The Pacific War reached a point in which a battered USS Enterprisestood as America’s only operational aircraft carrier. Undaunted, the crew hung a banner in the flight deck stating, “Enterprise vs. Japan” and kept on fighting. Arizona’s charter leaders may feel a bit under assault by circumstances these days as well, but in most any “Arizona charter educators vs. _________” I’m going to take our educators over the fill-in-the-blank. Your track record gives me this confidence.
Earlier I sent you data from Stanford University’s Opportunity Project showing academic growth and proficiency by school for Arizona. The Stanford scholars linked state tests from across the country, giving us both proficiency and growth scores for most American public schools. You can look the numbers up by campus here.
Some of you wondered, understandably, how Arizona’s charter schools look in the data, so let us address that now. The Stanford linking study allows us to compare schools across states. The figure below shows what the Arizona charter school performance compares to public schools in Massachusetts.