The National Center on School Choice is funded by the United States Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. The Center exercises national leadership in school choice research, including charter and magnet schools, private school vouchers, teacher recruitment, school management, and state policymaking.

Opening the Black Box of Choice and Regular Public Schools

Mark Berends, Vanderbilt University
Ellen Goldring, Vanderbilt University
Ron Houser, Northwest Evaluation Association

In this study, we will analyze achievement gains and growth in schools of choice and a matched comparison group of regular public schools.  We will also compare differences in curriculum, instruction, and the organizational conditions that promote achievement.  In the spring of 2007 and 2008, we will administer two different principal and teacher surveys in 170 charter schools, 60 magnet schools, 27 Catholic schools, 25 other religious and independent schools, and matched regular public schools.  The data collected will allow for multi-leveling modeling strategies to estimate achievement growth nested in students nested in teachers nested in schools—a rare quasi-experimental design across districts and school types. 

There have been many calls for understanding what is going on inside schools of choice.  But never before has a study gathered the same measures across a wide range of conditions to examine differences between schools of choice and regular public schools.  In addition, no previous study has been able to link these measures to student achievement growth in reading, Language Arts and math across a number of school years.