Little evidence that Philadelphia charter schools help or harm achievement of students in nearby district schools¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causalr?·q2
Currency · newest study 2008 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · overdue for a recheck since 2011: local conditions change quickly
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q2 i? There is little evidence that charter schools either help or harm the achievement of students in nearby district schools in Philadelphia. → Ron Zimmer 2008
Evidence¶
Ron Zimmer 2008¶
Ron Zimmer, Suzanne Blanc, Brian Gill, Jolley Christman. (2008). Evaluating the Performance of Philadelphia's Charter Schools. Santa Monica, CA: RAND. https://www.mathematica.org/publications/evaluating-the-performance-of-philadelphias-charter-schools
q2 · i? · causal · r?
The report's summary of its analysis of charter schools' impact on traditional public schools states there is "little evidence that charter schools either help or harm the achievement of students in nearby district schools." No effect size is printed in the available text.
"There is little evidence that charter schools either help or harm the achievement of students in nearby district schools."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Philadelphia charter school students' achievement gains are approximately equal to gains of students attending district-operated public schools — related
- The U.S. charter school sector has grown to more than 7,000 schools nationwide, prompting an active debate over charters' effects on the public school system and their regulation — a broader claim this one bears on
- Charter schools, on average, show test-score impacts that are not substantially better or worse than conventional public schools — related
- The average charter school performs about the same as nearby traditional public schools, but charter effects vary greatly — related
- The evaluation examined charter school effects by years of operation, grades served, mission, and demographics, plus student composition and turnover — related
- Officials raised equity concerns that closing low-performing charter schools may not better serve students when alternative district schools perform even worse — related
- Philadelphia's accelerated schools are evaluated for their impacts on enrollees' graduation rates — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
philadelphia-charter-no-spillover-nearby-district-schools |
title |
Little evidence that Philadelphia charter schools help or harm achievement of students in nearby district schools |
description |
Little evidence that Philadelphia charter schools help or harm achievement of students in nearby district schools |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2008 |
recheck_by |
2011 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-08 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — ron-zimmer-2008 |
Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.