Charter schools are producing results

Aldous Huxley once said, “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

Unfortunately Sherry Johnson, the executive director of the Monroe County School Boards Association did her best to ignore the facts about Rochester charter schools in her D&C essay last week when she wrote: “The majority of charter schools with demographics that are more aligned with RCSD for ethnicity [and] poverty ... do not perform overall significantly better than RCSD students.”

I invite all readers to browse the 2016 state test scores by school and by grade to see the facts themselves. The data are very clear that charter schools as a whole deliver dramatically better results.

For example you will see that Rochester Prep, the city’s leading charter school with multiple locations throughout the city and approaching an enrollment of 2000 children, had 60 percent of its fourth-graders score proficient in ELA compared with 8 percent for the district.

Fourth-grade math looked much the same, as 72 percent of Rochester Prep test takers were proficient compared to the district’s 11 percent. Sixty percent versus 8 percent in ELA and 72 percent versus 11 percent in math – I would label these differences as significant. And while all charters have not achieved the results of Rochester Prep, the data confirm that the average charter school test scores are multiples ahead of the City School District.

Ms. Johnson calls out the demographic differential to explain test score disparity. However the 2014-2015 demographic data show that Rochester Prep actually enrolled more minority students (97 percent) than the district (86 percent). Eighty-two percent of Rochester Prep’s children are economically disadvantaged, very close to the district’s 90 percent. Of the 12 charter schools open in Rochester in 2015-2016, only one, Genesee Community, had fewer than 84 percent minority students so it is very disingenuous of Ms. Johnson to use Genesee Community as her representative sample of charter demographics.

Charters are far from perfect and all have significant room for improvement. But charter supporters realize that continuing to resist change to protect the status quo has caused great harm not only to the children and families of Rochester but to the whole community. We are hoping that leaders like Ms. Johnson will rise above the motive of self interest and advocate for the change necessary to rescue Rochester.

Jim Ryan, a former community member of the Editorial Board, is a member of Rochester Prep’s Board of Trustees.