The NYT reports this morning on Stanford Professor Caroline Hoxby's latest findings on the Big Apple's charters. The results are extremely encouraging. Here are two blurbs:
Ms. Hoxby found that students who attended a charter school from??kindergarten to eighth grade would nearly match the performance of their peers in affluent suburban communities on state math exams by the time they entered high school.
The gap between students in charter schools and those in traditional public schools widened the longer students remained in the charter schools, according to the report.
Obviously, not all charters in NYC are great. But these finding suggest two important things. First, generally, the bell curve of charter quality in the city has shifted to the right (compared to the traditional public school sector). Second, there is a disproportionate number of superior charters.
Given that similarly encouraging news has come out about Boston's and DC's charters, we need to consider whether a pattern is emerging: perhaps a strong law plus strong growth plus an experienced charter sector (say a decade or so of charter experience) yields very good charter results in urban America.