Sector's Scores Lag in Three Out of Four Main Categories
Nearly four years after a front-page story in The New York Times sparked a fierce debate by suggesting that charter school students nationally were lagging academically behind their peers in regular public schools, the national testing program that informed the controversy has generated far more data for researchers and advocates to scrutinize...
...The picture that emerges from the growing data set appears mixed for charter schools. While many analysts urge caution in using NAEP to judge the 4,300-school charter sector, the latest data do not bolster the early hopes of charter advocates that the sector as a whole would significantly outperform regular public schools. The overall scores of charter students tested in 2007 in the nationally representative assessment program were lower than for students in regular public schools in 4th grade reading and mathematics, and in 8th grade math, all by statistically significant margins...
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If you read further in the article, you find that many researchers believe the NAEP isn't suitable for analysis of charter schools. The article says, "Researchers emphasize that because of NAEP's design, the program has serious limitations in assessing charter schools, or comparing them with other public schools. Some experts argue that the tests are altogether ill-suited for the purpose."
Your readers might find it enlightening to read, "Achievement and Attainment in Chicago Charter Schools" from RAND. It will "Google up" with that title. This study has focus that NAEP's highly matrixed test model can never achieve and concentrates on inner city schools likely to be associated with charter service areas.
Richard Innes
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