Alaska charter school performance deserves serious study
Gov. Mike Dunleavy will no doubt mention the new charter school performance study in his State of the State speech Monday and cite it as a reason to give the state more power in creating public charter schools, while decreasing the authority of local school districts.
Dunleavy and his education commissioner have already drawn sweeping conclusions from the document, which shows Alaska charter school students doing much better than their peers in charter schools Outside on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
“Alaska’s high ranking for charter-school student achievement may seem surprising given its low ranking for NAEP performance by all public-school students,” Paul Peterson and M. Danish Shakeel wrote in their report.
“In a 2019 analysis by the Urban Institute, Alaska ranked at or near the bottom in both reading and math in grades 4 and 8. It is possible that results are skewed in some way by the challenge of controlling for Alaska’s distinctive indigenous population, which makes up about 20 percent of K–12 students,” they said.
Part of the surprising performance starts when parents are involved enough and aware enough to decide to send their children to charter schools for any number of reasons.
Parents who are not involved and aware believe they have no role in public education. Those parents don’t apply to get their kids into charter schools or stay in touch with the teachers in regular public schools.
Alaska has about 30 charter schools, with about half of them in Anchorage and Mat-Su. Most of the charter schools do not provide transportation to school, which is a hurdle for many families, one-parent households and low-income families.
Most of the charter schools are for elementary students, who are the prime age for close parental involvement.
Alaska’s charter schools are public schools, not private schools, serving about 6 or 7 percent of public school students.
I’ve asked the state education department for a list of Alaska charter schools and enrollment numbers, information that should be easy to find, but isn’t.
Instead of just quoting the recent academic study, the state should make a commitment to answering the questions raised by that research.
The statement that “It is possible that results are skewed in some way by the challenge of controlling for Alaska’s distinctive indigenous population” deserves a thorough study.
Here is a 2020 state directory of charter schools, the most recent I could find. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools said there were 31 charter schools in Alaska in 2021-22 with an enrollment of 7,621.
Most of the charter schools have a specific academic focus, which is critical to setting goals and expectations for the families, teachers and students.
I’d like to know how many of the students at Alaska charter schools are from families where there are two parents and what the household income is.
Two parents or one, I suspect the unifying factor is parental commitment and a pledge to help at school.
Income level is probably a factor as well because that can give people the time and energy they need to be involved with a school on a frequent basis.
I’d also like to know to what extent the high performance of charter school students on the national NAEP test, given to a selection of students in fourth and eighth grade, is a reflection of the involvement of their parents in each child’s education.
It appears that the Dunleavy and House GOP “plan” to stuff unexamined education items into a bill and pass it without public review has drawn enough opposition to slow it down, which is good. The attempt to rework the charter school model to take power away from local school boards is one of the unexamined elements.
At a Saturday hearing, Anchorage Rep. Calvin Schrage said that while charter schools are theoretically open to everyone, they are not really accessible to low-income families, in part because of a lack of transportation.
“Do students, all students, have access to charter schools if they don’t have access to transportation?” he asked Education Commissioner Deena Bishop.
“And can you talk about whether there is any local data that addresses whether or not charter schools truly are serving the population equally or at least relatively equally across social and economic classes?” Schrage asked.
Bishop said, “I will have to provide data to you at another time because I don’t have that in front of me.”
Schrage asked the right questions. I don’t think anyone has done the research to provide reliable answers.
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