NAEP Study Fuels Debate Over Charter Schools

Washington

Stoking a debate that had been heating up all fall, federal officials recently released a long-awaited study showing that 4th graders in charter schools posted lower math scores on the tests commonly known as “the nation’s report card” than their counterparts in regular public schools.

The official analysis of scores from the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress found 4th graders in charter schools generally lagging behind their counterparts in regular public schools. But the gaps were statistically meaningful only for mathematics, not for reading, officials said. And the differences in both subjects shrank to insignificance once the race and ethnicity of the students were taken into account, the study found.

Release of the study in the nation’s capital on Dec. 15 revived a controversy that flared in August, when the American Federation of Teachers released an unofficial version of the results from data available on the Internet. ( "AFT Charter School Study Sparks Heated National Debate," ...