Black students gain from charter school advantage in California, but not in Washington
A new report shows that black students attending California charter public schools are outperforming similar students stuck in traditional public schools. The Wall Street Journal reports as follows:
"The California Charter Schools Association looked at the state's Academic Performance Index (API), which runs on a scale from 200 to 1000, and found that the average black charter student outscored the average black traditional school student by an average of 18 points over the last four years of publicly available data.
In reform hubs like Los Angeles, the charter advantage was 22 points, in Sacramento 48 points, in Oakland 51 and in San Francisco 150. In San Diego, the other major urban center, traditional schools outscored charters by an average of eight points.
The report also found that charters are disproportionately among California's best schools in educating black students. Though charters account for only 9% of California schools, they represent 39% of those in which African-American API scores exceed 800 in English and math proficiency exceed 65%. Charters serving African-American students are also less likely than traditional public schools to have low academic status coupled with low academic progress.
Crucially, the data show that charters' success isn't attributable to attracting students who are better equipped to learn from the start. 'The African-American populations in charter public and traditional public schools are very similar,' notes the report, with the same level of parental education, similar household income and nearly identical attrition rates."
Minority and other students here in Washington are denied the charter school advantage allowed California students.
But the winds of change may have reached the shores of Washington state. Last weekend the state PTA legislative assembly voted to support charter school legislation. Perhaps the state PTA can convince the legislature that black students in Washington deserve the same charter school advantage that California's black students now enjoy.
