The New York Times’ Comprehension Problem on Detroit Charters

In a piece criticizing school choice advocate — and future secretary of education — Betsy DeVos, an op-ed from the New York Times slams charter schools in Detroit.

Douglas N. Harris, a professor of economics at Tulane University and a nonresident senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, writes, “One well-regarded study found that Detroit’s charter schools performed at about the same dismal level as its traditional public schools.”

ForTheRecord says: No it didn’t find that.

The study linked is from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes. Here is an excerpt from the report: “Charter students in the city of Detroit (27 percent of the state’s charter students), are performing even better than their peers in the rest of the state, on average gaining nearly three months achievement for each year they attend charter schools.”