The growing popularity of charter schools is more a result of improved student behavior and better student attendance than higher student achievement, suggests a report by the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, based at Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York City.
According to the report, most previous research on charter schools had measured only test scores, while this study looked at an unnamed large urban school district and examined attendance records from 1994 to 2004, as well as test scores for 1998 to 2004.
The report shows that while charter school test scores may vary by school, parent and student satisfaction generally remains high across the board.