2005 NCLB data for public charter schools

The DC Public Charter School Board has released a summary of their NCLB AYP statistics for 2005. The Post has a story about the results here. The Post piece is a bit disingenuous when it writes:

Only eight of 31 charter school campuses under the jurisdiction of the D.C. Public Charter School Board made adequate yearly progress as required by federal law, according to data to be released today.

Although eight of the charter board's schools achieved adequate progress on the Stanford 9 achievement test this spring, as required by the No Child Left Behind Act, 10 schools failed. The other 13 campuses were not obligated under federal law to report adequate yearly progress because fewer than 40 students were tested in several categories.

The success rate isn't 8 out of 31, its 8 out of 18, which is roughly the same percentage as the DCPS schools. Counting ineligible schools in the total is a distortion. Notice they make the same mistake, but in the other direction in the next paragraph.

Twelve of 31 charter school campuses -- including Friendship-Edison, Maya Angelou and Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School for Public Policy -- failed to meet academic benchmarks for two or three consecutive years. In comparison, 81 of the city's approximately 145 traditional public schools were in the same category.

Does this mean that the other 19 campuses did meet their academic benchmarks? Absolutely not. I suspect some of those are not applicable due to the school not having complete data over the 3 year span (because the school isn't three years old, has had fewer than 40 students were tested in several categories, etc).

So, according to the Post, on one hand charter schools are worse than DCPS schools ("only 8 of 31 met AYP goals"), yet on the other ("only 12 of 31 failed to meet the benchmark on a multi-year basis") they kick DCPS's butt. Neither assessment tells the whole story.

UPDATE: Mark Lerner has more.

Greetings Wonkers & Joanna Jacobs readers. Feel free to make yourself at home and read all about DC education. There is more coverage of NCLB metrics here, here and here.