Reply #15: OK, I'm no fan of charter schools, but.... [View All]

[denverbill]

Charter schools typically 'outperform' their public counterparts because the parents that opt to send their kids to charters tend to be more educated and wealthier. The schools pull the cream of the crop from public schools, and drag down the public schools for the same reason.

If you compare them to public schools, the public schools are almost always going to lose. While comparing them to each other may not be a great idea either, at least the worst charters would get weeded out.

A better comparison would be to compare individual student achievement across schools. Or to arbitrarily assign public school students to charters so that instead of just teaching the cream of the crop, they are teaching the entire spectrum of students. Neither of those will ever happen though.