CHARTER SCHOOL COMPETITION IN NEW YORK CITY

A new study, "Everyone Wins: How Charter Schools Benefit All New York City Public School Students" 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.

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 New York City's public schools benefit from charter schools' expansion. The findings of this report further demonstrate why New York's cap on charter schools should be lifted.