Yesterday, a Midwest-based, National Education Association-funded organization called the “Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice” (read about the background of the organization here) released an analysis of our recently published issue brief, Connecticut's Charter School Law and Race to the Top.

At ConnCAN, we always begin our education reform advocacy with great research. What are the problems? What are the proven solutions? That’s why we welcome constructive reviews of our work and welcome opportunities to engage in a thoughtful debate of the issues. In this case, there’s actually not much other than the provocative headline to debate. Our brief was a straightforward presentation of the facts and their critique didn’t find issue with any of the facts.

As Nelson Smith, President and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said: “ConnCAN is the leading voice for education reform in Connecticut. The assertion made in their brief, that ‘Connecticut's charter schools have demonstrated sustained success, especially among low-income students’ is consistent with the findings of recent research studies, certainly in Connecticut and across the nation. ConnCAN’s legislative recommendations are grounded in solid research methodology revealing education reforms that can and do help close the achievement gap.”

The Great Lakes Center’s central critique of our issue brief was that its discussion of Connecticut charter school performance didn’t cite peer-reviewed research, and we agree: we wish up-to-date peer-reviewed academic studies of the state’s charter schools existed, but they don’t. The only independent, academic research study on Connecticut charter schools that exists was conducted in 2005. We should know, because we commissioned it. Dr. Gary Miron, Principal Research Associate at Western Michigan University’s Evaluation Center, ran the study and found Connecticut’s charter schools to be the highest-performing cohort they had studied to date.

In the words of the report: “Researchers at The Evaluation Center have been involved in conducting evaluations of charter schools in six states. The results from Connecticut are the most positive and promising for charter schools that we have seen.” Rather than just cite this five-year-old study, we provided in the brief a review of Connecticut charter schools’ most recent test results. And that data is telling: “On average, African-American middle school students fare better in charter schools than in traditional public schools. Statewide, only 35 percent of African-American middle school students are performing at goal, but at Amistad Academy, for example, 73 percent performed at goal.”

The Great Lakes Center’s piece also suggested that perhaps Connecticut’s current charter law was good enough for Connecticut to be competitive in Race to the Top. If our loss in Round 1 last week wasn’t a sharp enough rebuttal to that opinion, we would simply note that in addition to a literal cap on charter school enrollment that is in direct conflict with the Race to the Top guidelines, there is an even more restrictive functional cap on Connecticut charter schools that is costing us critical points in the competition: our current funding mechanism. The annual line-item appropriations process inhibits both the opening of new schools and natural grade growth in charter schools that are already open. High-performing charter schools already in existence are hindered by both of these policies.