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Friday, January 4, 2013

Florida HS Grades Show No Difference Between Charter Schools and Public Schools | Scathing Purple Musings

Florida HS Grades Show No Difference Between Charter Schools and Public Schools | Scathing Purple Musings:


Florida HS Grades Show No Difference Between Charter Schools and Public Schools

While the Florida media are obliged to publish whatever conclusions that the hacks at the FLDOE Bush Foundation release , Dr. Stanley Smith of UCF has emerged as a counterweight to their predictable everything is just swell fluff. Gina Jordan of StateImpact has Dr. Smith’s comparison of charter schools to public schools from Florida’ just released high school grades.
Smith examined 491 high schools. 46 of them are charter schools.
He says that at first glance, the average scores suggest charters are the stronger performers.
“Without any adjustments for poverty or minority status, it appears that the charter high schools perform better by a statistically significant difference of 4.37 percent,” Smith said.
But he says this is misleading because charter schools serve a higher percentage of minority