Mercy! A Skunk!?: Traditional Schools versus Charter School Achievement

Mercy! Mercy! From Wikipedia:

A mercy rule, also well known by the slightly less polite term slaughter rule (or, less commonly, knockout rule and skunk rule), brings a sports event to an early end when one team has a very large and presumably insurmountable lead over the other team. It is called the mercy rule because it spares the losing team the humiliation of suffering a more formal loss, and denies the winning team the satisfaction thereof, and prevents running up the score, a generally discouraged practice in which the opponent continues to score beyond the point when the game has become out of hand. The mercy rule is most common in North America and primarily in North American sports such as baseball or softball, where there is no game clock and play could theoretically continue forever, although it is also used in sports such as hockey and American football. It is very rare in competitive sports beyond the high school level.

What kind of lead do you have to have call on the mercy rule?

In Little League Baseball and Softball, rules call for the game to end if the winning team is ahead by 10 runs after four innings (3½ innings if the home team is ahead).

In NCAA and NAIA college baseball, the game will end if a team is ahead by at least 10 runs after seven innings in a scheduled 9-inning game. Most NCAA conferences only apply the rule on the final day of a series for travel reasons or during conference tournaments in order to allow the next game to start. The rule is not allowed for the NCAA Division I tournament, where all games must be nine innings.

In NCAA softball, the rule is invoked if one team is ahead by at least eight runs after five innings and, unlike with college baseball, applies in the NCAA tournament as well. In American high school softball, most states use a mercy rule of 10 in five innings. (In either case, if the home team is ahead by the requisite number of runs, the game will end after the top half of the inning.)

Most state high school associations (where games are seven innings) have rules where a baseball game ends after the winning team has built a 10-run lead and at least five innings have been played.

Ever wonder how charters stack up to traditional public schools statewide on the STAAR, Texas’ state mandated assessment? Might we need a mercy rule? I will first conduct a descriptive comparison of the 2013 STAAR scale score means for reading and math for ALL Texas schools reporting results in various demographic categories. I compare the means for all schools statewide (charters versus non-charters). Here is what I found. (I do also have the STAAR scale scores for 3-8 and EOC. I will calculate and post that data at a future date)

Descriptive Comparison of Means: 2013 STAAR Average Scale Scores

	Charter	N	Mean	Std. Deviation	Std. Error Mean
Reading — All	No	3976	1421.61	52.064	.826
	Yes	206	1398.65	60.339	4.204
Reading — Latina/o	No	3708	1407.59	48.164	.791
	Yes	162	1388.51	54.312	4.267
Reading — African American	No	1903	1392.33	54.482	1.249
	Yes	114	1395.63	66.815	6.258
Reading — White	No	2789	1460.92	49.675	.941
	Yes	80	1458.29	55.554	6.211
Reading — ELL	No	2554	1378.90	52.465	1.038
	Yes	104	1359.88	53.724	5.268
Reading — Special Ed	No	1434	1363.82	67.228	1.775
	Yes	19	1312.00	67.829	15.561
Reading — At-Risk	No	3749	1370.11	45.237	.739
	Yes	159	1362.11	57.970	4.597
Mathematics — All	No	3978	1460.36	62.907	.997
	Yes	206	1412.66	76.437	5.326
Mathematics — Latina/o	No	3714	1450.81	57.896	.950
	Yes	161	1407.39	67.113	5.289
Mathematics — African American	No	1904	1409.00	63.091	1.446
	Yes	114	1394.45	83.360	7.807
Mathematics — White	No	2793	1493.35	64.284	1.216
	Yes	81	1461.36	71.523	7.947
Mathematics — ELL	No	2524	1450.39	64.794	1.290
	Yes	92	1400.38	69.030	7.197
Mathematics — Special Ed	No	1646	1392.40	75.657	1.865
	Yes	20	1308.00	53.078	11.869
Mathematics — At-Risk	No	3737	1417.26	58.186	.952
	Yes	155	1393.25	73.794	5.927

Traditional public schools outscored charters across demographic groups 13-1 in 2013. Mercy!! The lone bright spot for charters was for African Americans on the STAAR reading (More on that later).

The next question is: Are the differences in mean scale scores statistically significant? I conducted t-tests.

T-Test Comparison of Means: 2013 STAAR Average Scale Scores

		F	Sig.	t	df	Sig. (2-tailed)	Mean Difference
	Reading — All	6.778	.009	6.122	4180	.000	22.967
	Reading — Latina/o	1.172	.279	4.908	3868	.000	19.079
	Reading — African American	6.440	.011	-.619	2015	.536	-3.297
	Reading — White	1.804	.179	.466	2867	.642	2.632
	Reading — ELL	.018	.895	3.619	2656	.000	19.014
	Reading — Special Ed	.091	.763	3.337	1451	.001	51.816
	Reading — At-Risk	16.986	.000	2.156	3906	.031	7.997
	Mathematics — All	10.190	.001	10.492	4182	.000	47.708
	Mathematics — Latina/o	5.696	.017	9.250	3873	.000	43.414
	Mathematics — African American	9.019	.003	2.344	2016	.019	14.556
	Mathematics — White	3.079	.079	4.400	2872	.000	31.987
	Mathematics — ELL	.919	.338	7.255	2614	.000	50.008
	Mathematics — Special Ed	5.004	.025	4.973	1664	.000	84.399
	Mathematics — At-Risk	19.134	.000	4.975	3890	.000	24.011

On the 3^rd grade STAAR, the mean differences (non-charters means are larger than charter means) are significant for 12 of the 14 groups examined. The formerly single bright spot for charters, African American scores on the Reading STAAR, turned out to not be statistically significant.

Again. Mercy rule applies.

Disclosure: As I have mentioned previously, I was an instructor at Aspire’s East Palo Alto charter and I currently sit on the board of the UT-Austin charter school. This insider view on charters has inspired research that shows that not all is well in the direction of the choice movement.

Are there excellent charters? Of course. For example, The University of Texas Elementary School Charter outperforms the average scales scores for the state for charters (11 of 11) and non-charters (8 of 11).

University of Texas Charter School 2013 STAAR Scale Scores

	Mean	Outperforms TX Non-Charters	Outperforms TX Charters
Reading — All	1431.00	Y	Y
Reading — Latina/o	1395.00	N	Y
Reading — African American	1473.00	Y	Y
Reading — White	1497.00	Y	Y
Reading — ELL	1404.00	Y	Y
Reading — At-Risk	1407.00	Y	Y
Mathematics — All	1458.00	N	Y
Mathematics — Latina/o	1421.00	N	Y
Mathematics — African American	1498.00	Y	Y
Mathematics — White	1502.00	Y	Y
Mathematics — At-Risk	1423.00	Y	Y

But on average, across the entire state of Texas, charters did not outperform our traditional public schools on the 3rd grade STAAR in 2013. As previously discussed, in future posts I will take a look at 8th grade STAAR results and the EOC Algebra I and English I Reading.

It’s a Skunk! 🙂 (Well, almost)

For all of Cloaking Inequity’s posts on charters click here.

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