The Arizona Charter Schools Association is proud to commemorate the 25th anniversary of charter schools with a series of blogs examining how charter schools have influenced the state’s education landscape.
Students in Arizona charter schools score higher on state achievement tests than district students. In fact, they score better in pretty much all grade levels and every demographic and programmatic category for which scores are published and have done so for several years.
Charter school critics often dismiss the results by claiming charters skim the “cream of the crop.” These critics imply charter schools somehow choose their students or, alternatively, only attract high-performing students.
“Cherry-picking” and “Creaming” – shorthand for taking the “cream of the crop” – are metaphors for how students find themselves in charter schools doing the hard work to get the high marks each year. “Creaming” implies some active process of capturing only the highest-performing students and somehow getting their parents to leave their neighborhood school and friends.
Well, it turns out that selecting high-performing students for entrance is not a charter school thing – it is illegal. The only public schools that have testing requirements, or “creaming criteria,” for enrollment are some district-run specialty schools. In Arizona, families choose their schools; charter schools do not choose families.
The Association analyzed three summers’ worth of student transfer data and found that charter schools, on average, take students who score below the state test average prior to transferring, further dispelling the “cherry-picking” myth. You can learn more here.
