All that glitters is not gold: School reform in Charlotte-Mecklenburg

In the early 1990s, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system (CMS) began a s weeping program of school reform that involved revamped standards, a compre hensive system of benchmark goals, increased autonomy for principals, and a high-stakes accountability system. This program has been lauded in prestig ious education journals, praised by reform advocates in business and govern ment, and cited as a model in a recently published handbook of school refor m. Such national publicity notwithstanding, there has been no systematic in vestigation of the effects of CMS's program on academic outcomes. This arti cle provides such an assessment by comparing CMS's progress in improving ou tcomes for both Black and White students with that of two other North Carol ina urban districts and the state itself. This the exception of some outcom es for Advanced placement (AP) and other higher level courses, we find no e vidence that CMSS's program improved academic outcomes. Trends in CMS's dro pout rate-one of North Carolina's highest-generally paralleled those of the controls as did trends in SAT scores and proficiency in core high school c ourses. Moreover CMS's progress in improving reading and math proficiency i n Grades 3-8 lagged behind the controls'. Finally, racial imbalance in CMS increased during this time period. The many shortfalls of CMS's program rai se questions whose answers will further the national dialogue about school reform and the role of standards, accountability, and assessment in such re form.