Chicago Charter Schools not just doing it (during strike) but doing it better!

As I earlier mentioned the now infamous teacher strike in Chicago didn’t impact the charter schools there, which enroll many thousands of students. It was school as usual for charter school students while chaos reigned in the traditional public schools.

The strike has renewed interest in charter schools in Chicago. Over at the J. P. Greene blog, guest poster Matthew Ladner just put up “Chicago Charter Students aren’t just in school today, they are learning more than their district peers.”

Dr. Ladner took a look at performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in reading and math for low income students in the city’s charter schools and traditional public schools.

No surprise to us, the Chicago charter school students outperformed in every area: fourth grade reading, fourth grade math, eighth grade reading and eighth grade math.

I’ll bet there will be even more pressure to create more charter schools in the city after the dramatic demonstration of child-hostile, me-first attitudes on the part of the rank and file teachers in the traditional Chicago public school system.

That adds to evidence we have discussed earlier from New York City (here and here) and from Boston that charter schools really do work for kids in under-performing school systems. We need that sort of option for our kids here in Kentucky, too.