Students attending a cluster of Los Angeles schools overseen by the charter operator Green Dot significantly increased their test scores and persistence in school and took more challenging courses than comparable peers, a new study finds.
The schools were created after 2007, when Green Dot took over Alain Leroy Locke High School.
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing compared two cohorts of Locke students entering 9th grade against demographically similar students from the same middle schools who ended up at different high schools.
Both Green Dot cohorts outperformed the comparison groups in persistence through high school and college-readiness ratesas measured by their completion of courses needed for admission to state universities. But academic performance was stronger for the second cohort on a wider variety of measures, including state test scores.
