Thoughts on NYS charter school data

I haven't had a chance to carefully review the charter school data, but I am quite certain of the following three things:

a) Charter schools, as a whole, will show lower scores than schools statewide, in NYC and among all big city schools in the state.  This is because charter schools serve MUCH more disadvantaged students -- something for which charter schools should be APPLAUDED not pilloried.  Thus, the low test scores, by themselves, tell us NOTHING whether charter schools are doing a good job. 

 

It would be better to, say, compare each charter school to a nearby public school with similar student demographics on a school-by-school basis -- and even this is deeply flawed because even assuming the two schools draw from the same neighborhood (not always a safe assumption, as many charter schools draw from wide areas) and have similar demographics, the students who choose to apply to the charter school may be quite different than the other students in the neighborhood. 

 

The only way to REALLY measure a school is to look at year-by-year progress of individual students -- and here, the great majority of studies show that charter schools do better then regular public schools (see slide 4 of the attached presentation, which is also posted at: http://www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/Charterschoolslides.pdf)

 

b) Regardless of these points, charter school opponents will seize on today's data and loudly proclaim that charter schools are a failure and the cap shouldn't be lifted.

 

c) Wide numbers of gullible and/or ignorant members of the media will lap this up and publish stories that echo this nonsense.