"In an odd new salvo in the food fight over whether charter schools are superior to public schools, a Stanford organization that released a high-profile study last June showing charter schools performing worse than public schools is reportedly about to release a new report showing the opposite about New York City's charter schools.
Because New York is the nation's largest school district and Mayor Michael Bloomberg's school reform policies are so drastic and controversial, this report should get a lot of attention. But there are some strange things about it.
The organization CREDO -- the Center for Research on Education Outcomes -- released its nationwide study in June 2009, showing that (according to the press release on the study) 'in the aggregate, students in charter schools [are] not faring as well as students in traditional public schools.' The report 'found that 17 percent of charter schools reported academic gains that were significantly better than traditional public schools, while 37 percent of charter schools showed gains that were worse than their traditional public school counterparts, with 46 percent of charter schools demonstrating no significant difference.'"