chair/discussant: gary w. ritter co-chair – education coordinating group

The Campbell Collaboration www.campbellcollaboration.org

EDUCATION PANEL

Impact of Charter Schools on Participants and Non-Participants

THURSDAY MAY 31 10.45-12 NOON

Chair/Discussant: Gary W. RitterCo-Chair – Education Coordinating Group

Campbell Collaboration Colloquium Copenhagen 2012


A Departure … (5? Minute intro)

• I will make my discussant comments at front end• Provide some food for thought for audience• Starting Point

– What is a US Charter School? – Middle road of school choice – publicly-funded school,

independent from local authority, open-enrollment• Research Questions/Charter Theories?

– Emily – how do charters influence kids who choose them?– Marty – how do charters surrounding TPS?


Funding Opportunities

• Mini-grants (between $6K - $14K per project)• Not full funding, but perhaps enough prompting to get

reviews moving• Goal – get reviews focused on policy relevant questions –

charters, school restructuring, teacher pay reform, impact of professional development

• Award decisions made by panel and responses will be turned around quickly

• Objective – get C2 into the policy discussion


Why are these questions important?

• We / C2 need to decide extent to which Campbell strays from clean T v. C interventions

• Given important conversation about the relationships between research and policy ….– These questions are certainly policy relevant– Policymakers need answers, IG happy to oblige …– Gives us the opportunity to think about how C2 will

engage/advocate with policymakers (advocate FOR evidence)• We / C2 also can use this as a test case for taking existing

reviews and “Campbell-izing” them


Food for Thought … Charter Effects

• There are many further questions that Emily’s study prompts– Do certain charters work and others fail?– What about the common lore that charters do poorly in early

years and better after that?– What should policymakers do?

• Author will present vote-count and average effect – how different are the resulting answers?


Food for Thought … Competitive Effects

• Work in process• Competition is a messy “intervention”

– Number of charters within 2, 5, 10 miles?– % of kids in charters in geographic region, etc..– Intervention is continuous …how should we derive an “effect

size”? (regression betas, Correlation coefficients)• Keep an eye on the decisions the authors have made here;

great example of all the difficult decisions that must be made in the course of a review


P.O. Box 7004 St. Olavs plass

0130 Oslo, Norway

E-mail: [email protected]

http://www.campbellcollaboration.org

Mostly, we are so pleased that more researchers are getting involved in this work

We will have funding (most likely) for those interested in studying policy relevenat questions in K12 education policy

Please get involved …. Thanks!


Meeting Agenda

• What do we talk about? (K12 ed, higher ed)• Tomorrow – 2 ed sessions• Funding opportunities (policy relevant questions – charters,

school restructuring, teacher pay reform)• Editorial Board (peer reviewer, author)• Where we hope to go

chair/discussant: gary w. ritter co-chair – education coordinating group

Documents