DC Charters Outperform Public Schools

Washington, D.C. charter schools are better at educating students than public schools, according to a new report from the Progressive Policy Institute.

Charter schools help students gain additional days of learning every year in reading, compared to traditional public school students. In math, charter students gain more than half an academic year on their counterparts.

More charter schools than traditional public schools have higher than expected levels of proficiency in math and reading. That measure of expected proficiency took into account students' income and race.

In the poorest sections of Washington, charter schools dramatically outperform traditional public schools, the report says.

It's not that Washington public schools are bad or getting worse, they just aren't improving as fast as Washington's charter schools. "Under both models, student performance is improving," writes David Osborne, director of the Progressive Policy Institute's project on Reinventing America's Schools.

Osborne says D.C. public schools are improving because they now have more autonomy than they had in the past, though not as much independence as charter schools.

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