How do charter school options affect student discipline in traditional public schools in Arkansas?

A research paper entitled “,” by ACRE Policy Analyst Dr. Mavuto Kalulu, ACRE Scholar and BT����Associate Professor of Economics Dr. Thomas Snyder, and former ACRE Undergraduate Research Fellow and BT����Alumnus Aaron Newell, was published in the November 2019 edition of the Quarterly Review of Business Disciplines.��

The Quarterly Review of Business Disciplines is a journal of the Academy of Business Disciplines sponsored by the University of North Florida.��

The authors examine the effect charter schools have on student behavior in traditional public schools. They find that an increase in charter school enrollment is associated with fewer disciplinary infractions in traditional public schools in Arkansas.

From the authors:

In Arkansas, charter enrollment appears to be a win-win for students in both types of schools. Existing Arkansas studies have shown that students perform well in charter schools compared to traditional public schools, and that student performance improves under competition. Our study shows that charter schools also reduce the disciplinary infractions at traditional public schools.��Teachers have listed classroom behavior as a major obstacle. Charter schools can provide alternative approaches and competition that can benefit traditional public schools. State and local governments can look to charter schools to help alleviate the disciplinary issues in the traditional public schools and improve student performance.”

The research paper was a project Newell undertook with Kalulu and Snyder during his tenure as an ACRE Undergraduate Research Fellow in the spring semester of 2018. Newell is currently a first-year law student at Bowen School of Law.

When a charter school opens in the vicinity of a traditional public school, some people fear that the decreased enrollment caused by students transferring will cause the traditional public schools to shut down. When a public school shuts down, children are assigned to other schools, which they and their parents may or may not like. This fear about charter schools is based on the assumption that traditional public schools cannot adjust to the competition by improving their standards.

show that in the 2015–16 school year, 18 out of 1,037 traditional public schools closed down. Two out of the 18 closed schools were in a district that did not have a single student transfer to a charter school. Nine of the 18 schools were in districts that saw less than 1 percent of their students transfer to open enrollment charter schools. Pulaski County School District had the highest percentage of students leaving for charter schools at 14 percent. The school district, however, closed only 2 out of its 38 traditional public schools. The reason for the closure was the , which meant consolidation of some schools.

No evidence shows that charter schools in Arkansas are causing public schools to close down. Traditional public schools are able to adjust and offer an alternative to open enrollment charter schools. Rather than harming traditional public schools, open enrollment charter schools are helping traditional public schools to improve students’ performance.

An empirical evaluation of shows that open enrollment charter school students perform better than comparable students in traditional public schools in both math and literacy. While this outcome is a positive one for charter schools, it is not as gratifying if, in the process, open enrollment charter schools cause academic harm to students in traditional public schools. Some argue that open enrollment charter schools draw the best students from traditional public schools, leaving behind hard-to-teach students and leading to the loss of the positive peer influence from the good students. Others argue that the opposite is true: open enrollment charter schools mostly draw students who might not perform as well in a traditional public school setting and who might have a negative effect on their classmates. However, research shows that the entry of charter schools into the public school system is actually associated with improved performance for traditional public school students.

A study in Texas by examined the effect of charter schools on student performance in traditional public schools. The researchers found higher test scores for traditional public school students when there was a greater percentage of students leaving traditional public schools for charter schools. Similarly, a forthcoming study by the Arkansas Center for Research in Economics examines how the entry of open enrollment charter schools affects the performance of school districts in Arkansas. The results show that traditional public schools that face higher levels of competition from open enrollment charter schools experience improved test scores.

The introduction of charter schools in Arkansas creates a win-win outcome benefiting both charter school and traditional public school students. An added advantage of improved traditional public school performance is that students enrolling in traditional public schools will not have to compromise on their academics to have the opportunity to engage in extracurricular activities, such as football, that may not be available in charter schools.

Healthy competition among schools should be embraced. It incentivizes schools to provide a better quality education and students enrolled in both open enrollment charter schools and traditional public schools benefit. Concerns about increasing competition are well-meant but data shows that we have more to gain than we have to lose.

Dr. Mavuto Kalulu is a Policy Analyst at the Arkansas Center for Research in Economics. His work on education has been featured��in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette,��Jonesboro Sun,��and the��Log Cabin Democrat.

In contrast to traditional public schools, it’s true that some charter schools, such KIPP Delta, mostly employ nontraditionally licensed teachers, but that doesn’t make those teachers underqualified. show that some core academic subjects (English, reading and language arts, mathematics, science, foreign language, social studies, and visual and performing arts) in open enrollment charter schools are not taught by highly qualified teachers. The same is true for traditional public schools. A total of 215 schools in Arkansas have core academic classes not taught by highly qualified teachers Ninety one percent of these schools are traditional public schools while six percent are open enrollment charter schools. The other three percent are conversion charter schools. Table 1 depicts the top ten schools with the highest percentage of courses not taught bay highly qualified teachers.

Source: Arkansas Department of Education

Eight of the top ten schools that have core classes not taught by highly qualified teachers are traditional public schools while two of them are open enrollment charter schools. One can conclude that by the ADE’s definition of highly qualified teachers the worst affected schools in Arkansas are traditional public schools.

The real difference between traditional public school districts and open enrollment charter schools may lie in the routes that their teachers take to be licensed. Open enrollment charter schools may mainly hire nontraditionally licensed teachers. A traditionally licensed teacher has completed a formal teacher preparation program offered by a four-year college or university and has majored in education. In contrast, a nontraditionally licensed teacher has completed a degree in some other subject and has not majored in education. Arkansas offers a variety of , including the Teach for America program, the Arkansas Teacher Corps program, and the Provisional Professional Teaching License, all of which require professional experience in teaching or in the subject being taught.

One major concern is that nontraditionally licensed teachers lack classroom management skills and are therefore less effective at teaching students than traditionally licensed ones are. , however, shows that there is no significant difference in the ability to manage a classroom between traditionally and nontraditionally licensed teachers. Therefore, nontraditional routes to teacher licensing help schools to meet Arkansas’s teacher shortage without compromising on students’ education.

What’s more, open enrollment charter schools continuously evaluate their teachers’ effectiveness using various methods, such as classroom observation, teacher self-assessment, student growth, and parent and student surveys, some of which are very similar to the methods used by traditional public schools. If an open enrollment charter school does not meet the performance goals deemed appropriate by the ADE, it must close. Thus, charter schools actually have to prove their excellence in an even more rigorous environment.

We can evaluate these arguments by comparing the performance of traditional public schools with that of open enrollment charter schools in Arkansas using the results of two sets of standardized tests: the 2014–15 Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) exams and the 2015–16 American College Testing (ACT) Aspire exams.

Figure 1 shows the percentage of students that met or exceeded expectations on the 2014–15 PARCC exams for both traditional public schools and open enrollment charter schools.

Source: Constructed using data from the Arkansas Department of Education.

On the 2014–15 exams, traditional public schools performed better in math by 1 percentage point, while in literacy, charter schools performed better by 3 percentage points.

Arkansas changed the exam type from PARCC to ACT Aspire for the 2015–16 school year. Figure 2 compares the ACT Aspire results for traditional public school students with the results for open enrollment charter school students. It shows the percentage of students in each school type that met readiness benchmarks in math, English, science, reading, and writing.

Source: Constructed using data from the Arkansas Department of Education.

In all subjects, open enrollment charter schools on average performed better than public schools on the 2015–16 exams.

Further empirical analysis by education and public policy professor Gary Ritter and others (2016) at the University of Arkansas has found that students attending open enrollment charter schools do indeed perform better than students in traditional public schools. The analysis accounts for the possible differences between the students in open enrollment charter schools and traditional public schools, such as student motivation levels and family socioeconomic background.

Instead of comparing open enrollment charter school students to the whole traditional public school population, Ritter and his team compared them to students who are similar, with the only difference being that they attend traditional public schools instead of open enrollment charter schools. The researchers found that test scores for students in open enrollment charter schools were significantly better in both math and literacy than the scores for comparable traditional public school students.

Individual open enrollment charter schools that do not perform better than traditional public schools run the risk of being closed as required by law, so they have an incentive to outperform. And the evidence does indeed show that open enrollment charter schools are performing better than traditional public schools.

Over the years, laws have been enacted to ensure that public schools are less segregated. For example, the Public School Choice Act of 1989 allowed for inter-district school choice, with a restriction that a student cannot transfer into a district that has a higher percentage of his or her race than his or her own residential district. The restriction was implemented because of the fear that white parents would transfer their students to predominantly white school districts, which tend to have more resources than predominantly minority districts.

Proponents of school choice argue that racial and economic divisions arise from the zoning system, which restricts the movement of students from their residential school districts into other school districts. School choice, they say, is the best way to allow minorities to transfer from poor-performing schools into better-performing schools, regardless of the racial composition of those schools.

Fast forward to May 2016, when a hearing on the expansion of charter schools in Little Rock revealed that concerns about school choice leading to segregation still linger. Charter school opponents argue that charter schools in Arkansas will worsen segregation. They believe that charter schools enroll mostly white and Asian students, leaving behind blacks and Hispanics in the failing traditional public schools.

To address this concern, the Arkansas Center for Research in Economics examined state-level data. Figure 1 shows the enrollment by race in both traditional public schools and open enrollment charter schools. Because some argued that Asians should not be included in the minority group during the Little Rock hearings on charter school expansion, our graph shows what open enrollment charter school enrollment looks like both when Asians are not grouped together with whites (green) and when they are (purple).

The graph depicts three different ways of looking at the same data. In all three cases, charter schools enroll a larger percentage of minorities than traditional public schools do. Using the Arkansas Department of Education categorization, which combines all races besides whites into the minority group (green bars), charter schools enroll a smaller percentage of white students (43.53%) than traditional public schools do (62.62%). When you exclude Asians from the minority group (purple bars), charter school enrollment is 47.73% white and Asian compared to 64.00% in traditional public schools. The third case, which perhaps is the main concern for charter school opponents, is the opportunity charter schools provide to Hispanics and blacks (blue bars). In Arkansas, half of the students in open enrollment charter schools are Hispanic black, while Hispanics and blacks comprise 32.32% of the total enrollment in traditional public schools. Thus, open enrollment charter schools in Arkansas are affording minorities opportunities to choose a school that best meets their children’s needs.

Arkansas offers two types of public charter schools for students seeking an alternative to traditional public schools. Conversion charter schools, first authorized in 1995, are public schools that are converted to charter schools. They have more autonomy than traditional public schools while still remaining under the school district’s control. Only students residing in a school district the conversion charter school is located in are allowed to attend.

Open enrollment charter schools, first authorized in 1999, are newly developed, publicly funded schools that are run independently by a government entity or a nonsectarian organization. As the name suggest, open enrollment charter schools are authorized to enroll students from anywhere in the state. The state grants them more autonomy than traditional public schools in return for greater accountability for performance. For example, the KIPP Delta schools in Helena–West Helena are exempted from the state requirements on start and end dates. The law requires that public schools open no earlier than August 19 and no later than August 26. For the 2016–17 school year, KIPP Delta schools started school on August 3. Its school calendar year has over 190 days compared to 178 days for the neighboring Helena-West Helena School District. Among other advantages, the extended school year coupled with extended school days allows KIPP Delta schools to have more time for activities like field trips and college visits without sacrificing classroom instructional time. Charter schools that don’t meet performance goals deemed appropriate for the charter school by the authorizer must close.

Charter schools are created to provide quality alternative learning and teaching environments, as required by the Arkansas Quality Charter Schools Act of 2013. People often debate whether charter schools are better than traditional public schools. What they overlook is that the two alternatives could actually complement each other, helping to achieve the goal of improving the academic performance of all students in Arkansas by acknowledging differences among students’ needs and learning styles. While some students may thrive in traditional public schools, others may not, and providing them with an alternative learning environment can help them to perform better.

Debates about whether charter schools or traditional public schools are superior often contain inaccurate information. In the blog posts to follow, the Arkansas Center for Research in Economics will examine some of the most common inaccuracies. Using data from the Arkansas Department of Education and empirical studies by academic scholars, we will dispel the following myths about open enrollment charter schools in Arkansas. We focus on open enrollment charter schools because unlike conversion charter schools, open enrollment charter schools operate independently of the school districts and draw students out of the school districts. Here are the myths that we will discuss:

Myth 1: Open enrollment charter schools don’t enroll many black or Hispanic students.

Myth 2: Education outcomes at open enrollment charter schools are worse than those at traditional public schools.

Myth 3: Open enrollment charter schools hire underqualified teachers.

Myth 4: Open enrollment charter schools receive more public funding than traditional public schools.

Myth 5: Traditional public schools will be forced to shut down because they can’t compete with open enrollment charter schools.

Academic research shows that teacher effectiveness plays a critical role in student learning. One study����shows that the difference between an effective teacher and an ineffective one can be as much as a year’s worth of learning.

In order to ensure the quality of teachers, states require teachers to pass��qualifying exams, Praxis I and/or Praxis II, to obtain a teaching license. If there is indeed a positive correlation between teachers’ effectiveness and the teachers’ qualifying exam scores, then policy makers can raise the bar on these exams to improve students’ achievements.

According to research findings by ACRE scholar Dr. James Shuls, simply raising the score needed to pass the licensure exams in Arkansas does not appear to be an effective strategy. He finds that in Arkansas, the relationship between teaching effectiveness and Praxis scores is very small to non-existent.��Taking advantage of the fact that Arkansas does have some teachers who scored less than the cut off score on the Praxis exam, Shuls addresses the question of whether or not students in classes with teachers who score higher on standardized tests perform better than students in classes with teachers who score lower. On the Praxis I exam, student outcomes are not significantly different for teachers who pass or fail the Praxis I exam.

The Shuls study is not the only one to have found that the current screening tools are doing little more than unnecessarily limiting the supply of new teachers. In an article for��, Chad Alderman��provides��evidence supporting��, which discusses��a lack of knowledge in how to properly train good teachers and alternative ways to test teacher effectiveness. In his follow up article, he cites Shuls’ research as well as another��, all of which have concluded��that instead of screening out ineffective teachers only, Praxis I exams are actually screening out some potentially high quality teachers. Thus in Arkansas, raising Praxis I cut scores will lead to some of our better teachers being screened out.

Praxis II, however, is an almost effective screening mechanism for both Math and the English Language Arts (ELA) exams. Shuls finds a statistically significant difference between teachers who pass Praxis II and those that fail. The magnitude is, however, so small that Shuls recommends Arkansas leaders and citizens would be better served by trying alternative approaches to improving student outcomes. Increasing the cut scores for passing the two Praxis exams is not a good solution.

The “easy way” solution of working within the current system but increasing the cutoff score for passing the two Praxis exams does not work. More outside the box thinking is needed. Stanford University education researcher, Eric Hanushek, suggests that schools remove the very worst teachers from the classroom ().��Another alternative, is to allow parents to choose the school to enroll their children. School choice generates competition among schools which tends to increase teacher quality (Hanushek and Rivkin, 2003).

Increasing cutoff scores on Praxis exams is not the solution.��Teaching is a��doing��profession, not a��test-taking��profession.

Today, the Arkansas school choice menu includes district transfers, charter school options, and home schooling. Beginning this fall, the menu has been expanded to include a limited voucher program that will only be served to special needs children.

While this menu may satisfy some, there are unnecessary limits.

For starters, these school choice options should be made available for all who wish to partake. There is an arbitrary three percent cap imposed on transfers from a school district. Additionally, court desegregation orders allow certain school districts to reject inter-district school transfers. ��According to the Arkansas Department of Education, there are currently that have asked for exemptions to participate in inter-district school transfers.

The artificial restrictions do not end with inter-district transfers. There is a separate arbitrary cap placed on the number of open enrollment charter schools allowed in Arkansas. The cap is currently set at 29. But the sheer amount of students on charter school wait lists are evidence enough that the cap is an impediment to Arkansans receiving the education they desire. For example, in February of 2016, eStem charter school had about 6,000 students on the waitlist, an indication that parents desire this choice.

Those in favor of removing the charter school cap face fierce opposition from traditional public schools. For example, the expansions of Lisa Academy and eStem charter schools in Little Rock were strongly opposed by the Little Rock School District. This opposition is a result of the competition for students between charter schools and traditional public schools. Competition, however, is what Milton Friedman saw as the force that would drive public schools to perform better. A by the Friedman Foundation suggests that Friedman was correct: competition improves academic outcomes of students and schools, save taxpayers money, reduce segregation in schools and improve students’ civic values.

But with all these restrictions, is there true competition among Arkansas schools? Not enough. Even the voucher program that has just started this fall is heavily restricted to students with special needs is limited to 100 students.

While Arkansas’ school choice menu may look appetizing to some, it is just that – an appetizer. The restrictions imposed on the options impede competition and prevent us from having a full menu of options for parents and students. Many parents, even those in failing school districts, are not able to choose a better school. The legislature should remove many of the current restrictions and allow all Arkansas’ students to choose from a broader, more satisfying menu of educational options.

For more ACRE research on education in Arkansas, visit��/acre/education/.