Arizona Charters Blow the Doors Off 2015 NAEP Science Gains

October 27, 2016

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Ok sports fans, I know you are all chomping at the bit, wanting to know “but Ladner, how do Arizona charter school science gains compare to statewide averages?!?” Oh I am glad you asked, here it is for 4th grade:

4th-grade-science-gains-charter

Hmmm…almost twice the gain as top ranking Arizona as a whole. Would it be running up the score to note that Arizona would not have done nearly as well without charters? I’ll just skip that part for now. Here are the NAEP 8th grade science gains:

naep-8th-grade-science-gains-charters

Well, would you look at that-twice as large as the largest state gain.  I’m crunching these out on a Prescott Library computer after taking a mountain bike ride on a “day off” but feel free to run the numbers for yourself here. I’ll breakdown subgroups later when I have more than 16 minutes left on my public computer use.

In the meantime I’m just going to go out on a limb here and say that there just might be something to this whole parental choice thing. Just maybe.


Arizona Leads the Nation in 4th Grade Science NAEP gains, Utah in 8th grade

October 27, 2016

naep-4th-grade-science-gains

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

So the CeleNAEP continues…Arizona topped the nation by a wide margin in 4th grade science NAEP gains, while Utah came out on top on the statewide gains for 8th grade:

naep-8th-grade-science-gains-by-state