Methodology Immigrants and Schools: Do charter schools founded by Turkish immigrants do better? Robert Maranto Danish Shakeel, Sivan Tuchman, Evan Rhinesmith, Department of Education Reform, University of Arkansas Results and Discussion Introduction As typifies entrepreneurship generally (Muller 1993; Anderson 2011), some successful charters were founded by immigrants (Arizona Charter Schools Association 2008). Most notably roughly 120 charter schools were founded by Turkish immigrants. These schools generally have good reputations and long waitlists (Maranto, Franklin, and Camuz 2014). Yet researchers have done little to study charter founder characteristics generally, and nothing to explore whether immigrant status matters. We offer a preliminary overview of the performance of charter schools founded by Turkish immigrants relative to traditional public schools (TPS). First, we will present results distilled from CREDO (Woodworth and Raymond 2013) using propensity score matching to compare charter school value added for individual students with those of "matched" students in nearby TPS. Second, we compare schools founded by Turkish immigrants with TPS for two states accounting for roughly half of former, Texas and Ohio, using the Global Report Card (Greene and McGee, 2011), which compares school level achievement data with national and international results. Finally, we compare proficiency levels using Ohio and Texas state data. TABLE I. Growth in reading and math compared to traditional public schools. All findings significant at p=0.001 (distilled from CREDO, 2013). Charter organization SchoolsReadingMath Daisy(Arizona) Magnolia (California) Cosmos Foundation (Texas, Harmony Schools) Concept Schools (Midwest) Riverwalk Education (Texas) StateOhioTexas School Type Founded by Turks All state schools Founded by Turks All state schools 2009 Total PK-12 Enrollment FRL Percentage Percent Minority State Math Percentile State Reading Percentile National Math Percentile** National Reading Percentile** International Math Percentile** International Reading Percentile** Math Percentile if District was in Finland** Reading Percentile if District was in Finland** TABLE II. Global School Report Card comparisons with TPS in Texas and Ohio. (Greene and McGee, 2011). Conclusion Results suggest that while schools founded by Turkish immigrants vary significantly, as do schools generally, where such schools serve comparable populations they do somewhat better than traditional public schools, and spend less. Results Table I shows student level academic growth for CMOs founded by Turkish immigrants compared to TPS, reported in standard deviations to eliminate issues with differences in the scaling of state assessments or changes over time. The Turkish networks typically outperform nearby traditional public schools, with six positive statistical relationships (with a mean of.042) and only two negative ones (mean of.03). The two largest networks, accounting for 61 of the 85 schools, had large positive impacts in reading. Using the Global Report Card (Greene and McGee, 2011) we find that Ohio Turkish founded schools (n=10) lag behind TPS, but they also serve far less advantaged populations. Texas Turkish founded charters (n=34) have comparable FRL percentages and far larger minority percentages than TPS; here the Global School Report Card figures consistently rank above those for TPS. Finally, using state assessments (results not pictured), we find that again, in Ohio grade 3-8 math, reading, and (for 8th grade) science results for Turkish founded schools fall consistently below those for TPS; TPS does better on all 13 comparisons. In contrast, Texas elementary level (grades 3- 6) exams find Turkish schools doing better than TPS on two comparisons and worse on six. For grades 7 and 8 the Turkish schools do better on four comparisons and tie on one. For more advanced subject matter exams the Turkish schools do better on ten of 11 exams, with a 12th as a virtual tie. This may accord with the CREDO findings of somewhat higher value added, and may suggest an advantage in advanced subjects, perhaps reflecting different teacher pipelines as found by Maranto et. al Notably, Ohio charter schools receive a mean of 27.1% less per pupil funding than TPS, though for Texas the figure is just 3.4% less (Batdorff et al. 2014, 14-15).