Study Finds No Clear Edge for Charter Schools

Students who won lotteries to attend charter middle schools performed, on average, no better in mathematics and reading than their peers who lost out in the random admissions process and enrolled in nearby regular public schools, according to a national study released today.

The federally commissioned study , involving 2,330 students who applied to 36 charter middle schools in 15 states, represents the first large-scale randomized trial of the effectiveness of charter schools across several states and rural, suburban, and urban locales. The charter schools in the sample conducted random lotteries for admissions, so that only chance determined who attended.

The study, conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, of Princeton, N.J., also concludes that the lottery winners did no better, on average, than the lottery losers on non-academic outcomes such...