THE CHARTER DIFFERENCE

A great Op Ed in today's NY Post by Malcolm Smith, the NY State Senate minority leader and a warrior for charter schools and education reform.  If only there were more than a handful of Democrats in Albany who shared his views -- but we're working on this!

It has been suggested that charter schools do better simply because of the kinds of students they enroll. Most notably, the claim is that  parents who seek out and fight for alternative methods of schooling are likely  to "invest" in their children's education in other ways - meaning that their children's ultimate success is less about the charter education and more about the educational climate at home.
 
But Hoxby has debunked this myth by conducting her research exclusively within the scope of New York City's random charter-school lottery.  That is, she looked only at students whose names were entered in the lottery - then compared the educational achievements of those students  randomly picked to attend charters versus those who had to stay in the traditional system.
 
Thus, she produced the first "apples to apples" comparison of city students, successfully controlling for the bias introduced by highly motivated parents. Her findings cast serious doubt on the critics' arguments  about the effectiveness of the city's public charter schools.
 
But there's another reason to be excited by Hoxby's findings.  Her team also found that public charters disproportionately serve poor and minority students. In fact, nearly 70 percent of New York City's 12,000  charter-school students are black, vs. 32 percent of the city's general student population. Ninety-one percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, compared with 73 percent citywide.
 
In practical terms, this means that the most rapidly improving public-school students in New York City are black, poor or both. Charter schools are standing the traditional racial-achievement gap on its head.  
 
At a time when less than half of the city's black and Latino students graduate with a Regents diploma, and those who do lag four grade levels behind their high-income peers, these results should get our attention.

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THE CHARTER DIFFERENCE
By MALCOLM A. SMITH
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08232007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_charter_difference.htm

August 23, 2007 -- THE first-year results of a five-year study of nearly 50 New York City charter schools echo what we in the charter movement have been saying for the last 10 years. This is the first compelling proof that the schools themselves are a major reason why students in charters measurably outperform their traditional public-school counterparts.