The New York City Independent Budget Office (IBO) released a study last month, which looked at elementary students’ transfer rates out of charter and traditional public schools. This report is an update of the IBO’s report on the same topic, released last year. As we noted in an earlier blog post, this issue is very relevant because researchers have found that changing schools can affect student achievement, and it may be a contributor to the achievement gap for minority and disadvantaged students who change schools frequently.
For the most recent study, IBO monitored a cohort of students starting kindergarten in 2008—with about 3,000 enrolled in public charter schools and 7,200 traditional public school students—and followed these students through their fourth grade year. The study found that on average, students attending public charter schools stay enrolled in the same school at a higher rate (64 percent) than students at nearby traditional public schools (56 percent). Students in charter schools left the city’s public school system at the same rate as students in nearby traditional public schools. Both the 2014 and 2015 reports included separate mobility analyses for students with disabilities. However, for the 2015 study, the IBO broadened its definition of special needs students to include any student identified as having a disability, while the 2014 report only included students in full-time special education programs. Of the students identified as eligible for special needs services in kindergarten, 53 percent who attended charter schools remained in the same school four years later, while 49 percent of traditional public school students with disabilities remained in the same school through fourth grade. Fewer special needs students in the initial kindergarten cohort attended public charter schools (8.9 percent) than traditional public schools (12.7 percent). However, the distribution of students by disability type was similar among both types of public schools. The most common disability, speech impairment, was identified in 70.0 percent of charter students and 68.5 percent of traditional public school kindergarteners. Among the kindergarten students identified with speech, learning, and “all other disabilities,”(this category includes: autistic, emotionally disturbed, hard of hearing, intellectual disability, multiply handicapped, orthopedically impaired, preschool disability, and visually impaired), those who started kindergarten in charter schools remained at their schools at a higher rate. Nora Kern is senior manager for research and analysis at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
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