NOTE THAT THE OTHER SCHOOLS ARE IMPROVING TOO IN THE MORE COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT:

Charter schools fare better academically than L. A. Unified peers, report says: But some education experts question the validity of the survey, which relied heavily on test scores for comparisons. (Mitchell Landsberg, 6/10/08, Los Angeles Times)

It's the $64,000 question of public education: Are charter schools better than their traditional public school counterparts?

A report to be released today from the California Charter Schools Assn. takes a crack at it, comparing charter schools in Los Angeles with their traditional peers. Its conclusion is that charters generally perform better academically than nearby regular public schools, and that charters improve as they age. [...]

"It's pretty significant that seven out of 10 charters actually outperform their most similarly matched district public school," said Caprice Young, chief executive of the charter schools association, citing one finding in the report. She said the study was intended to answer the question parents are most likely to ask: How does their local charter school stack up against the nearest comparable regular schools?

It found that charter schools did especially well in educating African American students and that charters show some of their strongest success in middle schools, whose traditional counterparts have been stubbornly resistant to progress.