Assessment of Reading Proficiency in Urban Education: The Case of Charter Schools in Michigan, United States

Abstract

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the 7th grade reading performance among a random sample of urban public school academies (charter schools) in Wayne County, Michigan, compared with a random sample of traditional urban public schools within the same geographic area. This study was conducted using the fall 2012 Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) reading test scores, as reported by the Michigan Department of Education. A total of 11 public charter schools were selected and represented 15% of the total public charters in Wayne County that serviced middle school aged children. The 11 randomly selected Traditional Public Schools used for the comparison represented 10% of these traditional public schools that were located within a 5-mile radius of the public charter schools. Contingency tables were constructed (type of school vs. reading proficiency) and the data was analyzed using the nonparametric chisquare test for independence. According to the data, the traditional public schools had a higher percentage of grade 7 students who were proficient readers when compared with the public charter schools (30.7% vs. 18.6%, respectively). The difference, however, was not statistically significant and the null hypothesis was not rejected. These results suggested that the public charter schools were not outperforming traditional public schools in grade 7 reading proficiency.