Joel Klein Turns a Blind Eye to His Own Data on Charters and Test Scores
The Atlantic just published a long opinion piece by Joel Klein, including a repetition of his long-standing argument that New York City’s charters perform miracles with “students who are demographically almost identical to those attending nearby community and charter schools,” and that anyone who claims differently is a blind supporter of the “status quo.” A closer look at Klein’s own numbers, however, tells a very different story. According to the progress reports released by his Department of Education just last year, New York City’s charter sector did not outperform similar district public schools. And the Harlem Success Academy — the school which he specifically holds up as “almost identical” to neighboring district schools — actually serves dramatically lower proportions of the city’s neediest students and of English Language Learners than other Harlem schools.
As most observers of the city’s schools know, each year the Department of Education releases progress reports with “grades” for each of its district and charter schools, which take into account the progress that students at each school made when compared to students at “peer schools” (those with similar student bodies in terms of poverty, Special Education status, and the proportion of English Language Learners, as well as other factors.) On the newest school Progress Reports, which were released by Klein’s office in 2010, 58% of district schools got an A or a B in 2010, compared to only 34% of charters. In Districts 4 and 5 in Harlem, more than half of district schools got either an A or B (27 out of 53), compared to only 8 out of the 21 charters in those neighborhoods.
