Research on charter schools needs to go beyond test scores | News | Notre Dame News | University of Notre Dame Skip To Content Skip To Navigation Skip To Search University of Notre Dame Notre Dame News Experts ND in the News Subscribe About Us Home Contact Search Menu Home › News › Research on charter schools needs to go beyond test scores Research on charter schools needs to go beyond test scores Published: August 11, 2015 Author: William G. Schmitt A comprehensive review of the research assessing charter schools as the fastest growing area of school choice reforms has uncovered a need for studies that take a different tack, according to University of Notre Dame sociologist Mark Berends. Charter schools have gained increasing attention in recent years as school choice laws have made them an alternative to traditional public schools. In the past decade, a number of studies have examined the effects of these schools to assess their impact on student achievement. Researchers are questioning whether the 6,000 charter schools now operating deliver on the promise of school choice laws to shrink achievement gaps. However, the question demands deeper probes of schools’ qualitative conditions, not merely metrics such as test results, Berends wrote in an article, “Sociology and School Choice: What We Know After Two Decades of Charter Schools,” published in mid-August in the journal Annual Review of Sociology. Mark Berends Berends, director of Notre Dame’s Center for Research on Educational Opportunity (CREO), notes that the explosive growth of charter schools in the past decade, with total enrollment now exceeding 2.5 million children, has benefited from claims in the public arena that are not thoroughly examined. “It’s time to go beyond the horse race between charter and traditional public schools based primarily on test scores,” Berends said in summarizing the Annual Reviews article. “More helpful research — how schools and classrooms are organized and an examination of school mission and goals, principal leadership, professional development and parent involvement — will help us understand whether charter schools are truly effective or not.” Berends is a fellow of the Institute for Educational Initiatives, which advances Notre Dame’s multidisciplinary research of K-12 schools, public and faith-based. Contact: Bill Schmitt, Institute for Educational Initiatives, 574-631-3893, wschmitt@nd.edu Posted In: Research Home Experts ND in the News Subscribe About Us Related October 05, 2022 Astrophysicists find evidence for the presence of the first stars October 04, 2022 NIH awards $4 million grant to psychologists researching suicide prevention September 29, 2022 Notre Dame, Ukrainian Catholic University launch three new research grants September 27, 2022 Notre Dame, Trinity College Dublin engineers join to advance novel treatment for cystic fibrosis September 22, 2022 Climate-prepared countries are losing ground, latest ND-GAIN index shows For the Media Contact Office of Public Affairs and Communications Notre Dame News 500 Grace Hall Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Pinterest © 2022 University of Notre Dame Search Mobile App News Events Visit Accessibility Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube LinkedIn