The Denver Post reports that "Colorado's charter-school students have outperformed their traditional public-school peers on the state assessment test," with 46 percent of charters rated "excellent" or "high" on the state's accountability reports, compared to just 39.6 percent of traditional public schools. Charter critics maintain that the reason charter schools in the Golden State have fared so well is that they serve a disproportionately low number of poor children - statistics show that just 13 percent of charter students are eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, compared with 24 percent of traditional public school students. Colorado charter advocates insist that those numbers do not paint an accurate picture because "some charter schools don't provide hot lunch at all, meaning they report no students receiving a free or reduced-price lunch [which skews] the most-often used measure of poverty." Regardless, such a strong showing is good news for the charter movement, especially since many of the Colorado charter schools have been around long enough to iron out some of the "start-up" kinks that plague fledgling charters elsewhere.
"State's charter schools buck trend," by Karen Rouse, Denver Post, December 22, 2004