters.

Read the full article about evaluating district and charter schools by Marcus Winters at The 74.