When the media gets a charter school story wrong, I usually suspect political bias.
Progressive media outlets often underplay the effectiveness of charter schools, while conservative outlets overstate their impact.
But sometimes everyone misses a major part of the story.
All of the following media outlets reported on Mathematica’s study of The Equity Project: Vox.com (leans left), the Wall Street Journal (leans right), National Public Radio (leans left), the National Review (leans right), Shanker Blog (leans left).
Most of these education writers are top notch.
But all of them, I think, missed the mark.
The Mathematica Study; The CREDO Study
The Equity Project is a charter school in New York City. It pays teachers $125,000.
Mathematica just completed a rigorous study and found that, over four years, The Equity Project delivered an additional 1.6 years of math gains and .4 years of ELA gains.