Reflection On The Article About Charter Schools And Traditional Public Schools

Competition between charter schools and traditional public schools has fluctuated different effects in different states. Researchers have noted that North Carolina and California see no effect, while positive effects are slightly seen in Florida and Texas. Some studies also show the negative effects in Ohio and Michigan. In the article, “The impact of charter schools on the efficiency of traditional public schools: Evidence from Michigan,” by Yongmei Ni (2009) focuses on Michigan as whole and not just one demographic area. While this study produced that charter schools competition had a negative effect on traditional public schools on the students’ achievement and the schools efficiency there are limitations. These limitations include replication, diversity within the schools, community type affected, data not being able to count for the self-selection problem seen in Michigan, and conflicting results in other studies.

In the article Yongmei Ni (2009) observes the competitive effects of charter schools in Michigan on their traditional public schools. Ni does this by looking at the states longitudinal dataset from 1994 to 2004 that included information such as “school for school choice enrollment, student demographics, school fiancé and other school level factors over the 11 years (2009.)” Three different methods where used in study, which included a fixed effects and two alternatives methods. The alternative methods essentially allowed for unobservable characteristics and control of the changing composition within students that are caused from the policy of charter schools. This study was designed to look at the limitations that were present in past research, and to consider the relationship of efficiency between the two types of schools. Ni examines two questions in her study. These questions are “how has competition from charter schools influenced efficiency in TPS? And does the competition generate different impacts on TPS efficiency in the short-run and the long-run”

To answer these questions the researcher looks at the systematic changes caused by the charter school program, Michigan’s choice program called inter-district choice, and by looking at each district resident percentage that has transferred to charter schools. While Ni has produced an in depth approach do determine the competition effects charter schools have on traditional public schools replication would be difficult. First of all her information to produce this study comes from a longitudinal data set that was accumulated from three different sources and merged to include the factors such as “school to school choice enrollment, demographics and finance”.

You would need to be able to have access to this data set, and it does not say whether or not she had to be given permission or if it was open to the public. Without this information this study would not have been able to be conducted. Though this study is thoroughly thought out and provides a plentiful amount of information and data it is difficult to follow with the three different methods that were used, and what to make sense with the data that was collected and calculated. Ni examines three methods in order to produce data this is because she had to consider the unobservable variables that would need to be accounted for. If these unobservable variables were not accounted for the study would become bias, and the results would be favoring one outcome over the other. This would cause the results to have a systematically error throughout, and allow for the have validity of this experience to be put into question. Due to the fact that she did think of the bias situation she was able to create a study that has validity and can be used in further research to compare the competition effects between the two with information from more recent years since they schools had more time to develop and act upon the competitiveness that effects them. Due to the fact that many different methods where used when it comes to computing the Pooled OLS only the standard deviation in present when looking at the results from charter competition impact on standardized test scores.

I was actually curious of how the calculations where done. It would be nice to have an example present in the study that shows what data was used to calculate the standard deviation. It’s hard to conclude what the standard deviation is telling you. I would have also liked to be able to compare the mean test scores in each grade and class that was looked at. In this case fourth grade and seventh grade math and reading were the testing that was studied.

Another element that I believe causes a limitation on the study, is that the diversity in the schools was hardly looked at. It was looked at for a brief moment in the explanatory variable table and in the pooled OLS results. The results showed that by 2004 approximately 17% of African Americans and about 5% of Hispanics and Asians composed the minority groups with the public schools in Michigan. Looking at diversity between charter schools, and traditional public schools would allow for a more understanding of why the school is either succeeding or not succeeding and maybe that is one of the reason for competitions. It has been known that the higher concentration level of minority students with in school brings in fewer resources, teachers with less experience and poor academic achievement. If you looked at this competition and the composition of schools it might be another reason why traditional public schools are seeing the affects between the charter schools. Due to the diversity gap student achievement and school efficiency still stays present. Traditional Public Schools competition of charter schools was mainly in the urban community type in the medium-run and long run, but in the short-run was in the suburban area. The percentage of competition was approximately 79% in urban areas, only ten percent in suburban areas, and 11% in rural areas. This is seen because charter schools try to open up around communities trying to gain interest within the low minority groups but do they really?

I think this piece of missing information would help with the competition effects charter schools play on traditional public schools and whether or not the gap of student achievement could be closed with each type of school. Ni discuss that she sees a possible limitation that is present in her paper has to do with the self selection problem that is present in Michigan, and that the school data might not have accounted for it. Though she was able to control observable changes between the student compositions the data is not able control the changing of student population. This makes me wonder if her results would have been different if the self-selection could be monitored, or if the decrease in student population within the state has to do with the results found.

Lastly this study has conflicting results in which it compares to the results of one study and differs from another study. Why could this be? She explains that there are several reasons for different results, which included the time period, different controls, and measures of competition, along with different estimation methodologies were used. What would have happened if she had used the same estimation methodologies as in the study that proved charter schools would have a positive effect on traditional public schools? Or what might happen to the results of the positive effect study if they had access to the same information Ni had? Maybe the longer charter schools are around the more effects on traditional public school changes throughout the years and that’s why we are seeing conflicting results. Answering these questions, and conducting a study to answer these questions but allow for the gaps of why there are studies that have conflicting results.