Study: Maryland charter students’ gains outpace those at traditional schools; black, Hispanic pupils benefit most

By Jean Marbella of The Baltimore Sun. Excerpt:

"A new study has found that students at Maryland charter schools, especially those who are black or Hispanic, have on average made greater academic progress than their counterparts in traditional public schools.

While the study noted deficiencies in about a third of charter schools, the student gains were the equivalent of them getting about an extra month of learning over the typical 180-day school year, according to Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, or CREDO.

For black and Hispanic students, the progress was even more pronounced. Black charter students, for example, made math gains equivalent to 47 extra days of learning, while Hispanic children’s advances in reading represented 77 additional days of learning.

“These results show that black and Hispanic students are better off attending charter schools,” the report said.

The center compared standardized test scores for students at Maryland’s roughly 50 charters, most of which are in Baltimore, with those of students who matched their demographic profiles at traditional schools. Researchers, who analyzed four years of data ending with the 2016-2017 school year, calculated how much the charter students’ test scores deviated from those in traditional schools and how many more or fewer days of learning that represented."