In an op-ed published recently in the Wall Street Journal about school choice, charter leader Eva Moskowitz says when it comes to test scores and charter school attendance, the numbers don’t lie.
Responding to charter school critics who say that cherry-picking by charters means that academic gains by charter schools are offset by losses in district schools, Moskowitz, the founder and CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools, uses statewide exam scores to refute this claim.
Moskowitz claims that the unique environment in New York City’s 32 school districts make for an ideal real-world experiment:
“New York City has 32 community school districts. The availability of free facilities in some of them has spurred rapid charter-school growth, while in others, the absence of such facilities has thwarted it. As a result, charter enrollment varies widely, from nearly half of students in the Central Harlem district to none at all in other districts.
We can examine the 16 districts where charter school enrollment is highest (charter-rich districts) and the 16 districts where it is lowest (charter-light districts) and see how their relative rankings, based on their results on statewide English and math proficiency exams, changed between 2006 and 2014.”
The full article with the results of Moskowitz’s analysis is available on the Wall Street Journal’s online edition.