Finishing proposal

My proposal is coming together nicely and I have finished summarizing all articles. I found out a bunch of information about teacher retention that relates to student achievement. However the internal workings of a charter school and its effect on achievement remains elusive. I found that teacher retention has a lot to do with organizational factors within a particular school. Charter schools are all organized differently so it makes a direct comparison between schools difficult. I was able to determine that low teacher retention has a disruptive effect on the school as a whole. This phenomenon is seen in both charter and traditional public schools, so high levels of turnover seen in the charter sector may account for inconsistent achievement gains compared to public schools.      

Question

I think that I have finally nailed down my research question:

Do differences in teacher retention patterns between charter schools and traditional public schools account for differences in student achievement observed between the school types? 

or something like that….  

Topic

I was originally trying to narrow down what to put in the blank:

Does ___________ influence the effectiveness of charter schools? 

I was thinking of using teacher retention, and there are a few articles out there that address this. But as I did more research, and going along with some of the things I know from looking at charter schools for a separate assignment, this research is largely inconclusive, as is the case with so much of the research out there in general about charter schools. However, there are a few studies that do more of a meta-analysis of which factors influence charter school effectiveness (looking at a variety of primary studies focusing on individual factors). These factors range from funding, oversight, staff/student populations, size, retention etc, etc. I was possibly considering looking at a few different factors, maybe 3-5 of them, and use my thesis to comment on "which of these factors appear to have a significant effect on overall effectiveness and which appear not to have a significant effect." I think this could be more insightful than focusing solely on one factor only to find out by the end of the project that this factor is useless at determining effectiveness of charter school.

Teacher retention

This week I reviewed the article titled "New Schools, new students, new teachers: Evaluating the effectiveness of charter schools" by Celeste Carruthers. This article focused on charter school effectiveness and its relationship to teacher turnover and retention. The study focused on public schools in North Carolina and included numerous charter schools with varying demographics. The study concluded that teacher retention tended to increase with the age of the charter school, as did average achievement gains. However, both remained significantly below the rates observed in traditional public schools. Carruthers concluded that teacher retention was only a minor factor for student achievement and only accounted for about a third of the gains observed in math among charter school students and virtually none of the reading gains. Carruthers cites experimental biases and other aspects of charter schools, like leadership, that may contribute to the results generated in the study. Further research is needed to determine if teacher retention is a significant factor in student achievement.

First Article

The first article I reviewed for my thesis was “Examining charter school achievement effects across seven states” by Zimmer et al (2012). This study was very complex and technical and at times quite difficult to follow. That being said, it was also one of the most comprehensive studies I have seen that attempts to answer the question of charter school effectiveness.  While his study did not look at specific factors that may account for the effective school, it was a large study that looked critically at its own data in terms of the accuracy of the assumptions associated with conducting a fixed effect model of student testing data. I found this study very interesting as a baseline for the research that is available to date but will focus more on the individual factors that have an influence of the effectiveness of  charter school as I conduct more research. 

 

Thesis topic

The academic effectiveness of charter schools is something that has interested me for a long time. I knew very little about what a charter school even was before I began working at one several years ago. Charter schools were designed to allow innovation in the classroom and give parents and students some choice in their education.  This ultimately would help improve the local public schools by providing competition and choice. Unfortunately is largely unclear if charter schools are having the desired effect on the regional public schools. Originally, I tried to focus my inquiry on the simple question, “Are charter schools effective?” This question is almost impossible to answer because of the immense variability among charter schools.  Reading an article by Stephen Lawson has helped me focus my research question on “What factors account for the varying degree of effectiveness seen among charter schools in the United States?". As I do more research, it will be able to determine if this question leads to a more reliable answer about charter school effectiveness.  

Lawton, S. (2009). Effective Charter Schools and Charter School Systems. Planning and Changing, 40(1/2), 35-60.

http://0-search.proquest.com.liucat.lib.liu.edu/docview/218750132?accountid=12142