The District's Charter Schools Shine With Historically Disadvantaged Populations

I continually emphasize two points: charters outperform the state, and charter performance overall has improved every year since the DC CAS was introduced seven years ago.

But one of the most noteworthy things about charter schools has been their strong performance with groups of students considered to be “educationally disadvantaged.”  This includes African Americans, Latinos, English Language Learners, and students with disabilities.

This blog focuses on charter school performance with African Americans.   

While charter schools overall outperform the state by about four percentage points, they outperform with African Americans by 7 to 9 points.

   African American DC CAS Proficiency 2013

Charter schools also serve a higher population of African American students than the state as a whole: in tested grades, 83.5% of charter school students are African American, compared to 75.5% statewide. And proficiency rates have climbed substantially since the first DC CAS was administered in 2006.

  African American Charter School DC CAS Proficiency 2006-2013

Some of our schools have African-American proficiency rates that are at levels that have effectively closed the achievement gap between white and black children in our city.

African-American Reading Proficiency

African-American Math Proficiency

And finally, we want to highlight those schools that showed tremendous growth in proficiency rates for African-American students between 2012 and 2013:

African-American Reading Proficiency Rate Growth from 2012 to 2013

African-American Math Proficiency Rate Growth from 2012 to 2013