More Dispatch for the FLDOE’s Charter School Superiority Study
There are few education writers who can claim to be peers of Walt Gardner. Earlier this month, the former teacher effectively unmasked the half-truths the charter school industry are telling the nation. In a post titledQuestioning Charter School Superiority, Gardner responded to one such half-truth propaganda which - not unsurprisingly – came from Nina Rees, president/CEO of the National Charter School Alliance. From Gardner:
In her letter to the editor, Rees wrote that “charter students from low-income families are outperforming their traditional public school peers.” This is the claim she repeated in an op-ed on Mar. 27 (“Will Obama’s Budget Recognize Charter Schools?” The Wall Street Journal). To support her view in the essay, Rees cited a multiyear study of KIPP that was released in February by Mathematica Policy Research. According to investigators, after three years students in KIPP were 11 months ahead of their traditional public school peers in math, 14 months ahead in science, and 11 months ahead in social studies.
Rees emphasized that KIPP’s success is all the more remarkable because it “draws from some of