Florida Department of EducationAugust 2004
Are charter schools doing as well as their traditional district counterparts? The New York Times claimed to answer that question last week, in its gleeful promotion of a slipshod AFT study purporting to show low test scores at charters. But that was not the last word, as innumerable critics quickly noticed that the Times viewed only a snapshot of data (see "Slugging back on charters," above), which is no substitute for a value-added analysis measuring changes over time. Thankfully, the Florida Department of Education understands this key point and has just come out with a useful appraisal of its state's charters. These results are encouraging: charters posted greater gains in reading and math scores than regular district schools. The report breaks down the data into five subgroups (African American, Hispanic, poor, disabled and gifted students) and considers four tests. Across these twenty categories the district schools did not perform better than charters in a single one; in eleven, there was no difference, and in nine the charters did better. Charters also did a better job of achieving Adequate Yearly Progress under NCLB, and 69 percent of Florida parents gave their charter school a grade of A+ or A (compared to 29 percent of public school parents nationwide; there's no comparable data for Florida public schools alone). But this report also recognizes that charters have considerably more work to do. Their absolute scores trail slightly behind those of district schools, "in large part, because parents often choose a charter school when their child's needs are not met in the traditional school." (This is consistent with the data indicating that students held back one year in school are three to four times more likely than other students to switch to a charter school.) They also point out that some charters have done a poor job of meeting their reporting obligations, and many operators "are inexperienced and ill equipped to handle the complexities of charter school operations." But it seems reasonably clear that, so far, the charter movement in Florida has had more success than failure, creating worthwhile choices for many parents. The full study is available online here.
