One of the original intentions of creating charter schools was to improve student learning—which is why it’s telling that proponents of “school choice” now justify charter-school and school-voucher expansion by saying they are necessary to provide parents with options other than traditional public schools.
Choice for choice’s sake—originally a secondary rationale for charters—has become the go-to line of charter school proponents. Meanwhile, measures of academic performance have faded into the background as a justification for school options. Nevertheless, for years, the question of whether or not charter schools academically out-perform traditional public schools has gnawed at the industry like an annoying uncle who insists on having the last word in every family debate.
The latest attempt to prove the supposed superiority of the charter industry comes from the Center for Research for Education Outcome, or CREDO (not the same as the phone company), which has taken prior stabs at the question with results that were far from convincing.
“Remarkable” was how Margaret “Macke” Raymond, CREDO’s director and author described the results of CREDO’s latest national charter school study. Her enthusiasm was infectious. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board proclaimed that CREDO’s new evidence showed charter schools are now “blowing away their traditional school competition.”
But despite the headlines that popped up in pro-charter media, the only thing “blown away” was the truth. Like prior national studies, CREDO’s latest report, “As a Matter of Fact: The National Charter School Study III,” shows tiny average differences between charter and public school students—0.011 standard deviations in math and 0.028 standard deviations in reading. These are differences so small that the Brookings Institution’s Tom Loveless once likened them to standing on a few sheets of paper to increase one’s height.
And CREDO knows it. The organization characterized nearly identical differences (where charters were on the losing end) in their 2009 national study as inconsequential—referring to them as “meaningless,” “small,” and possibly derived from “measurement error.”
How could “meaningless” suddenly become “remarkable” once a tiny statistical tilt in outcomes favors charter schools? The answer lies in who runs CREDO, who funds it, and the methodological problems inherent in its reports.
We tackle these points in our new Network for Public Education report, “In Fact or Fallacy? An In-depth Critique of the CREDO 2023 National Report.” Here's a brief summary.
Who runs CREDO?
Although reporters refer to CREDO at Stanford University or Stanford’s CREDO, the relationship between CREDO and the prestigious university is complicated.
CREDO is based in the conservative, pro-charter Hoover Institution, a private think tank on the Stanford University campus. The Hoover Institution governs and finances itself without oversight or control by the university. In fact, Hoover has a “long and fraught relationship” with Stanford’s faculty and students who have objected to its lack of diversity, controversial scholarship, and conservative ideology.
What all of these funders have in common is a vested interest in charter schools and—at least in Pearson’s case—profit.
Expanding school choice is a focus of the Hoover Institution. For example, in 2021, Hoover hosted Betsy DeVos in a stop on her book tour. Secretary DeVos was introduced and praised by Raymond, who, along with her role at CREDO, refers to herself as the education program director at Hoover in the video.
Who funds CREDO?
Because the organization is private, it relies on private funding. There is no list of donors on their website, although funders are listed occasionally in CREDO reports.
The new report identifies two underwriters—the City Fund and the Walton Family Foundation. The City Fund, started and funded by pro-charter billionaires John Arnold and Reed Hastings, exists to turn public school districts into “portfolio” districts of charter schools and charter-like public schools.
The Walton Family Foundation has publicly disclosed $1.35 million in donations directly to CREDO since 2017. Hoover Institution biographies of Raymond between 2015 and March 2017 describe CREDO as being in partnership with the Walton Family Foundation and Pearson Learning Systems (which owns the online charter chain, Connections Academy).
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated $2.7 million to CREDO to evaluate charter schools in Washington State. And the Fisher Fund, run by the billionaire founders of The Gap, funded a 2017 report by CREDO.
What all of these funders have in common is a vested interest in charter schools and—at least in Pearson’s case—profit. For the foundations, the motive rests in multi-million dollar investments in charter schools and advocacy organizations.
Methodological problems
CREDO has issued reports for fourteen years, and each year scholars have critiqued their methodology.
For example, the problems with CREDO’s 2017 study on charter management organizations (CMOs) were so troubling that Gary Miron and Christopher Shank at Western Michigan University suggested that CREDO was more interested in “serving the needs and agenda of funding agencies than in providing sound policy advice.”
Those problems are compounded in the new report, which compares student scores in schools run by charter management organizations, independent charter schools, and public schools. The latest report excludes several large, low-quality, for-profit CMOs including Charter Schools U.S.A. and Pearson’s online Connections Academy—without explanation or justification for the omission. Do CMO run schools actually outperform “mom and pop” charters as the report claims? Because the report “cherry picks” what it considers a CMO it is impossible to know.
And that is a problem given the comprehensive and exclusive access to taxpayer-funded datasets that CREDO established by agreements with state education departments—access unavailable to researchers outside of their organization. With that privilege comes great responsibility. CREDO is responsible for both the quality of its research and how its findings are explained and presented to the public. It has failed on both counts.
Equally troubling is the lack of transparency in CREDO’s relationship with the Hoover Institution, which advocates for school choice. Is CREDO a credible source by which to evaluate the success of charter school students? You can read our new report and decide for yourself.