I’m pretty frustrated by Natalie Hopkinson’s failure to include any data of any kind in her New York Times op-ed “Why School Choice Fails” which is actually specifically looking at the District of Columbia. It’s a little bit difficult to know exactly how we would want to go about assessing whether the availability of charter schools is or is not helping, but a good starting point might be this chart of DC NAEP scores that I’ve assembled. The trends are positive, especially for younger kids. So the question we should be asking is what’s been driving improvements in DC public schools.
Meanwhile, I hope fans of education controversies all across the nation will eagerly await the release of the latest tranche of Trial Urban District Assessment data later this week.
