What the new NAEP tells us about Atlanta’s Charter Schools

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results from late winter 2017 testing have finally been released, and one of the more interesting findings is how black charter school students in the Atlanta, Georgia school system compare to blacks attending traditional public schools in that city. This table, which shows data extracted from the NAEP Data Explorer, tells the tale, and it is impressive.

Atlanta Black NAEP Scores Charters and Non-Charters 2017

Very simply, charter school blacks in Atlanta surpassed in every area tested, and by a statistically significant amount, which is particularly hard to do in this case because the statistical sampling errors in these district-level scores get pretty big once you look at subgroup performance.

By the way, while the table shows the results using NAEP Scale Scores, I took a look at the Grade 8 NAEP Math proficiency rates, as well. Charter school blacks scored 21 percent proficient while blacks in the city’s traditional public schools only logged 7 percent proficient. Statewide in Kentucky black students only scored 9 percent proficient in this subject/grade level on NAEP.

In other words, while we want to see a lot more than 21 percent proficiency rates, Atlanta’s black charter school students are producing about three times the level of proficiency found in the traditional schools. And, Kentucky could benefit from such improvements.

By the way, it is no accident that the Kentucky Department of Education crafted its regulations to support Kentucky’s new charter school law using Georgia as a model. Now, you can see why, and you can also be more confident that if funding is finally found for charter schools in Kentucky, what results is highly likely to perform well above the average for charter schools nationwide, especially for minority students.