Professor Aaron Pallas of Teachers College weighs in on the comparison of charter school performance versus district schools, today on GothamSchools.org (here).

Prof. Pallas doesn't exactly agree with my critique of the New York City Department of Education's points grid that showed district schools outperforming charters in the overall score. Prof. Pallas also overlooks the successive years of charters outperforming districts in this same report, at least going back to the 2005-06 school year, which demonstrates a multi-year trend.

Credit belongs to the City DOE for attempting to grade schools with a mix of current performance and improvement over time. Again, my concern is that the weightings between the two lead to an overall inaccurate conclusion at variance with other recent studies and the superior charter results on the state exams.

Peter Murphy
for The Chalkboard