Can Charter Schools break the Poverty-Poor Student Performance Link?

In an earlier post, I argued that school based solutions to the problem of the poor performance of students in central city schools were not likely to succeed because they ignored the impact of the concentration of disadvantaged students on student achievement. The data showed that 79% of the variation in performance in school performance […]

New York’s “Failing Schools” – The Wrong Diagnosis and a Misguided Solution

For the past several years, Governor Cuomo’s office has issued a report, “The State of New York’s Failing Schools.” The 2015 report contends that “Despite the fact that districts with failing schools receive more state funding than other districts, these schools are delivering unacceptable results…The statistics and facts contained in this report and its Appendix […]

What Critics of Central City School Performance Ignore

Students attending central city schools perform very poorly on statewide tests. For example, in Upstate New York, less than 20% of city students received passing grades on the 2015 Grades 3-8 New York State Statewide Assessment. In Syracuse, only 8.7% of students passed, while in Rochester, only 6.1% passed. In Buffalo, 13.4% of students passed. […]