Dear Commons Community,

Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes just released its latest study on student performance in charter schools and basically found no significant differences with comparable public schools.  Charter school students on average slightly outpace comparable public school kids in reading and tie them in math, according to a large study of academic performance that shows slow but steady charter school improvement in some states since 2009.

Charter students on the whole end the school year with reading skills eight instructional days ahead of public school kids, and perform at about the same rate as public school students in math, according to the study released Tuesday by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, or CREDO. In math, the study found that 29 percent of charter schools showed “significantly stronger learning gains” than their public school peers, with 40 percent performing similarly and 31 percent “significantly weaker.” In reading, 25 percent of charters showed “significantly stronger learning gains” than public schools, 56 percent showed no difference and 19 percent showed “significantly weaker gains.”

CREDO looked at 2.3 million charter students in 25 states and two cities — New York and Washington. It is likely the biggest study of charter schools to date — bigger than the Stanford group’s 2009 study of charter schools in 16 states that has been cited hundreds of times by scholars, lawmakers and advocates. The 2009 study showed charter students were losing seven days in reading and 22 days in math to public school students. It found that 17 percent of charter schools outperformed public school peers and 37 percent were actually doing worse.

In New York, to think that we have caused such major disruptions in some of our public schools to house charter schools to say nothing about the siphoning off of precious  funds, for eight days of improvement in reading scores.

Tony