Hoxby is the Scott and Donya Bommer Professor of Economics at Stanford University, a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, the director of the Economics of Education Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and Senior Fellow of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

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Shocking! As the author, Michael Lovenheim of Stanford University, notes, these results aren’t expected. Unions negotiate for better work conditions and salary increases, so it’s a general assumption that school district unionization would increase teacher pay. Previous studies have shown unionization to increase teacher pay by as much as 12 percent. A paper by Caroline Hoxby, seen here at the Show-Me Institute talking about the effects of collective bargaining, found that majority teacher union membership results in a 5-percent pay boost for teachers (study available here).

Looking at the source of Lovenheim’s data, I wonder whether his findings are attributable to a lack of available details. He calculated monthly teacher pay by dividing a district’s monthly full-time instructional payroll by the number of full-time instructional staff. That pool includes not only teachers, he writes in the study’s appendix, but also educational support staff, school-level administrators, principals, and guidance counselors.

The things I saw while attending teacher-administration contract negotiations at the Lindbergh School District in Saint Louis lead me to believe that educational support staff, school-level administrators, principals, and guidance counselors don’t necessarily benefit from teacher union negotiations, even if the union purports to represent them. In fact, in the Lindbergh case, they lost out slightly. (Administrators and the teacher union ended up agreeing that counselors and librarians should contribute to the “substitute pool” when absent from school, even though substitutes aren’t hired when either counselors or librarians are absent.)

The average pay Lovenheim calculated could be obscuring teacher gains because of the varying salary trends among non-teacher staff. For an example of this in action, see the Miami-Dade School District. After 16 months of negotiations, the district awarded its teachers an average 1.8-percent raise, while “reducing the number of days support staff will work from 260 to 250.” For the unindoctrinated, school districts generally can’t cut pay; instead, they cut days.

Another issue with analyzing the effects of unionization on teacher compensation is that non-salary benefits, such as health, life, and vision insurance, as well as working conditions, are difficult information to find, and can be very hard to quantify. The lack of availability, Lovenheim writes, forced him to leave those measures of compensation out of his study. Non-salary benefits are not inconsequential, and can add up to thousands of dollars more in compensation. If unionization helps teachers negotiate for more non-salary benefits, that could amount to a large positive effect left unaccounted.

I’m not quite sure whether the following is a non-salary or a salary benefit. In any case, it’s my favorite teacher union contract provision. From the Mehlville School District’s 2009–2010 agreement with its teacher union:

Any savings exceeding $70,000 between now and August 1 resulting from teacher staff changes will be added to the base salary.

That surely is evidence of teacher union negotiating power, especially during a recession when school districts across the state are looking at ways to make cuts.

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Matthew Kahn (scroll down to the Sept. 28 post) wonders how much of this effect can be attributed to what goes on in the classroom. He suspects that when parents see that their child’s new school is better than the old one, they work harder to supplement the child’s education at home. For instance, they might be more careful in checking that homework is completed on time.

I think this parental response probably does account for part of the charter effect. Caroline Hoxby herself points out in her talks about charters (you can watch one here) that parents may approach education differently when they’ve chosen a school, just as customers expect more from a restaurant they’ve chosen than from an office building cafeteria.

It’s an interesting question from the point of view of econometrics, but less relevant to policy. What matters is that charters spur student achievement. Whether 100 percent of the learning happens in school, or whether some of the benefits come from changes within homes, the fact remains that students who switch to a charter generally do better than their peers who lost the charter lottery. That’s one more good reason to let students attend charters if they want to.

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The embedded video below is a playlist consisting of five separate parts. After each individual part has finished playing, the playlist should automatically load the subsequent part until the sequence has finished.

You may also choose to view any individual part on its own:
Part 1 (9:22) | Part 2 (9:20) | Part 3 (9:13) | Part 4 (9:57) | Part 5 (10:01)

During Hoxby's trip to Saint Louis, she also spent a few minutes speaking with the Show-Me Institute about some of the key points contained in her lecture. In this interview, Hoxby explains the benefits of charter schools, outlines the challenges that charter schools currently face, points out the reasons for success in many charters, and more.

The embedded video below is a playlist consisting of two separate parts. After the first part has finished playing, the playlist should automatically load the second part.

You may also choose to view either individual part on its own:
Part 1 (9:08) | Part 2 (7:59)

This same interview can also be viewed in seven separate sections, each addressing a different educational question:

What are the benefits of charter schools?
What are the challenges that charter schools face?
How do traditional public schools and charter schools compare?
What are the reasons that some charter schools succeed?
What constitutes adequate funding for public schools?
What are the current barriers to school choice in the United States?
How does collective bargaining affect quality teacher retention?

The post The Promise and Performance of Charter Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Here are a few of the criticisms of charters that come up time and again, each followed by my answers:

Charter school students’ gains are a result of their intrinsic motivation, not superior schools.

I don’t want to dismiss hard work on the part of students; obviously, learning can’t be forced on anyone and the children should rightly take credit for their own accomplishments. However, we observe that some schools allow children to succeed through hard work and others do not.

This is from an article about KIPP:

Typically students are two or three grade levels behind when they enroll at KIPP as fifth graders. A KIPP study shows that the average fifth-grade student beginning in KIPP scores in the 40th percentile in math and the 32nd percentile in reading based on norm-referenced exams, which compare a student’s performance to their peers nationally. After four years in KIPP, the youngsters tend to score in the 82nd percentile in math and 60th percentile in reading.

If KIPP’s success could be attributed solely to motivation, why were those extremely motivated students so far behind to begin with? The motivation was probably there in fourth grade as well as in fifth grade, right? So the traditional public schools could have taken that motivation and run with it, before these students ever set foot in KIPP. And not every city has KIPP schools, so we should see large groups of traditional district students making sudden, large gains during middle school in the cities where KIPP can’t siphon off the motivated children. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen.

You don’t have to take my word for it — researchers like Roland Fryer and Caroline Hoxby take the motivation problem into account. When they look at student achievement, they compare students who attend charters with other students who entered charter lotteries, but who randomly were assigned to traditional public schools. Their studies find that students who attend charters do better than students who were equally motivated to apply to charters. The only difference between the two groups is that some had the luck of the draw.

It is possible that attending a school your family chose increases your motivation over time. Maybe at the beginning of the study, the charter school kids are no more motivated than their counterparts who lost the lottery. But after a few years in a charter school, they feel a sense of ownership about their schools. They could always choose to go back to their assigned district, so there’s no attitude of “I have to be here, but I don’t have to like it.” Instead, students may think, “My family made this choice, and now it’s up to me to follow through and do my part.” If it turned out that charter school students actually have extra motivation stemming from this reason, that’s an argument in favor of more charters and choice.

Charter schools can be super-selective and set strict rules, while traditional public schools have a disadvantage in that they must accept all comers.

Charter schools are public schools, and they don’t do anything that public schools can’t do. Remember the Clyde C. Miller Career Academy? I wrote a post about how wonderful this “charter” school is, only to find out it’s a district school. If the Career Academy can make students write essays and do interviews before they’re admitted, other district schools could do that too.

Traditional districts like SLPS have the talented people they need to succeed, but political forces just don’t allow them to realize their potential.

I agree completely. As competition with the charters heats up, we’re going to see more district schools like the Career Academy that are just as good as charters. SLPS has the necessary raw materials; choice is the catalyst. The district should view charter schools as its partners in battling political inertia — they’re not enemies.

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Hoxby explained that one of the things setting her research apart from other studies is that her design allows for comparison of groups of students that are statistically indistinguishable. This is possible because charter schools in New York and Chicago assign placement by random lottery when they have more applicants than they do seats (which happens frequently). Student trying to get into charter schools are very similar in terms of race, socioeconomic status, parental education and motivation, and previous academic performance. Thus, the only ready difference between the students is whether they won the lottery for charter school placement, or whether they were forced to remain in the traditional school system.

Hoxby’s research has revealed that the charter students in these two cities reliably demonstrate better academic progress than those who remain in traditional public schools. Because many of these students were already academically far behind at the time they entered charter schools, their test scores may continue to lag behind those of the average public school student during the short term. But research shows that, over time, charter school students can be expected to close the achievement gap and eventually outperform their peers who stay in traditional public schools.

The Show-Me Institute videotaped Tuesday’s lecture, and as soon as we are able we will post the video on our website so that everyone can enjoy Dr. Hoxby’s presentation. Stay tuned!

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Dr. Hoxby is the Scott and Donya Bommer Professor of Economics at Stanford University, a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, the director of the Economics of Education Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and senior fellow of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. It is extremely exciting that a scholar of her prestige will be presenting here in St. Louis, so I encourage all of you to RSVP today!

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This Thursday evening, the library’s series will continue, as Jay Matthews, an education reporter from the Washington Post, will discuss his new book, Work Hard, Be Nice. The book offers readers a look at how the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) network of charter schools has become a poster child for helping children from the most challenged socioeconomic groups prepare for academic success and college. This topic is extremely relevant for Kansas City, which saw a KIPP school open in recent years, as well as Saint Louis, which will greet a new KIPP school this fall.

And, last, but not least, I wanted to take this opportunity to plug yet another exciting event on the calendar. On May 5, the Show-Me Institute and Saint Louis University will be hosting Dr. Caroline Hoxby, yet another celebrated education expert with the Hoover Institution at Stanford, for a discussion titled, “The Promise and Performance of Charter Schools: Drivers of Educational Improvement in the U.S.?” This lecture will be a great opportunity for anyone interested in learning what research is telling us about the impact of charter schools nationwide.

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Confluence is now larger than many public school districts — nearly the size of the Clayton and Affton districts.

The interesting thing about this situation is that nothing is preventing SLPS from running its own Confluence Academy. This is a good time to review Caroline Hoxby’s remarks about charter schools. She points out that charter schools are not doing anything that it’s illegal for public schools to do. Nobody ever said traditional public schools couldn’t imitate the best charters, or pioneer their own innovations. They just don’t do those things.

So if SLPS really wanted to replicate Confluence Academy’s success, they could: teach Spanish to kindergartners; spend extra time on reading; offer more opportunities to study chess, poetry, and African step-dance; and teach a different character value each month. (At Confluence, this month’s value is compassion.) But SLPS isn’t looking for innovations like these, because in the past, its students have had no other school to choose. It didn’t need to attract students and show results.

Maybe SLPS will start trying new things as it faces more competition from charters. But even if it doesn’t, at least families will have options besides SLPS.

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As Coulson points out, free-market proposals like tuition tax credits are not incompatible with the ideals of public education, such as preparing children for citizenship. And Coulson has done extensive research on education markets around the world. I’m guessing that one reason people like Finn discredit that evidence is that it’s from other countries. Here in the U.S., the public education system has a tight hold on the education sector, and the only experience we have with a free-market system are a few limited voucher programs. People are then left to make judgments about free-market education from these programs (which are a good start, but not big enough to transform the education sector the way universal parental choice would).

Caroline Hoxby’s research on charter schools presents evidence that’s a bit closer to home. Although charter schools are still public schools, they face incentives more like the ones private schools face. Consequently, they do things differently from the traditional public schools. Here you can watch Hoxby explain why incentives matter.

In short, there’s evidence that free-market reforms work. And there’s evidence that the traditional public system is failing — as Finn himself writes, the nation is "still at risk." That doesn’t look like a crazy philosophy to me.

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Although colleagues long thought they had him pegged, he made an abrupt about-face on vouchers in the most recent issue of City Journal, the [Manhattan Institute]’s magazine, saying there was little evidence they had done much to improve public education across the country. […]

“Milwaukee’s public schools still suffer from low achievement and miserable graduation rates, with test scores flattening in recent years,” Mr. Stern wrote. “Violence and disorder throughout the system are as serious as ever. Most voucher students are still benefiting, true; but no ?Milwaukee Miracle,’ no transformation of the public schools, has taken place.”

And here is the St. Louis Public Schools’ response to a teacher’s effective math program:

"He knows what works for him. That’s not to say he doesn’t have a program that works well for his students. But he doesn’t have the research base yet to implement what he is doing on a larger scale," said William Parker, an assistant superintendent for elementary education.

In each of these cases, a small portion of students is enjoying the success of a new idea — parental choice in Milwaukee, and a curriculum in St. Louis. But there’s opposition to expanding these ideas, because they haven’t helped everyone yet. It’s true, we wouldn’t want to implement a policy or a curriculum on a wide scale if there’s no indication it works. But if it’s helped a few students — the students who were exposed to it — that’s a good reason to expand it to a few more students and see whether the strong results continue.

The only students who will benefit directly from a parental choice program are the students who get to change schools. Caroline Hoxby has shown that competition can improve public schools too, and that’s a welcome side effect, but we can’t throw out every choice program because it hasn’t transformed the public schools yet. 

Likewise, if a curriculum works in a classroom of 20 kids, you don’t throw it out because it hasn’t yet been demonstrated to work for an entire district.

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