Charters generally perform better than traditional schools, not as well as magnets

Howard Blume Mitchell Landsberg and Sandra Poindexter:

Standardized tests show that the highest-performing charters push low-income black and Latino youth to higher levels of achievement.

At their best, charter schools in Los Angeles shatter the conventional wisdom that skin color and family income are the greatest predictors of academic success.

Setting standards high and wringing long hours out of students and teachers, the highest-performing charters push low-income black and Latino youth to levels of achievement, as measured by standardized tests, more typical of affluent, suburban students.

If such schools were the norm, any debate over the value of charters would be moot. But there is no typical charter. They adhere to no single vision and vary widely in quality.

That said, a Times analysis showed that, overall, L.A. charter schools deliver higher test scores than traditional public schools. But charters lag well behind L.A. Unified's network of magnet schools.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at January 11, 2010 3:44 AM
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