Advocates of privatizing education suggest that traditional public schools are not adequately preparing students for college, career readiness, and global citizenship (Lobosco, 2019; Schneider and Berkshire, 2020; Tienken and Mullen, 2016). Charter school supporters believe charter school students perform better than public school children on state standardized tests (Lubienski and Lubienski, 2014). Advocates for traditional public schools promote the idea that there are no significant differences between public and charter schools in academic achievement (Chen, 2020b; Fischler, 2021).
This study compares public and charter elementary school students in terms of their reading and math assessment scores, both as measured by the Virginia Standard of Learning (SOL) for the 2018-2019 school year. Data were collected and analyzed on 642 students enrolled in three of Virginia's elementary charter schools and three traditional public schools in Loudoun County and Richmond City. SOL assessment data for the public and charter schools were compared for the overall student population per grade level to determine if there is a significant difference for the 2018-2019 school year. A two-way ANOVA was utilized in this study.
Results indicated no significant differences in the reading mean SOL assessment scores between traditional public elementary and public charter school students: F (1, 636) = .119, p = .730. Additionally, results showed no significant interaction between school type and grade level between traditional public elementary and public charter schools: F (2, 636) = 1.076, p = .342. However, findings revealed a significant difference in the reading SOL assessment scores between grade levels of traditional public elementary schools and public charter schools: F (2, 636) = 4.473, p = .012. Furthermore, results from the math analysis indicated no statistical differences in math SOL scores between traditional public elementary schools and public charter schools: F (1, 636) = .000, p = .997. Also, findings indicated no significant difference in the math SOL scores between the grade levels of traditional public elementary and public charter schools: F (2, 636) = .520, p = .595. / Doctor of Education / Advocates of privatizing education suggest that traditional public "brick-and-mortar" schools are not adequately preparing students for college, career readiness, and global citizenship (Lobosco, 2019; Tienken and Mullen, 2016; Schneider and Berkshire, 2020). Charter school supporters believe charter school students perform better than public school children on state standardized tests (Lubienski and Lubienski, 2014). Advocates for traditional public schools promote the idea that there are no significant differences between public and charter schools in academic achievement (Chen, 2020b; Fischler, 2021).
This study compares public and charter elementary school students in terms of their reading and math assessment scores, both as measured by the Virginia Standard of Learning (SOL) for the 2018-2019 school year. Data were collected and analyzed on 642 students enrolled in three of Virginia's elementary charter schools and three traditional public schools in Loudoun County and Richmond City. SOL assessment data for the public and charter schools were compared for the overall student population per grade level to determine if there is a significant difference for the 2018-2019 school year.
This study did not reveal any significant differences in reading and math SOL scores between traditional elementary public schools and public elementary charter schools. However, findings in this study revealed significant differences in reading SOL scores on average among grade levels. Conversely, findings did not reveal any differences in math SOL assessment scores on average between grade levels of traditional public elementary school and public elementary charter school students.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/115355 |
| Date | 06 June 2023 |
| Creators | Brown, Renee Williams |
| Contributors | Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Alexander, Michael D., Kniola, David John, Cash, Carol S., Price, Ted S. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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