N.Y.C. Study Finds Gains for Charters

Research Shows Schools Closing City-Suburb Gap

New York City’s charter schools are making strides in closing achievement gaps between disadvantaged inner-city students and their better-off suburban counterparts, a new study concludes.

The study, conducted by Stanford University researcher Caroline M. Hoxby and her co-authors Sonali Mararka and Jenny Kang, is based on eight years of data for students applying to the city’s growing number of charter schools. It finds, for instance, that attending a charter school from kindergarten to 8th grade can close the achievement gap with a similar student in the affluent suburb of Scarsdale, N.Y., by 86 percent in mathematics and 66 percent in reading.