Charters can ‘TUDA’ their own horns

The recently released NAEP Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) includes breakouts for charter public schools and traditional public schools in six out of 21 districts assessed. The table below shows that charter schools outperformed traditional public schools in the majority of districts in both subject areas and grade levels. In all of the other instances, charter schools performed as well as traditional public schools (e.g., the differences in scores were not statistically significant). In both the 2009 and 2011 NAEP TUDA, charter schools never underperformed against traditional public schools.

Others have pointed to the limited number of districts in NAEP with both charter and traditional public school data to compare. A larger sampling of charter schools in big districts like DC, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, and San Diego could allow for further analyses of NAEP performance trends at the district level.

The NAEP assessment does have limitations, as we have discussed in previous blogs. Moreover, comparing a snapshot of student performance between charters and traditional public schools does not control for the potential bias of students selecting to attend charter schools. However, the large differences below deserve attention and further analysis.

2011 NAEP, Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA)  for Charter and Traditional Public Schools

Data compiled by NAPCS from: http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/naepdata/dataset.aspx
Note: CPS – Charter Public School; TPS – Traditional Public School; N/A – insufficient data to compare CPS and TPS; ↔ – no statistically significant difference in the scores