Charter schools have been one of the rallying cries of Christians for some time now.  Yet, an interesting new study has been released pointing out that they don’t seem to do any better of a job educating our young people. 

From this weekend’s New York Times…

A federal study showing that fourth graders in charter schools score worse in reading and math than their public school counterparts should cause some soul-searching in Congress. Too many lawmakers seem to believe that the only thing wrong with American education is the public school system, and that converting lagging schools to charter schools would cause them to magically improve.

The study, based on data from 2003 on students’ performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, found charter school students significantly behind their non-charter-school counterparts. But it also showed that not all charter schools are created equal.

On average, charter schools that were affiliated with public school districts performed just as well as traditional public schools. That may be a disappointment to advocates who expected them to show clear superiority. But the real stunner was the performance of free-standing charter schools, which have no affiliation with public school systems and are often school districts unto themselves. It was this grouping that showed the worst performance.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/opinion/27sun1.html?ex=1314331200&en=d17f1e1f87a808fb&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

If this research holds up, this is a blow to the pro-charter school crowd and a win for the Christians need to be in the public arena folks.

Undoubtedly there are people in your church on both sides of the issue.