An Evaluation of a Turnaround Charter School

• In Event: From Rural to Urban: Examining the Effectiveness of Innovative School Forms

Abstract

The current evaluation looks at the effects of the Turnaround Project, turning an existing high school to a charter school, on students over the past three years. Comparing the Turnaround Project students to a matched sample of students at the District, using propensity score matching, results suggested that 9th graders who started with the Turnaround Project generally performed better on a range of student outcome measures than they would have if they attended a comparable high school in the District. Furthermore, positive Turnaround Project effects were generally more prevalent for the second and third cohorts of students than for the first cohort.

Authors

• Joan L. Herman, University of California - Los Angeles

• Jia Wang, University of California - Los Angeles

• Jordan Rickles, University of California - Los Angeles