A long-delayed U.S. Department of Education's analysis of the academic achievement of charter school students compared to regular public school students released Aug. 22 showed that charter school students for the most part performed at lower levels than students in regular public schools. "The department's study provides further evidence against unchecked expansion of the charter school experiment," said AFT president Edward J. McElroy.

The AFT has been calling for the release of the analysis of 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores among these groups for more than two years, and "we are pleased that the Department has finally made it public," said McElroy.

The study confirms the findings of a 2004 AFT Report on the 2003 NAEP charter school data, which showed that charter school students usually do not perform as well as their peers in public school. In a 2004 New York Times advertisement, critics of the AFT report said characteristics such as parental education, household income and the quality of learning resources in the home were necessary to make a more accurate comparison between achievement in charter and regular public schools. The analysis released on Aug. 22 adjusts for race, socioeconomic status and other characteristics.

Some of the same charter school advocates who attacked the AFT report for not having access to those data now have launched efforts to undermine the Education Department's expanded analysis even though it includes those data. "These results are inconvenient for charter school proponents," McElroy said. "But charter supporters can't just keep moving the goalpost when they don't like the results. Their 'see no evil' attitude ultimately hurts the charter movement."

August 23, 2006