FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The analysis uses data from the Michigan Department of Education. It looked at math and reading MEAP results for the 2011-2012 school year in grades 3-8.

In every single category, African-American students in charter schools scored higher than African-American students in traditional public schools in the same host districts.

The largest gaps were found in the MEAP reading scores – as high as 9.3 percentage points difference in eighth grade (43.6 percent proficient for African-American students in charter schools, compared to 34.3 percent proficient for African-American students in traditional public schools).

“These findings are very significant, but not surprising,” said Dan Quisenberry, President of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies (MAPSA), the state charter school association. “One of the primary missions of a charter school is to give parents a quality educational option in places where the local public schools are failing. This data shows that the mission is succeeding. African-American students in charter schools are succeeding at a higher level – in every grade, and in both math and reading. This also shows that thanks to charter schools, we’re finally making progress on closing the achievement gap that’s plagued our public education system.

“We’re never going to be truly great again as a state until we have an educational system that offers every child the chance to receive a quality education. As these results show, for African-American students, charter schools are doing a superior job of helping to prepare them for college and success in the 21st century,” he added.

Among the other findings from the year’s MEAP results:

• Charter schools in Detroit continue to far outperform the Detroit Public Schools. In math, Detroit’s charter schools had an average proficiency of 15.4 percent, compared to 10.4 percent for DPS schools. In reading, the gap was even larger – 42.5 percent proficient for charter schools compared to 35.5 percent for DPS schools. Of the 18 different grade and content-area testing combinations on this year’s MEAP test, Detroit’s charter schools scored higher than DPS schools in 16 of them.
• Charter schools also outperformed traditional public schools in most of the state’s other large urban areas, including Lansing, Grand Rapids, Flint and Saginaw.
• In Lansing, charter schools did better in both math (18.2 percent vs. 14.8 percent) and reading (49.7 percent vs. 44.7 percent).
• In Grand Rapids, charter schools did better in both math (18.8 percent vs. 17.0 percent) and reading (44.9 percent vs. 41.5 percent).
• In Saginaw, charter schools did better in both math (22.8 percent vs. 18.4 percent) and reading (45.5 percent vs. 44.9 percent).
• In Flint, charter schools did far better in reading (44.8 percent vs. 33.9 percent), while they performed virtually the same in math (14.7 percent for traditional schools vs. 14.6 percent for charter schools).

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