I saw this on Facebook a few days back – maybe even a week – but I wanted to have some time to really take a look at this article and any data I was able to find based on it. The item that scrolled through my news feed read:
Click on the image or visit http://www.idahostatesman.com/eyepiece/story/900202.html
This is an interesting development in the history of cyber charter schools. Usually, when we have actual data on student performance in cyber charter schools it is mixed or bad news (see Report: Ohio E-Schools Show Superior Results, Data: Academic And Cost Effectiveness, CREDO National Charter School Study, Selective Conclusions About Charters and Cyber Charter School Research).
In reading through the article there were a lot of interesting things. For example, this paragraph:
This year, only one Treasure Valley charter school did not make adequate yearly progress as defined by the federal No Child Left Behind law.
Which was followed by these three paragraphs:
But just because charter school students tend to get good grades doesn’t mean the schools are doing a better job than traditional public schools, said Bill Goesling, chairman of the Idaho Public Charter School Commission, which oversees charter schools.
“Time will tell. Charter schools can pick and choose the students who will be attending,” Goesling said. “They don’t have that expansive requirement to take every student who shows up and give them the same education.”
Whether a school offers bus service, a lunch program or requires uniforms will influence who might attend, he said.
I found the list of items interesting, as I had never seen the possible exclusion factors for charter schools laid out like that – and hadn’t even considered them in all honesty. In searching for some of the actual data that was available – after seeing this news item – I wasn’t able to find much.
One interesting thing that I did discover, which has little to do with this actual story because it comes from a report that is three years old, but I did come across this:
Charter Schools in Idaho
Some of the conclusions from this report read:
Charter schools in Idaho tend to attract students who have been performing above average in traditional public schools. Newer charter schools appear to be more effective than schools that have been in operation longer, though this may in part reflect changes in the mix of students recruited to a school over time. Finally, the analytical method preferred in the literature—a longitudinal analysis comparing gains of individual students before and after their enrollment in a charter school—shows that charter schools at the elementary level have been more effective than traditional public schools in promoting mathematics achievement. However, a simple cross-sectional comparison of gains in the two sectors indicates the opposite. (emphasis added)
Getting back to the issue of comparing apples and apples – which I’ve raised in the past. Better performing students tend to be stronger students (there are always individual exceptions, but as a group). Strong students should have the potential to experience greater gains. And when the data is analyzed one way this is true, but when analyzed a second way not so much. For those unfamiliar – which include myself, as I’m more familiar with qualitative methods – for information about longitude analysis can be found here, while more information about cross-sectional comparison can be found here.
Of course this speaks nothing to cyber charter schools in Idaho – and in all of the information I was able to find through searching online there was no distinction between brick-and-mortar charters and cyber charters.
I posted an entry about this back at the end of August (see 
The item itself linked to a note, which I have re-produced below. Essentially a list of links to all of the various 
