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 […]

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. […]

The Crisis of Poverty in Upstate New York Cities

For many years, concerns about Upstate New York’s relatively slow economic growth have revolved around the idea that the region’s performance has been subpar, and that by altering government policies, by reducing tax burdens, or by spending money on economic development projects, performance could be improved. But these analyses ignore the fact that Upstate’s economic […]