Charter School Performance and Practices After the COVID-19 Pandemic

MIT Blueprint Lab Abstract In recent decades, with the advent of a greater array of school choices, including charter schools, a growing share of students in the United States are pursuing alternative school options. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this trend (Dee, 2023; Dee & Murphy, 2021). Moreover, while it is clear students have generally experienced learning loss during the pandemic (Fahle et al, 2023; Goldhaber et al., 2023; Relyea et al., 2022; Sass and Goldring, 2022), it is unknown how recovery differed between charter and traditional public schools, how school strategies to address the learning loss varied across school types, and whether these strategies increased or decreased inequalities among racial/ethnic or socioeconomic subgroups. In this proposed project, we plan to leverage an existing grant from Tennessee SCORE in which we are examining charter school practices and performance after the pandemic in Tennessee. We are requesting additional resources to examine these same questions in Indiana.