New York City charter schools (don’t serve poorest kids)

STUDY FINDS NYC CHARTERS DON'T SERVE THE CITY'S POOREST; WNYC, NY, January 16, 2011

New York City has long boasted of studies finding charter schools do a better job of educating low-income students than regular public schools. But a new study questions that data.

Bruce Baker, an associate professor at Rutgers' graduate school of education, said charters do serve the same proportion of children receiving free and reduced-price meals. But those two categories are lumped together when they're actually quite different, he said.

"The charters seem to have a larger share of the kids who are the less poor among the poor," he said.

Baker's study found 57 percent of the students at a typical charter school in New York City receive free lunch compared to 68 percent in the typical regular elementary school. Students who receive a free lunch are much closer to the poverty limit than those who qualify for reduced-price meals…

Baker's new study was published by the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. It also found some charters are so successful at private fundraising that they spend an extra $800 to $1500 per pupil each year in many cases. The New York Center for Autism charter gets much more philanthropy, enabling it to spend an extra $9,571 per pupil…

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Access the study @ http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/NYC-charter-disparities