Two new posts in the GothamSchools community section discuss the new report showing that city charter schools are helping their students perform as well on state tests as suburban kids do. First, Diana Senechal, the city teacher whose experiment showed that students can be promoted even if they guess on state tests, lists eight questions she wishes the report had answered.
Then Alexander Hoffman, a student in the educational policy program at Columbia University’s Teachers College, addresses whether the study meets the “gold standard” of education research — or whether such a standard actually exists. He writes:
The Gold Standard crowd has a favorite method for comparing charter schools to non-charter public schools, one of which they are quite proud, but one that is so full of problems that I am shocked that they keep using it.