Sign Up For Our Newsletter

NYC charters outperform public schools?!

How can this be?

Charter schools in the city are vastly outperforming public schools in their neighborhoods, according to a bombshell state report obtained by The Post.

The just-released study by state Education Department found students in 11 of 16 city charter schools outscored kids in nearby public schools on the state’s fourth-grade English and math exams in 2005.

The academic gap widens in the upper grades, the report said, with kids in five of six upper-grade charter schools faring better on eighth-grade English and math exams.

Charters are privately managed but publicly financed schools that have more flexibility in developing a curriculum, hiring personnel and establishing work rules than traditional schools.

The report – to be discussed at a state Board of Regents meeting next week – cited city charters whose kids were top achievers compared to charters in other parts of the state.

But wait…wasn’t some study released a few days ago saying private and public charter schools are pretty much the same as public schools?  So what’s with the discrepancy? 

This is a very good illustration of the NCES study’s fundamental weakness (which the study’s authors themselves admitted): there is so much variation among private schools and public schools that a massive aggregate comparison is so broad as to be useless for practical purposes.  But when comparing choice schools to their direct competition–i.e. looking at the choice schools kids transfer to against the schools they came from–studies have shown over and over that kids are far better off.  Once again, this study isn’t nearly what choice opponents believe it to be.