NEW YORK, NY October 28, 2009 —Charter school students in New York City may do better on state exams than other public school pupils. But a new study finds the proliferation of charters here has not caused test scores to go down among students left in the regular public schools.

Marcus Winters is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and looked at fourth through eighth grade scores over three years at regular public schools and tracked the percentage of students leaving to attend charters. He says reading scores even went up slightly. "The fact that they're doing this without having any harms to the regular public school students, and even having a mild positive benefit on them says a lot about the benefits of the policy," Winters says.

He supports lifting the state cap on charters, but acknowledges the gains are small and might only result in one additional point on the state's reading test.

For more information visit our news blog.