Jersey Jazzman: How Student "Creaming" Works

Jersey Jazzman: How Student "Creaming" Works

How Student "Creaming" Works

There is, as usual, so much wrong in this Star-Ledger editorial on Camden's schools that it will probably take several posts for me to correct all of its mistakes. But there's one assertion, right at the very top, that folks have been making recently about Newark's schools that needs to be corrected immediately:

Last year, for the first time ever, the low-income, mostly minority kids in Newark charter schools beat the state’s average scores in reading and math in grades 3-8 – incredible, given the far more affluent pool of kids they were competing against.

This is yet another example, like previous ones, of a talking point that is factually correct but utterly meaningless for evaluating the effectiveness of education policies like charter schooling. It betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of test scores and student characteristics, which keeps the people who make statements like this from having to answer the questions that really matter.

The question in this case is: Do "successful" urban charter schools get their higher test scores, at least in part, by "creaming" students?

Creaming has become a central issue in the whole debate about the effectiveness of charters. A school "creams" when it enrolls students who are more likely to get higher scores on tests due to their personal characteristics and/or their backgrounds. The fact that Newark's charter schools enroll, as a group, fewer students with special education needs -- particularly high-cost needs -- and many fewer students who are English language learners CONTINUE READING: Jersey Jazzman: How Student "Creaming" Works