Edison Schools reports accelerating student achievement gains Tuesday, September 19, 2000 Edison announced that the rate of increase by its students on state and national achievement tests is climbing. For the first four years of its operations, the company reported average increases per year on norm- and criterion-referenced exams of 4 percentiles and 6 percentage points respectively. For the academic year just ended, these rates of gain were up 20 percent to 5 percentiles and 7 percentage points, as reported in a 150-page annual analysis. The report covers more than 450 achievement trends in reading, writing, spelling, language arts, math, science and social studies. It also provides a look at 40 different schools from coast to coast, all open long enough to measure their gains in student achievement. The company noted that many of its schools in urban settings were performing particularly well, pointing to one of its largest "clusters" in Washington D.C. Edison's District schools gained an average of 9 percentiles on nationally normed tests and 10 percentage points on criterion-referenced tests. Edison also reported that its parent satisfaction was higher than national norms for the fifth consecutive year, with 85 percent of parents rating Edison's schools an "A" or a "B". View the entire Annual Report (in Adobe Acrobat format) Back to News...