Charter school report card...

Last month the New York Times ran a story about an American Federation of Teachers report which claimed that charter schools don’t perform as well as traditional public schools. The report was widely blasted as experts pointed to flaws in both the study and the AFT’s conclusions. Daniel Drezner gave a nice roundup of it here.

Drezner now points to a new, more comprehensive study which indicates that charter schools are outperforming their traditional counterparts. Drezner quotes this abstract:

This study compares the reading and mathematics proficiency of charter school students to that of their fellow students in neighboring public schools. Unlike previous studies, which include only a tiny fraction (3 percent) of charter school students, this study covers 99 percent of such students. The charter schools are compared to the schools that their students would most likely otherwise attend: the nearest regular public school and the nearest regular public school with a similar racial composition. In most cases, the two comparison schools are one and the same. Compared to students in the nearest regular public school, charter students are 4 percent more likely to be proficient in reading and 2 percent more likely to be proficient in math, on their state's exams. Compared to students in the nearest regular public school with a similar racial composition, charter students are 5 percent more likely to be proficient in reading and 3 percent more likely to be proficient in math. In states where charter schools are well-established, charter school students' proficiency "advantage" tends to be greater.