When Jerry Brown touts his record on education on his campaign website, he starts by citing the two charter schools he founded, calling them “among the top-performing schools in Oakland.” They aren’t — not when measured by academic achievement, at any rate.
The chart below shows the percentage of students in Brown’s two charter schools who score at or above the “proficient” level on the California Standards Tests (averaged across all available grades and subjects). The results are broken out a few different ways to show that they are not particularly sensitive to demographics.
Far from being “among the top,” Jerry Brown’s schools are marginally lower-scoring than the abysmal Oakland Public Schools, and fantastically far below the city’s real top performers: the American Indian Public Charter Schools network (3 schools) and the Oakland Charter Academies (2 schools).
Another of Mr. Brown’s campaign website claims is more credible: “I have gained first-hand experience in how difficult it is to enable all students to be ready for college and careers.” Perhaps if Mr. Brown had taken the time to learn from and emulate the two charter school networks that are already achieving that goal in his own backyard, Californians would have greater confidence in his education policy acumen.
