Do charter schools help kids earn more as adults?

Charter school boosters have many arguments in favor of fostering a publicly-financed, privately run parallel education system. But at the end of the day, their model should help kids learn more, perform better, get good jobs and earn a higher salary than they might have otherwise, right? 

By that metric, it appears that Texas' charter schools have failed, according to a large-scale study of kids from the K-12 system through early adulthood. 

The analysis was conducted by Will Dobbie, an assistant professor at Princeton, and Roland Fryer, the Harvard economist who in recent years helped Houston ISD adopt charter school methods (you might also remember his name from research on Houston's police-involved shootings). It uses data from Texas state agencies that tracks student achievement and demographics from primary school, through college, and on to the labor market.  

Texas is the ideal laboratory for this kind of study. It introduced charter schools way back in 1995, and they now enroll 3.5 percent of the public school population. The schools have thus had time to refine their methods and work out some kinks, while their students have had time to test their mettle in the labor market. 

The findings: On average, charter schools have no meaningful effect on test scores or employment, and actually have a slight negative impact on earnings. The results are slightly better for so-called "no excuses" charters, which feature stricter discipline and extended instructional hours -- they increased test scores and four-year college enrollment and had no effect on earnings. Regular charter schools boosted two-year college enrollment, but depressed test scores, four-year college enrollment, and earnings. 

The authors aren't able to come to any solid conclusions about why charter schools don't seem to have the positive impact that their backers have touted. Perhaps it's still too early for the potential of charters to have been fully realized. Or maybe, the focus on improving test scores came at the expense of programs like art and foreign languages that could have value when looking for a job. 

"It is plausible this is due to the growing pains of an early charter sector that was 'building the plane as they flew it,'" the authors write, attempting to explain their results. "Much more troubling, it seems, is the possibility that what it takes to increase achievement among the poor in charter schools deprives them of other skills that are important for labor markets." 

The charter school lobby hews towards that first explanation, saying it's simply too early to measure labor market outcomes from a sector that's only 20 years old, especially when most improvements have been made in the last decade. "We invite the authors of this study to continue their work with the entire charter school population over the next several years," said David Dunn, director of the Texas Charter Schools Association. "We are sure they will find results of positive impact." 

Of course, this is just one contribution from one state to an increasingly vast literature on the impact of charter schools -- some negative, some positive. Just today, Texas released evaluations for all schools in the state, and labeled charters as "needs improvement" at nearly twice the average rate. Charter proponents, meanwhile, point to studies showing that charter school quality has already improved markedly, and that their students progress faster in both math and reading. 

But Dobbie and Fryer's findings are also one of the first to measure lifetime earnings potential, not just academic performance, and suggests that charters might not have the kind of impact on economic mobility that reformers have hoped.