TO THE EDITOR:
The article published in Wednesday’s issue of The Daily Tar Heel misleadingly used poor statistics taken from studies on specific online charter schools to negatively characterize all charter programs.http://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2017/04/charter-schools-0412-a57d (please link!)
I wanted to address this unfair portrayal, because the data was drawn from such a specific category of charter programs, and yet there was no note to say that these facts did not embody the performance of any other type of charter school.
In fact, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction published results of state end-of-grade testing in January 2016, which stated that charter students achieved grade level proficiency on 66.7 percent of all tests taken as opposed to the 56.1 percent that traditional public school students achieved. This alone shows the positive impact charter schools have on their students.http://southbcs.org/2016/02/01/state-eog-averages-public-charter-students-outperform-traditional-public-students/ (search the numbers)
This article’s blatant misrepresentation of these schools is an insult to the efforts of those who are working through these establishments to provide students opportunities.
If one is going to report on the effectiveness of charter schools, it is necessary to use data that pertains to that group of schools, and not just to an arbitrary sub-section of it, to provide a comprehensive and accurate description.
Sean McCaffery
First-Year
Pre-Business and Computer Sciencestudent directory, class of 2020
