Report: Charter Schools Make Performance Gains

They're outstripping traditional public schools in reading

A new, independent national study finds improvement in the overall performance of charter schools, driven in part by the presence of more high-performing charters and closure of underperforming charter schools

The National Charter School Study 2013, released today by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University, is an update and expansion of CREDO's 2009 landmark 16-state study, Multiple Choice, the first study to take a comprehensive look at the impact of charter schools on student performance. The 2009 study found a wide variance in quality among charter schools, with students in charter schools not faring as well in the aggregate as those attending traditional public schools.

The National Charter School Study 2013 looks at performance of students in charter schools in 26 states and New York City, which is treated separately as the city differs dramatically from the rest of the state. In those states (and New York City), charter school students now have greater learning gains in reading than their peers in traditional public schools. Traditional public schools and charter schools have equivalent learning gains in mathematics.