Caroline Hoxby To Speak at SLU

Caroline Hoxby, a charter school scholar, will be speaking tonight at St. Louis University through a joint SLU and Show Me Institute speaker's series. She researched charter students in Chicago and New York, comparing their achievement levels to those of district students. Charter schools give great advantages to many students, especially disadvantaged students.
From the St. Louis Post 'The Grade': (click to read entire article)

Charter schools in Chicago, New York better serving disadvantaged students, Hoxby says

By David Hunn

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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Stanford University Professor Caroline Hoxby is speaking at St. Louis University tonight about her research comparing charter school students to district students in New York and Chicago.

Her talk will focus on what she’s learned from her study of over 100 schools — the biggest study of charter school affects so far, she says — and how charters are teaching educators what works for disadvantaged students in American cities.

The Grade interviewed her last week for a preview of her speech. The following answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Charter Schools Showing Excellence

In a recent St. Louis Beacon article, charter schools are shown to be productive educational settings, especially the language immersion programs. They are not only getting better grades than in other schools, the the achievement gap is closing. Charter school boosters try to close the gap

By Robert Joiner, Beacon staff

Posted 7:51 a.m. Tues., Mar. 17 - One of the highest scoring public schools in Missouri is Academie Lafayette, a language immersion charter school in Kansas City. Not only does it outperform other charters and many regular public schools on state assessment exams, Lafayette stands out this year for being the first charter to become a Missouri Gold Star school. These are schools, 15 in all this year, that the state says are performing at a high academic level. The rest of the article can be viewed at the Beacon.

Charter Schools Can Help Open Doors

Charter schools are a great way of expanding options for our children. While I wish there were more options available for special needs children, at least charter schools can give those children more options to look into other than the traditional public schools that may not service their needs.
However, currently, only Kansas City and St. Louis are allowed to have charter schools.