Current and former leaders of the New York City, Chicago, and District of Columbia school systems who tout strategies such as using test scores in teacher evaluations, promoting charter schools, and closing failing schools, have exaggerated the pace of academic improvement for poor and minority students in their districts, a new report contends.
Using district-level data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, advocates for a more holistic approach to improving public schooling argue that those three districts—often held up as national models—produced slower gains between 2003 and 2011 on NAEP than other urban districts that have not been as aggressive in adopting similar strategies.
The Broader, Bolder Approach to Education—a national campaign that favors using a wider array of services such as early childhood, after-school programming, and health care to improve outcomes for poor and minority students—released its 15-page executive summary of the analysis last week. The full report is expected out this week.
