A Comparison Of School Type, Student Performance, And Funding: An Analysis Of Urban Middle Schools In New Jersey

Dissertation

Public Deposited

Abstract

In this study, a nonexperimental and quantitative design was used to compare students’ language arts and mathematics proficiency scores and the school funding levels of three charter middle schools and three traditional public middle schools in a New Jersey urban school district. The schools were selected based on their socioeconomic status as identified by the district factor groups as determined by the New Jersey Department of Education, the state oversight and monitoring government agency. All of the schools in the sample were ranked “A,” the lowest socioeconomic group in New Jersey. The research began by canvassing and examining PARCC state exam data for middle school grades. Only the sixth grade generated a complete set of test results; therefore, the analysis of the study was based on sixth-grade PARCC state exam data and participation rate requirements established by the New Jersey Department of Education for one academic year. The results of the study suggested that students in charter schools outperformed students in traditional public schools on state language arts and mathematics exams with less public funding per pupil. These study results were consistent with the results of similar national and local studies that compared charter schools to traditional public schools.

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