Best Practices in Massachusetts Charter Schools: What We Know Now. White Paper No. 165

Despite ample evidence that Massachusetts's charter public schools are among the highest performing schools--charter or traditional--in the country, a 2016 ballot initiative to open more of them failed by a large margin. Rhetoric on both sides of the issue was driven by emotion rather than data, and charter school detractors successfully advanced several myths about the schools. The ballot question's failure is unlikely to halt charter school expansion in the future, but it does slow the pace of the movement's growth and speak to the work that charter supporters must do to educate the public. This paper summarizes the research-based truth about Massachusetts charter public schools, focusing on the ideas that were most prominent in the charter school ballot initiative debate. The data that follow are taken from a series of papers published by Pioneer Institute over the course of 2016.