Charter schools fare better academically than L. A. Unified peers, report says
It's the $64,000 question of public education: Are charter schools better than their traditional public school counterparts?
A report to be released today from the California Charter Schools Assn. takes a crack at it, comparing charter schools in Los Angeles with their traditional peers. Its conclusion is that charters generally perform better academically than nearby regular public schools, and that charters improve as they age.
As is often the case with education statistics, it's not quite that simple. A majority of the regular schools surveyed actually did better in one batch of test scores than the nearest comparable charter school and improved more from 2006 to 2007.
But by most measures, charters had the edge.
"It's pretty significant that seven out of 10 charters actually outperform their most similarly matched district public school," said Caprice Young, chief executive of the charter schools association, citing one finding in the report. She said the study was intended to answer the question parents are most likely to ask: How does their local charter school stack up against the nearest comparable regular schools?
It found that charter schools did especially well in educating African American students and that charters show some of their strongest success in middle schools, whose traditional counterparts have been stubbornly resistant to progress.
The differences between charters and regular public schools were smallest in the elementary grades, where the Los Angeles Unified School District has sharply improved achievement in recent years.
The study found that charters, on average, were improving their test scores at a faster clip than traditional schools. However, it also found a big difference in achievement between "mature" charters -- at least 6 years old -- and those more recently established. The older charters scored significantly higher, leading the association to call for patience in judging young charter schools.
Ramon C. Cortines, L.A. Unified's newly appointed senior deputy superintendent, said the report pointed to how traditional schools could learn from charters -- a strikingly different attitude from that typically expressed by district officials.
"I think that what it says is that they have some best practices, and those should be replicated in the district in all schools," he said. "I would say the same about islands of excellence in the Unified district. . . . We need to each learn from each other."
