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Sunday, November 15, 2009
Charters Underperform Against Counterparts
South Valley Academy students are among thousands who have chosen charter schools over their larger neighborhood traditional schools.
Other local charters that target Hispanic students include La Resolana Leadership Academy, a middle school; Nuestros Valores high school; La Academia de Lengua y Cultura, a bilingual middle school; and New America School, which opened this year for immigrant students.
Charter schools in general say they are providing choice and services that larger traditional schools can't offer. But on paper, they aren't showing much improvement.
In June, Stanford University released a report showing New Mexico charter students overall tended to perform "significantly worse" than their traditional school counterparts. Listing all the charters, it said South Valley Academy was performing the same as other schools with similar demographics.
Hispanics, in particular, did "significantly worse as a result of charter school attendance compared to their counterparts in traditional public schools in both reading and math," it said. However, English Language Learners in charters did "significantly better" in reading.
State Secretary of Education Veronica Garcia said that absent a difference in performance, the charters' biggest asset is giving parents a choice.
"It appears many parents feel that the charter schools fill a need that maybe isn't being provided in the traditional public schools," Garcia said. "Maybe it's around a curriculum focus. It could be the size of a classroom or size of the school ... it appears oftentimes parents make a choice to go to charter schools rather than traditional schools for other than the academic performance."
— Andrea Schoellkopf
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