scholarly journals Student Enrollment Patterns and Achievement in Ohio’s Online Charter Schools

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
June Ahn ◽  
Andrew McEachin

We utilize state data of nearly 1.7 million students in Ohio to study a specific sector of online education: K–12 schools that deliver most, if not all, education online, lack a brick-and-mortar presence, and enroll students full-time. First, we explore e-school enrollment patterns and how these patterns vary by student subgroups and geography. Second, we evaluate the impact of e-schools on students’ learning, comparing student outcomes in e-schools to outcomes in two other schooling types, traditional charter schools and traditional public schools. Our results show that students and families appear to self-segregate in stark ways where low-income, lower achieving White students are more likely to choose e-schools while low-income, lower achieving minority students are more likely to opt into the traditional charter school sector. Our results also show that students in e-schools are performing worse on standardized assessments than their peers in traditional charter and traditional public schools. We close with policy recommendations and areas for future research.

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandre Medeiros Figueiredo ◽  
Danette Waller McKinley ◽  
Adriano Massuda ◽  
George Dantas Azevedo

Abstract Background Shortages and inequitable distribution of physicians is an obstacle to move towards Universal Health Coverage, especially in low-income and middle-income countries. In Brazil, expansion of medical school enrollment, curricula changes and recruitment programs were established to increase the number of physicians in underserved areas. This study seeks to analyze the impact of these measures in reduce inequities in access to medical education and physicians’ distribution. Methods This is an observational study that analyzes changes in the number of undergraduate medical places and number of physicians per inhabitants in different areas in Brazil between the years 2010 and 2018. Data regarding the number of undergraduate medical places, number and the practice location of physicians were obtained in public databases. Municipalities with less than 20,000 inhabitants were considered underserved areas. Data regarding access to antenatal visits were analyzed as a proxy for impact in access to healthcare. Results From 2010 to 2018, 19,519 new medical undergraduate places were created which represents an increase of 120.2%. The increase in the number of physicians engaged in the workforce throughout the period was 113,702 physicians, 74,771 of these physicians in the Unified Health System. The greatest increase in the physicians per 1000 inhabitants ratio in the municipalities with the smallest population, the lowest Gross Domestic Product per capita and in those located in the states with the lowest concentration of physicians occurred in the 2013–2015 period. Increase in physician supply improved access to antenatal care. Conclusions There was an expansion in the number of undergraduate medical places and medical workforce in all groups of municipalities assessed in Brazil. Medical undergraduate places expansion in the federal public schools was more efficient to reduce regional inequities in access to medical education than private sector expansion. The recruitment component of More Doctors for Brazil Program demonstrated effectiveness to increase the number of physicians in underserved areas. Our results indicate the importance of public policies to face inequities in access to medical education and physician shortages and the necessity of continuous assessment during the period of implementation, especially in the context of political and economic changes.


Author(s):  
Belinda M. Cambre

Publicly funded alternatives to traditional public schools have taken place in the form of charter schools and, most recently, cyber charter schools. Cyber charter schools are fully online K-12 public schools and they “look” like traditional schools since students learn traditional subjects and are still subject to the same public accountability measures as their traditional brick and mortar counterparts. This chapter examines cyber charter schools in practice and summarizes the most controversial issues surrounding this form of school choice. Issues such as the legality of cyber charters under state charter laws; the allocation of per pupil funding; the use of for-profit companies in school management; ensuring access to cyber charters; and fulfilling state mandates top the list of salient issues with respect to cyber charter schools.


2014 ◽  
Vol 129 (3) ◽  
pp. 1355-1407 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland G. Fryer

Abstract This study examines the impact on student achievement of implementing a bundle of best practices from high-performing charter schools into low-performing, traditional public schools in Houston, Texas, using a school-level randomized field experiment and quasi-experimental comparisons. The five practices in the bundle are increased instructional time, more effective teachers and administrators, high-dosage tutoring, data-driven instruction, and a culture of high expectations. The findings show that injecting best practices from charter schools into traditional Houston public schools significantly increases student math achievement in treated elementary and secondary schools—by 0.15 to 0.18 standard deviations a year—and has little effect on reading achievement. Similar bundles of practices are found to significantly raise math achievement in analyses for public schools in a field experiment in Denver and program in Chicago.


2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Bifulco ◽  
Helen F. Ladd

Using an individual panel data set to control for student fixed effects, we estimate the impact of charter schools on students in charter schools and in nearby traditional public schools. We find that students make considerably smaller achievement gains in charter schools than they would have in public schools. The large negative estimates of the effects of attending a charter school are neither substantially biased, nor substantially offset, by positive impacts of charter schools on traditional public schools. Finally, we find suggestive evidence that about 30 percent of the negative effect of charter schools is attributable to high rates of student turnover.


2011 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erica Frankenberg ◽  
Genevieve Siegel-Hawley ◽  
Jia Wang

The political popularity of charter schools is unmistakable. This article explores the relationship between charter schools and segregation across the country, in 40 states, the District of Columbia, and several dozen metropolitan areas with large enrollments of charter school students in 2007-08. The descriptive analysis of the charter school enrollment is aimed at understanding the enrollment and characteristics of charter school students and the extent to which charter school students are segregated, including how charter school segregation compare to students in traditional public schools.  This article examines these questions at different levels, aggregating school-level enrollment to explore patterns among metropolitan areas, states, and the nation using three national datasets.  Our findings suggest that charters currently isolate students by race and class. This analysis of recent data finds that charter schools are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the nation.  In some regions, white students are over-represented in charter schools while in other charter schools, minority students have little exposure to white students.  Data about the extent to which charter schools serve low-income and English learner students is incomplete, but suggest that a substantial share of charter schools may not enroll such students. As charters represent an increasing share of our public schools, they influence the level of segregation experienced by all of our nation’s school children. After two decades, the promise of charter schools to use choice to foster integration and equality in American education has not yet been realized.


2012 ◽  
Vol 114 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongmei Ni

Background/Context Teachers affect student performance through their interaction with students in the context of the classrooms and schools where teaching and learning take place. Although it is widely assumed that supportive working conditions improve the quality of instruction and teachers’ willingness to remain in a school, little is known about whether or how the organizational structure of charter schools influences teacher working conditions. Purpose/Research Question This article compares teacher working conditions in charter and traditional public schools and among various types of charter schools. In doing so, it seeks to understand whether the different working conditions are influenced by the intrinsic institutional features of charter schools such as autonomy and competition, or by the extraneous factors such as measureable school and teacher characteristics. Research Design This study utilized data from the 2003–2004 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), the nation's most extensive survey of K–12 schools and teachers, both for charter schools and traditional public schools (TPSs). This article is a quantitative analysis that involves three main steps. First, based on the responses to the SASS teacher questionnaire, confirmatory factor analysis was performed to generate multiple factors corresponding to key dimensions of teacher working conditions. Second, propensity score matching was used to pair charter schools with TPSs that are similar in terms of school location, educational level, school type, and student demographics. This matching process mitigates the confounding effects of these extraneous factors on teachers’ perceptions of working conditions. Finally, a series of weighted Hierarchical Linear Models were utilized to compare teachers’ perceptions of working conditions between charter and traditional public schools, controlling for teacher and school characteristics. Conclusions/Recommendations The results show that charter and traditional public school teachers perceive their working conditions to be similar in many regards, including principal leadership, sense of community and collegiality, classroom autonomy, opportunities for professional development, and adequacy of instructional supplies. However, charter school teachers perceive that they have significantly more influence over school policies, but a heavier workload than traditional school teachers. Among charter schools, district-granted charter schools show consistently more supportive working environments than charters granted by other organizations. This implies that state policy can have some indirect influence over charter school working conditions by providing substantial administrative support and oversight to charter schools authorized by independent organizations other than the established structure of school districts.


Author(s):  
Alex Stone

Pennsylvania is at the forefront of the public cyber charter schooling movement in America. As more and more students elect to transfer from traditional public schools into cyber charter schools–and their districts of origin are forced to forfeit their tuition allocations–a need for a public school alternative to cyber charter schools has emerged. Using current practices in Pennsylvania’s public schools as a backdrop, this article presents a new model for district-level cyber schooling, called the holistic model for blended learning, that public schools in Pennsylvania (and elsewhere) can use to compete with cyber charter schools and meet the growing demand for K-12 online learning.


2019 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 105
Author(s):  
Bryan Mann

Scholars and policymakers have yet to hold a robust conversation about diversity in K-12 online schools. This study builds on research that suggests online charter schools enroll higher percentages of White and economically advantaged students compared to national K-12 school enrollment averages. While these findings remain consistent, the study presented here employs techniques used in school segregation and diversity research to develop a more nuanced understanding of online charter school enrollment patterns. While more White and wealthy students attend online charter schools compared to other types of schools nationally, there are differences across states. Understanding the nature of these differences helps consider possibilities for moving online charter school enrollments toward increased diversity. While diversity in traditional schools has benefits, this article concludes with cautions about how to achieve equity through diversity in online spaces and if these goals are attainable. If online charter schools achieve racial and economic diversity, their leaders need to apply critical lenses in developing online programming to ensure diverse enrollments lead to equity. 


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