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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Educ.
Sec. Assessment, Testing and Applied Measurement
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2024.1277484

Weathering the Storm: A Descriptive Examination of COVID era proficiency changes in charter schools

Provisionally accepted
Ian Kingsbury Ian Kingsbury *
  • Educational Freedom Institute, Phoenix, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The COVID-19 pandemic imposed unprecedented disruptions on American education and contributed to profound learning loss. The stakes attached to learning loss are especially high for charter schools, whose survival and potential expansion or replication is heavily tied to test score performance. Using nationwide school-level proficiency data, this study examines achievement patterns in the charter sector between 2018-19 and 2020-21. Overall, it emerges that school proficiency rates in 2018-19 remained strongly predictive of proficiency rates in 2020-21. Still, certain notable patterns emerge from the data. Charters that serve more Black, Hispanic, and economically disadvantaged students lost more ground. Moreover, charters affiliated with education management organizations experienced less learning loss than other types of charter schools.

    Keywords: Charter school, School choice, Education Management Organizations, Charter management organizations, charter school accountability

    Received: 14 Aug 2023; Accepted: 10 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Kingsbury. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Ian Kingsbury, Educational Freedom Institute, Phoenix, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.