The "Days of Learning" Metric for Education Evaluations

Abstract

The third National Charter School Study (NCSS III) aimed to test whether charter school were effective and to highlight outcomes on academic progress. The authors reported that typical charter school students outperformed similar students in non-charter public schools by 6 days in mathematics and 16 days in reading. This "days of learning" metric used to claim relatively higher performance in charter schools than in comparable public schools. This logic of this metric is critiqued in this paper, and an alternative method of reporting outcomes is proposed.