The Florida Department of Education unveiled its annual charter school performance report on Monday which showed students in charter schools do better than those in traditional schools.
“There is simply no denying that choice works, particularly for minority and low-income students,” said Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran. “These results represent hundreds of thousands of Florida families who were empowered to make the best education decisions for their children and are reaping the benefits. Governor DeSantis has made bold choice-related proposals leading into the 2019 Legislative Session, and this report provides further evidence that they are right for Florida.”
“Using 2017-18 school year data, Student Achievement in Florida’s Charter Schools: A Comparison of the Performance of Charter School Students with Traditional Public School Students compared achievement, learning gains and achievement gaps across a variety of subgroups and grade levels. The statutorily mandated report is based on more than 4.2 million test scores and makes 195 comparisons of academic success between students attending charter schools and students attending traditional public schools,” the Florida Department of Education noted.
“Highlights of the report include in 63 of the 77 (82 percent) comparisons, students enrolled in charter schools demonstrated higher rates of grade level performance than their peers in traditional public school,” the department continued. “The report concluded that the achievement gap was lower for charter school students in 19 of 22 (86 percent) comparisons. The achievement gap component included English Language Arts, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies.
When comparing learning gains, the percentage of students making learning gains was higher in charter schools in 88 of the 96 (91.7 percent) comparisons.”
The Florida Department of Education looked at how minority students did in charter schools.
“In comparisons of achievement and learning gains, African-American students in charter schools performed better than African-American students in district-managed schools in 89 percent of the comparisons,” the department noted. “In comparisons of achievement and learning gains, Hispanic students in charter schools performed better than Hispanic students in district-managed schools in 93 percent of the comparisons. In comparisons of achievement and learning gains, students eligible for free/reduced lunch in charter schools performed better than students eligible for free/reduced lunch in district-managed schools in 93 percent of the comparisons. For 2017-18 school grades, 47 percent of graded charter schools earned an ‘A’ compared to 28 percent of graded traditional schools.”
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