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Saturday, July 13, 2013

Newark Charter Update: A few new graphs & musings | School Finance 101

Newark Charter Update: A few new graphs & musings | School Finance 101:

Newark Charter Update: A few new graphs & musings

Posted on July 14, 2013

 
 
 
 
 
 
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It’s been a while since I’ve written anything about New Jersey Charter schools, so I figured I throw a few new graphs and tables out there. In the not too distant past, I’ve explained:
  1. That Newark charter schools in particular, persist in having an overall cream-skimming effect in Newark, creating demographic advantage for themselves and ultimately to the detriment of the district.
  2. That while the NJ CREDO charter school effect study showed positive effects of charter enrollment on student outcomes specifically (and only) in Newark, the unique features of student sorting (read skimming) in Newark make it difficult to draw any reasonable conclusions about the effectiveness of actual practices of Newark Charters. Note that in  my most recent post, I re-explain the problem with asserting school effects, when a sizable component of the school effect may be a function of the children (peer group) served.
  3. In many earlier posts, I evaluated the extent to which average performance levels of Newark (and other NJ) charter schools were higher or lower than those of demographically similar schools, finding that charters were/are pretty much scattered.
  4. And I’ve raised questions about other data - including attrition rates - for some high flying NJ charters.
As an update, since past posts have only looked at NJ charter performance in terms of “levels”