STUDY REVEALS CHARTER SCHOOLS HAVE POSITIVE IMPACT ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS

New York, NY:  Today, October 28^th , Manhattan Institute senior fellow Marcus A. Winters released a new study, “Everyone Wins: How Charter Schools Benefit All New York City Public School Students”. The author uses student-level data to study the effect of competition from charter schools on academic performance in public schools.

This report is the first to focus on the effect that charter competition has had on the math and reading proficiency of students who remain in a New York City public school. Its findings compliment those of recent research showing that students make academic gains when they attend one of Gotham's charter schools.

Assemblyman Sam Hoyt (D-Buffalo) said, “The findings in this study confirm what charter school advocates have believed for some time and which other reports have shown; charter schools improve student success across all schools.  This makes a compelling case for eliminating New York’s cap on charter schools, something I am calling for as part of the comprehensive reform initiatives in the education bill I recently authored.”

Highlights of the study include:

• For every 1 percent of a public school’s students who leave to attend a charter school, reading proficiency for those students who remain at the school increased by about 0.02 standard deviations. This directly contrasts the suspicions of charter school opponents who claim that there would be a negative impact on public school students.
• There is no effect on overall student achievement in math.
• The lowest-performing students in public school benefit in both math and reading from charter school competition.

This new study demonstrates that even those students who remain in public schools benefit from charter schools' expansion. The findings of this report further demonstrate why caps on charter schools should be lifted.

The study can be accessed online at http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_60.htm. If you would like to schedule an interview with the author, please contact Kasia Zabawa at (646) 839-3342 or by email at kzabawa@manhattan-institute.org.

Marcus A. Winters Ph.D., is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He has performed several studies on a variety of education policy issues, including high-stakes testing, charter schools, and the effects of vouchers on the public school system.  He received his B.A. in political science with departmental honors from Ohio University and his doctorate in economics from the University of Arkansas.