Zip it! Charters and Economic Status by Zip Code in NY and NJ
There’s no mystery or proprietary secret among academics or statisticians and data geeks as to how to construct simple comparisons of school demographics using available data. It’s really not that hard. It doesn’t require bold assumptions, nor does it require complex statistical models. Sometimes, all that’s needed to shed light on a situation is a simple descriptive summary of the relevant data. Below is a “how to” (albeit sketchy) with links to data for doing your own exploring of charter and traditional public school demographics, by grade level and location.
Despite the value of a simple, direct and relevant comparison using accessible data providing for easy replication, many continue to obscure charter-non-charter comparisons with convoluted presentations of less pertinent information. Matt DiCarlo recently published a very useful post (at Shanker Blog) explaining the various convoluted descriptions from Caroline Hoxby’s research on charter schools that make it difficult to discern whether the charter schools in her comparisons really had comparable student populations to nearby, same
