StickWithANose

So, what can one do when CREDO releases a study on NYC charter schools that pretty much confirms what national studies on charter schools consistently show? If you’re a corporate tool, you declare victory!

Students in New York City charter schools outperformed their public school counterparts in reading and math, according to a Stanford University study.

Fifty-one percent of charter school students showed gains in math that are “statistically larger” than they would have achieved in conventional public schools, according to the report released today by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, which is based at Stanford, near Palo Alto, California. The study, which analyzed six years of data at 49 charter schools from 2003 through 2009, also found that 29 percent of charter schools students showed greater gains than their public-school counterparts in reading.

Remember that simple math skills are easily taught through “drill and kill” methods that quickly evaporate after the assessment. Thus, the real metric here is reading as it is a cognitively complex skill-set that involves higher order thinking. The skinny that emerges from the research literature is that charter schools are not the cure-all they are sold to be, but then again reality has very little to do with politics these days. The corporate train will continue chugging along for the foreseeable future.